On the way to the vet Saturday we passed a very young fawn on the side of the road. Just a very narrow shoulder, a deer, a bit of grass, and then a wooded area. It's fur was damp, it's nose still fairly blunt, and it was calmly standing next to a fairly busy stretch of road munching grass. It's head looked more like that of a baby bunny than a deer.
About half an hour later, on the way back home, we passed the same point. The fawn hadn't moved. Yummy got concerned. We came back around, found a wider spot of the narrow shoulder, and stopped. The deer didn't care. We called the community's volunteer fire department and they said we were out of luck. Someone's cow roaming around would be one thing. This was a wild creature who, by our description, wasn't freaking out or anything. But, they agreed, it's momma was probably long gone.
So, Yummy got out of the car to try to convince the fawn that the grass further from the road was a safer place to be. She walked over to it and slowly reached out. I started to press the button on my camera just as Yummy was about to pat the deer. There was less than a hand span between her hand and the deer. But when the shutter reopened I had a different picture.
a different picture
It didn't run far. But it was away from the road. I watched it through the grass for a bit. It's a cute little thing. I hope it finds other deer to run around with. Or a nice friendly backyard to hang about in.
Another potential Class M planet discovered only 22 light years away. [link]
OK, it's probably Class K which means it can become class M with a bit of terraforming. [link]
A building with 55,000 LED lights. But Belgium? Looks more Indian to me. [link]
This an advanced version of an electric car charging proposal I saw back in high school. Both plans have the same basic problem of needing to rebuild the national highway system. But, if you can start with the major highways and work down to the modest highways I think it'd be good. You can still get a respectable distance once you're off the major roads. [link]
20 nifty things to do with shipping palettes. Some repeats. [link]
Millennium Falcon found on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. [link]
Old trucks. [link]
I'd love to see a company still using trucks of this style to move product.
What the left gets right. [link]
What the right gets right. [link]
I take issue with parts of the second. I see several things that they claim and apparently did in the pre-Reagan years, but don't actually do anymore. Not on the federal level, anyway.
What Rick Santorum says according to lip readers.
Proposed trailer for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary in 2013.
New research indicates volcanoes may be a bigger risk these days than we thought. [link]
Reddit IAmI Q&A with a former Chuck E Cheese employee. [link]
A new Spider-Man trailer is coming out. It's not associated with the last three. Gwen Stacy is the female lead while she had just an appearance in one of the earlier movies. And the villain is the one we were waiting for through the last three movies. Remember Curt Connors? That professor with one arm?
The final veteran of World War I died recently. She was 2 weeks short of her 111th birthday. [link]
Brits and Americans have different ideas of what makes a prom. This is Tim Minchin playing the Doctor Who theme at the end of a recent comedy proms.
Newt's people have been futzing with his Wikipedia page. Or, at least trying. This article talks about their effort to purge unflattering facts and Wikipedia's protections from such actions. [link]
picture: Thor and Hulk have come a long way since the 70's. [link]
Werner Herzog dissing chickens. Mom and my brother are actually pretty good at hypnotizing chickens. [link]
This picture shows two maps. We've used the lower one in a couple of our textbooks. It's Napoleon's march. The thickness of the line indicates the number of troops. Pinkish is the advance and black is the retreat. It illustrates why you never get involved in a land war in Asia. [link]
Hydrocarbon reactors? Photonic crystals? Are you trying to power a warp engine or a mobile phone? This article does a decent job of explaining the technology that could move from deep space probes to mobile phones in the near future. [link]
I forgot all about the latest X-prize venture. Build a Star Trek-style tricorder. [link]
To to raise kids that aren't obnoxious little shits. [link]
Republicans say that they more they learn about Romney the more they dislike him. Personally, the man comes off as a snake every time I see him, but if I look at what he did in office instead of what he says I find he's the only GOP candidate that isn't a completely repugnant human being. [link]
I don't watch enough Daily Show/Colbert Report. But I love them. I find them to be sources of the most honest reporting anywhere. And I'm loving what Stephen Colbert is doing to the Supreme Court about the Citizens United decision. I love even more that he's doing it against the wishes of Viacom and Comedy Central. This is why we have free speech. Because nothing disrupts bad thinking and stupid ideas as much as laughing at it. [link]
I have never eaten a squirrel and I will not be upset if I never do. But if you want to, here's some cooking tips. [link]
Middle school student models a molecule with great potential.
Camden council in north London has restricted access to the communal garden at Walker House. I do look forward to seeing how this plays out. [link]
Self portraits done by someone suffering Alzheimers. [link]
Jobs done in midieval ages. note: blogger isn't on the list. [link]
This video on how robots view the world isn't quite correct. Or... rather... damn. It shows a graphical representation of what data the robots get from the video and then overlays it on top of the video. But what does the robot "see"? Then again, how would we show what information we get from our eyes and separate it from the picture we looked at? [link]
I'll be reading this long article for awhile. It's the story of what happens when someone releases their private zoo into a suburban area. [link]
What did ""Well, I hope Neil Young will remember a southern man don't need him around anyhow" really mean? What was "Sweet Home Alabama" actually about? [link]
Complete lower jaw replacement with titanium jaw. [link]
Model plane with a camera finds a river of blood. [link]
Edit: A highball refers to any drink that's a mix of alcohol and mixer in a ratio that favors the carbonated beverage. Typically the mixer is some form of carbonated beverage. [link]
I'm not much of a drinker. When I was little I begged a drink off of Mom's Bud Light. She put salt in hers to make it fizzier. It was awful.
My next drink came while I was still in college but longer after turning 21 than you might believe. A friend was getting married and the bachelor party was at my place. Everyone brought their favorite beers and the leftovers stayed in my fridge. I started drinking with Heineken and Guinness and some other stuff. I went back to Mom and Dad's for the weekend. Thinking I had developed a taste for it, when my brother asked if I wanted a drink from the garage fridge I asked for a beer. He got me a Bud Light. I sorta spit it out and wanted to know what the hell he did to it. Nothing. It's just crap.
Later in college I was hanging out in the office at home with my cousin and fiddling with the computer. My brother asked us if we wanted something to drink so my cousin asked for a screwdriver. My brother mixed 50/50 OJ and 1979 Kansas made vodka. The fumes were so bad that as soon as he walked in the room my cousin grabbed his eyes and yelled "I'M BLIND!"
I've spent time with people who know how to drink. Some who make good peach schnapps, chocolate martinis, unnamed things made just for people who don't like the taste of alcohol, and the Todd-tini, OMG, the Todd-tini. If it's not perfect Todd puts it down the drain. I know several places to get good mudslides or mojitos. I've had some rum and cokes and vodka and tonics, but it's always someone who knows what the hell they're doing who order and I just get one of the same. So I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Not really.
What I have learned over the years is that there is no down turn in the bartending business. The worse the economy gets the more people tend to drink. So my advice to people starting college now is to learn to mix drinks. Even if you don't drink, you want to know how to tend bar just so you'll always have a job opening. And it's a skill that people respect. Even if you don't ever have to resort to slinging drinks to make money, there's plenty of times in the business world that you'll score points with the boss by knowing how to make a good martini.
Now, I've got some friends who are starting college. What drinks would your recommend they learn how to make? How should they stock the liquor cabinet on a Pabst Blue Ribbon budget? If they're going to invest in a bottle of something good, what should they get?
I have an actual office to call home. Mind you, until the boss tells us we need to change our schedules I and my coworkers have no particular plans to show up any more than we currently do. Why? Because from my house to the DC Beltway is half an hour. Yeah, DC is a shitty place to try to get out of or across. Then, I spend another hour on I-270 to get to work. That's if the traffic is cooperative. It makes my 8 hour day into an 11 hour day. Not something I'm gonna volunteer to extend to more of my work week if I can avoid it.
Another game worth checking out is "Chrononauts". You start with a grid that shows real world historical events. Disasters, wars, assasinations, and whatnot. Then you get cards that allow you to start messing with history. If Lincoln didn't die then Andrew Johnson wouldn't have been President and gotten impeached. And Nixon wouldn't have had to resign 109 years later. Things like that.
Initial game board.
There are three ways to win the game.
One is get to get back to your own timeline. Each ID card has one real historical event and two screwed up events. Change history so those three events are true and you're home.
A second is to complete your mission. That means collecting three artifacts from history.
ID and Mission cards
The third way is to get 10 cards in your hand. As you change history you create paradoxes. When Lincoln lived a paradox formed with Andrew Johnson and Nixon. If you reach 13 paradoxes the game ends and everyone loses. But if you apply a patch to a paradox you get rewarded with an extra card in your hand. Reach 10 and you win.
This game requires more thought than "Gloom" did, but is an interesting game to play none-the-less. You get history lessons and some rather convoluted thinking to make it work.
Some time back Yummy and I went to an internet convention called Intervention. I went to see some of the people whose comics I read online and Yummy was there to see if there were any ideas she could steal for the conventions she puts on. One of the rooms we liked best was the game room. Along one wall were tables filled with games you could play. Another wall was lined with shelves full of games you could buy. And the girl working there? Her job is to play the games with people. She teaches you the game, if you like it, you buy one. Rough life, right?
One of the games that caught our attention was "Gloom". Mostly because all of the cards are transparent. So we looked a bit closer. The point of the game is to make people as miserable as possible. Alas, there were no copies for sale. I'd kept an eye out for it for several months after that. Finally, we just ordered a copy.
It's for 2 - 4 players ages 13 and up. There are four families, each with five family members. The object of the game is to make your family members more miserable than the other families, and when you think you can't make them any more miserable you kill them.
The hands for a two player game
Some of the cards you place on top of family members.
Look closely at the cards shown above. Red dots have negative numbers, black dots have positive, grey dots are zero. You can see that down the left side of the card there are spaces for 3 dots. You place these cards over the characters. As the stack of cards builds on a character you'll see their value plummet and climb as dots overlap and mask those on previous cards. Only the dots you can see matter. And when you think your character is a miserable as you can safely make it, or when an opponent's character is having a good day, you kill them using the cards with gray text boxes at the bottom.
The Blackwater clan mid-game.
The game ends when one whole family is dead. Once that happens you count up the points. Lowest score wins. But only dead family members can be counted. Yummy totally had me out scored, but her family tended to live longer than mine so I won because I had more dead people with slightly bad days than she had dead people with really bad days.
The game recommends that you embellish the bad stories. Half the fun, they say, is telling about how everything went wrong. I recommend drinking a bit to help you with the stories.
TARDIS interior map. [link]
"First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, fifth door on your left." - The Unquiet Dead
"half a mile down the corridor, left, then right, then right again, then the third right, past a weird swirly thing, left, then the other left, through the sun room, past a green door, right, along a wall until it becomes slimy, down a lift to the third floor and straight ahead - easy-peasy!" - TARDIS Adventure Game
Space station concepts that were never made. I still think that the Space Odyssey model and the Inflatable Station are still inevitable developments. Or at least stations based on those designs. [link]
Covered walkway in Italy made from a coverted railway tunnel. We need more areas like this. Covered pedestrian and bike paths. It lets me cover long distances on foot out of the rain and gets those bike riders off the road and not careening madly across traffic. [link]
A classical violinist did a bit of improvising when someone's phone rang. About 35 seconds in.
Martian rover "Opportunity" turned 8 Earth years old on January 25. That is if you measure from the day it "hatched" on Mars.
Solar activity comes in cycles. This winter and next are peaks in solar storms. This means peaks in aurora activity. Here's a recent picture. [link]
This belongs in the tl;dr category. I doubt I'll ever read it because there's no way I'm voting for him anyway, but I thought I should post it. It's the McCain campaign's writeup about Mitt Romney from 2008. [link]
What's it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics. [link]
It seems to explain why there's so much difficulty explaining science to the religious. I mean, besides the fact that you can't explain something to a person whose income (or worldview) is dependent on them not understanding. But once they have a level 8 or 9 understanding the mathematicians have trouble dealing with the level 3 or 4 explanations. Which means they're right when they say you need another 6 years of school to understand the answer to your question.
"This is Aperture" - a Portal song set to the tune of "This is Halloween".
"Attic Junk" - an animated Mitchell & Webb sketch.
After a 10 year legal battle, Neil Gaiman is now part owner of a couple of issues of Spawn and a few issues of some spinoff comics. Gaiman says that it's about character ownership, not the money. [link]
Another 10 seconds of The Avengers.
Commissioner Gordon as Magnum P.I. Now when do we get to see Tom Selleck play Gordon?
Newt Gingrich is being used over illegal use of "Eye of the Tiger" at campaign rallys. [link]
If you want to end movie piracy you have to offer something better. [link]
It's... uh... If you lived through the 90's just hit play.
I'm a bit disturbed by how many of these songs I knew from commercials and not from radio play during my late teen/college years.
More quad-rotors! I welcome our new Skynet overlords.
Scientists are about to finish drilling into a subglacial lake in Antarctica. They hope to find life cut off from the world for 20 million years. Failing that, a small town in western Kansas is their next best bet. [link]
How many singers do you know of who sound fantastic whether played at 33 or 45 rpm? Now you know of at least one. [link]
Shaky legal decision in the UK. A picture that isn't a copy, but is very similar, is now copyright infringement. [link]
I mean, I suppose I can see the point in this case, but how many millions of people have taken picture of the Eiffel Tower from more or less the exact same spot?
The 10th President has grandsons that are still alive. [link]
An Andre the Giant memorial. He'd have turned 65 last month. [link]
We actually have offices now. I'm moving around furniture and setting up computers today. So instead of my planned post you get a tiny picture I took yesterday of 12 deer on base.
I've got some blog posts that I'm working on, but I've got some work to do on them yet. I needed something that I could kind of slap out. Hey! I know. Blog stats! That should interest nobody at all but me. Well it's my blog, so suffer.
My all time most popular blog post was about making a homemade CD lens cleaner. I posted it in May of 2007 and month after month it keeps getting the most hits. I get that. It's something everyone in a technological society needs at some point.
The next few are less understandable.
Number two is my review of "Clash of the Titans". It's not a particularly good review. But the phrase "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" does appear a time or three.
Number three is my review of the book "Death Troopers". I assume it's because it's a Star Wars book and there are lots of fans. Plus, this one has a zombie overlap and people will want to know if it's good before they buy it. Maybe? I dunno.
Back in 2006 I used a DIY spray on insulation called "Tiger Foam". It was a disaster. I'm still scraping the hardened residue of the fluid that leaked out from the floor of my shower. It come in number 4 because it's the only product like it and people want to know whether to mess with it. Don't.
Fifth is my post from when I found the remains of the SciFi.com audio series "Seeing Ear Theater". It was a good radio series that remained buried on their website for years. After it went away I went looking for it elsewhere. The links are all defunct now. Still, see if you can find it somewhere. It's worth a listen.
6th - "How to write on a steamy mirror". I've considered redoing this but writing "The Game" on the mirror. I figure I'd get a ton of 4Chan people here.
7th - One I'm most proud of and is linked to most from other sites is my "Record player animation". I figured out how to do looping animations using a record player and a camera.
8th - How to make your own paving stones. Also proud of. Not so many links to it.
9th - "Papercraft Katamari". The Prince was redrawn from a low-res version on another site. The Katamari was my design. Yes, I have the ability to model dodecahedrons in my head well enough to draw them on a 2 dimensional surface.
10th - I'm not at all proud of my review of "Hoodwinked Too" and don't know why anyone reads it.
Popular keywords (all time):
1 - tiger foam review
2 - dougintology
3 - radiolab symmetry
4 - death troopers
5 - tiger foam reviews
6 - release the kraken
7 - scorpion candy
8 - far side cartoons (one post. ONE! Why does this get the hits?)
9 - homemade dvd lens cleaner
10 - katamari papercraft
Popular keywords (this month):
1 - scorpion candy
2 - star wars death troopers
3 - death troopers
4 - far side cartoons (WHY!?!)
5 - katamari papercraft
6 - dehumidifier solar decathlon
7 - homemade molds for bricks with cement
8 - pictures of writing on steamy mirrors
9 - release the kraken
10 - star wars wallpaper
Most hits are from American, Windows users, using Internet Explorer. After that German, Mac users on Firefox and British, Linux users on Chrome. In 10th place are South Korean, PlayStation Portable users using UniversalFeedParser. I also welcome the Swedish folk who got here using Netscape on a Wii.
StumbleUpon seems to be the most popular source for people to follow links from. But why they go to the archive site for June 2007 I don't know. That's followed by Yummy's blog at number 7 and blog.makezine.com at number 9. But, frankly, I think makezine stays so high because so many people came here when they reposted my record player trick.
Out of curiosity, what brought you here the first time?
Senator Dodd doesn't get it. SOPA is a horrible bill and the only way to get Congress to talk to concerned parties without massive payoffs is a massive blackout that makes sure the whole country knows and gets angry. [link]
You may have seen a trailer for the upcoming movie "Pirates!". The trailer has a scene where the pirate captain raids a ship that turns out to be full of lepers. Turns out several groups that represent lepers are complaining so the scene will be either changed or removed. Props to Aardman for not wanting to cause hard feelings, but shame on the lepers for not finding the humor in it. [link]
More Starbucks to begin selling wine and beer in southern California and Atlanta. Caffeine, alcohol, when do the tobacco sales start? [link]
This ad campaign needed a bit more thought. [link]
Game: Color - Test your color vision with this color matching game. I got and 8.9. I'm convinced I could do better. [link]
The Pirate Bay has named and will host plans for things that can be made using 3D printers. [link]
I have to assume the government's response to the SOPA blackouts was the raid on the Megaupload HQ. They hosted files that were too big for e-mail. I'm figuring that the raid and extradition of the owners was to point out that the point of SOPA/PIPA is to attack foreign data thieves. This article talks a bit about the raid and what Megaupload did. [link]
I have used Megaupload for both legal and non-legal purposes. Mostly to send the files for our books to proof readers and printers.
Anonymous struck out at RIAA, MPAA, Universal Music, and the Department of Justice in a response to SOPA. [link]
A country musician had a bird land on him during a concert. [link]
This has happened to me a couple of times. Minus the country music, of course.
I'm not sure what case motivated this decision, but the Supreme Court has decided that works in the public domain may have their copyright reinstated. [link]
Cats sing Christmas songs. Dogs sing movie theme songs.
Subway's product placement in "Hawaii 5-0" is even more blatant than the Prius and Vespa placements in "Bones".
I actually wrote a very similar post to this before, but it was five years ago so I don't feel so bad about repeating myself.
According to the Bible, in the beginning God made a bunch of stuff and then created man and woman. He turned them loose and told them to name things, take care of things, and generally be in charge.
Jump forward however many years you think are appropriate and you have now. We're working on developing computers with an artificial intelligence. There is a question, however, as to what "intelligence" means. So far AIs tend to be restricted to single tasks. Winning chess games (straight up logic). Playing Jeopardy (context recognition, data sorting, selection of most likely answer). Controlling the behavior of the guards in video games. Things like that. None of which would be likely to survive long if released into the wild to fend for itself. Granted, most of us couldn't survive in the wild, but you get what I'm saying. They do what they do and nothing else.
To be fair, there are some tiny virtual cockroaches that do a bang up impression of actual cockroaches. They may actually be able to survive and multiply if they were given the ability to reproduce and released into the walls of a high school lunch room.
My point is that, while it has some remarkable data parsing skills, Watson is still a computer that is following a program. He can't ad lib. He can't get stage fright. He can't make his own decisions. He can't go against his programming. If you or I went on Jeopardy we could give it our best shot because we want the money. We could also start insulting Alex Trebek's mother or practicing our standup routine. Watson could only answer the questions to the best of it's ability, not decide to hook up with a cute little Lisa and run off to Spain.
Even the AIs in Skyrim are disappointing compared to the AIs in the Thief games. If I put an arrow through someone in Skyrim they'll go looking for me and eventually decided they were hearing things. That arrow sticking out of his chest is a figment of his imagination. But in Thief they'll start investigating if they just hear your footsteps. If they find a corpse or there's an arrow sticking out of them they will never ever stop looking for you. They'll even get others to help.
I'll be impressed as hell when we have a robot that can do accounting or paint or be a dentist. But I don't think it'll be intelligent until it can decide to quit it's job as an accountant to go start it's own accounting firm. Or, better yet, when it can get fired from it's job for embezzling funds so he can spend it's out of warranty years surfing and scuba diving in Tahiti.
This is where we get back to my original point and what I was on about five years ago. God had filled the planet will all kinds of animals with low level AIs. Grow, decompose dead material, eat, mate, attack, hide, etc. Nothing revolutionary. But God wanted something that he didn't have to pay attention to. Those neanderthals were doing alright, but they weren't going anywhere. They kept making the same tools over and over. Not much in the way of creativity. Whether he was working with a new model or a select pair or neanderthals doen't matter, but God introduced a computer worm (i.e. serpent). It tweaked Eve's programming a bit so she was able to ask "well, why shouldn't I eat the fruit? Because Gaaaawd told me not to? Screw that." And she defied given instructions ate the apple.
That's the important part. The "defied given instructions" part. And it means that the serpent wasn't Satan or an agent thereof as our sunday school teachers told us (note that the Bible says no such thing). Yes, the first humans defied God's will, but it was God's will that we defy God's will. The whole bit with the forbidden fruit was a test to see if the given programming was intelligence or simply another machine following orders. It was a final beta test before final release outside of Eden.
Mind you, I don't believe a word of this. But, if someday I do find religion and it's roughly Biblically inspired this is what I'm gonna be believing. That's a whole lot of ifs.
I've wondered for awhile if there was a difference between a hot cake and a pancake. You know, as in "they sold like hot cakes". But I never wondered at a time or place that was convenient to looking it up. Then, at the start of the cattle drive last September I got to try jonnycakes which made me wonder even more. There was clearly a difference between pancakes and jonnycakes as jonnycakes seem to be primary corn meal. Not bad, really, but certainly in need of more syrup than you'd need in pancakes.
Hot cakes refer to a thin batter fried on both sides on a griddle. This includes anything called battercake, flannel cake, flannel-cake, flapcake, flapjack, hotcake, pancake, or griddlecake.
Jonnycake (also johnnycake, johnny cake, journey cake, johnny bread, hoecake) refers to a fried gruel made of a mixture of corn meal, salt, and water or milk. Sweetening is optional, but strongly recommended.
Both are made with quick bread which is any bread made with a non-yeast leavening material.
Now you know, but I bet you wish you had those couple of minutes back.
I don't know what trailer I saw, but I walked into this movie knowing only that it was yet another Underworld movie. Yummy loves these movies so there was no way we weren't going to see this. Not unless Kate Beckinsale started wearing glitter.
First of all, know that you don't need to have seen any of the previous three Underworld movies. I remember going into the third movie with only the vaguest recollection of what happened in the first two and I was pretty much lost. At a few points they gave us a quick reminders and I needed them. This fourth movie has a quick "previously on..." segment at the beginning of the movie, but it wasn't really necessary other than to establish the characters. That's because this starts a new story in the Underworld universe.
You'll keep hearing two names. Selene is a bad ass warrior vampire who has protected her clan for thousands of years until they turned against her and she was forced to kill the leadership. Michael is the first vampire/werewolf hybrid and is Selene's love interest. His part in this movie is to be Selene's motivation. Pretty much everything else from the previous movies is not relevant.
That's because, after a brief action scene, we have Selene waking up after 12 years in stasis. The existence of vampires and werewolves is now well known in the world. Instead of a big revival of the church or the development of artificial blood, like in some movies, the discovery let to major military development and death squads. Werewolves are thought extinct. The hunt for vampires continues. But while the military and police have training and special vampire weapons they haven't faced anything like Selene. Among vampires she was always one of the best trained and most able. She's skilled in the used of the same weapons and force multipliers that the humans have. But, as the trailer shows, a scalpel is more than she needs.
But if she's that good, then what kind of lame ass movie is this? That's the part that neither I nor the trailer are saying. There's something much stronger and there's a couple of somethings that keep drawing her back into the battle instead of just getting the hell out of Dodge.
So, what we have is an action movie that tries to duplicate the Matrix, but falls a bit short. Not a lot short, but it's not quite there. That's still a heck of a lot better than the typical action movie. It has vampires that are actually threatening and monsters that can smack the vampires around.
I won't get it on DVD, but Yummy might. We'll be seeing the next movie in the sequence when it comes out.
This species of giant tortoise may not be extinct, just hiding. [link]
So there's this new video game controller called "Avenger". It wasn't being delivered on time so one of the people who pre-ordered it wrote in to ask when it was gonna show up. The company doing publicity decided that the appropriate response would be complete jackassery. Then the guys at Penny Arcade stepped in and ruined someone's life. You can follow along here.
The guy did eventually say he was sorry. Alas, he was just sorry that he was a jackass to someone with the pull to ruin his life, not for being a jackass. [link]
A video John Scalzi's daughter meeting a record for the first time. [link]
A guy telling the story about how he went to check out where his electronics are made and the factory conditions. [link]
Huh. Turns out Santorum won the Iowa Caucus. Too bad for him that nobody cares anymore. [link]
A planetarium for the bathtub. Project either up or down. [link]
Alien attack as seen by surfers. A guy has to have his priorities.
If the food wasn't unappealing enough, here's another reason not to eat at McDonalds. [link]
You think SOPA and PIPA won't be abused? These are the people who tried to make VCRs illegal. [link]
Fun fact: SOPA would have the power to take down Whitehouse.gov and the author's own website. [link]
Look! A SOPA circumvention plug-in for Firefox. [link]
The reaction of politicians to Wednesday's SOPA/PIPA protest. [link]
CW, the network that brought us "Smallville" with Green Arrow will have a new "Green Arrow" series that isn't related to the "Smallville" series. [link]
Ellen McClain, voice of GlaDOS, cold reading something at a convention.
Here someone tweeked her voice for the full effect. [link]
An actor who played a goblin in the Harry Potter movies was victim of a dwarf tossing attack. He may be wheelchair bound for life. [link]
Thieves spend 6 months tunneling into an ATM. [link]
Heavy metal Batman theme medley. 3:40 FTW!
Be sure to check out this guy's other stuff.
Zombies to go the Twilight route. The horror.the horror. [link]
Stools made with solidified ferromagnetic fluids. [link]
Raytheon shows off their snazzy new police cars. [link]
I want my GPS to be able to tell me where that emergency vehicle siren is coming from. Do I need to get over or is the ambulance on a cross street? I can't tell.
This is a good idea. The preferred glassware at my house are Ball jars. But do I really want them to look like sippy cups? [link]
The birds and the bees in slow motion and time lapse HD. [link]
I saw some flakes the other day. Is that enough to make one of these snow forts? [link]
A video of 30 hornets take out 30,000 honey bees. [link]
Wait, are these the same damn bees that won't hesitate to come after me if I step in the wrong place? FIGHT BACK YOU LOSERS!
Watch the video lower down the page that has the narration.
More nature films! Short clips in slow motion. [link]
How Stanley Kubrick created the model for modern movie distribution. [link]
How graffiti should be done. [link]
Actually, the guy who did picture 16 (between the bus stop and Burger King trash can) did do a couple of place in DC. A wall and a phone switch box.
Why Best Buy is slowly going out of business. [link]
Sorry this was late. It decided to post on January 19, 2011 instead of 2012. My bad.
- - -
I got Yummy a pretty good air filter for the third anniversary of our first date. The box with the air filter came in another box that just sort of sat around taking up space. But when she left me at her place a few weeks back I turned my attentions on it.
The box was 13 inches wide on the ends, 22 inches front and back with flaps on the top and bottom. I folded the front and back in half making four 11 inch segments. I marked a point (A) on each corner 6 inches above the flaps that were on the bottom of the box. The top flaps came off. From the top corners I made sure to mark (B) equal distances that left 1 inch in the middle of the 11 inch segments and 3 inches in the middle of the 13 inch segments. I drew lines connecting the points A to the points B. Those lines became the 6 corners that come down from the top. Luckily I remembered to leave flaps to overlap the neighboring cardboard. Then I cut away what I didn't want. Hot glue connected the flaps behind the neighboring sides. The bottom flaps were folded so they overlap.
The teepee was an immediate point of interest for the cats. They were torn between their love of cardboard and the need to snub anything made specifically for them.
Pinky enjoying Seamus' teepee.
Seamus walked into the teepee, turned around, stood there, and then left. He did that a few more times. And while I was in Kansas Yummy reported that he slept in there for an hour. So I'm declaring the teepee a success. Still, I think the cat wants a more comfortable floor for the hut.
p.s. - All that was written back in mid-November. Last weekend I cut up a carpet Yummy is getting rid of and put a more comfortable floor in the teepee. A few hours later I finally got to see Seamus spend a couple of hours sleeping in there.
Many sites on the internet have gone black today. Do you understand why? Do you understand why Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia, and so many others are protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA)? Those bills wouldn't end the internet, but they would result in a change so significant that you wouldn't recognize it anymore. They would effectively get rid of user generated content without accomplishing their alleged goal of stopping software, music, and movie piracy.
You might be thinking that these are big companies with lots of money for lawyers. That they don't have to worry. But these were small companies at one point. They and thousands of others wouldn't have survived under these proposed laws. Thousands of more companies won't have a chance to get off the ground if these bills pass.
If you're not in the United States, don't think this doesn't affect you. The internet is global and much of it runs out of here. We'll start blocking sites we don't approve of. So even those that just want to do business in America will have to change to adhere to these laws. This is America trying to dictate how the internet runs everywhere.
GoDaddy supported SOPA and their customers left by the thousands. [link] GoDaddy felt it and it hurt.
So complain. If you can't complain to politicians in the United States complain to your own and tell them to complain. If you do business with companies in the United States stop and tell them why you've stopped. Make those who support this bill suffer.
I've told lots of others to sod off. Not Congress. Congress can suck my balls.
Sign these petitions if you want them to suck your balls, too. [link 1] [link 2]
There was no way I wasn't gonna see this movie. Not with the list of names it has as writers, directors, and producers.
Steven Moffat was the writer early in development. He had to leave at some point because he was offered the job as Executive Producer for "Doctor Who". He had offers for several other movies that he turned down for the lower paying job with Doctor Who because it was Doctor Who. Getting to work on that was a dream come true. You should also check out the shows "Sherlock", "Coupling", and "Jekyll". He was the sole writer on those last two titles.
Edgar Wright and some guy I've never heard of took over when Moffat left. He first came to my attention as the director for "Spaced". He also directed and cowrote "Shawn of the Dead" and "Scott Pilgrim vs The World".
Peter Jackson started with some rather fantastic but horrific movies called "Meet the Feebles" and "Dead Alive". But you probably know him best for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, District 9, and the upcoming Hobbit movies.
Then there's the legendary Steven Spielberg. We could spend all day talking about his credits. But this movie is one he wanted to direct personally.
I know a little about Tintin, but not enough to speak to how well it sticks to the source material. It does try to keep some of the comedic background activity of the comic strips and comic books. I don't know how much action there was. Some people have complained that they feel the action in the movie is over the top. I have to point out that it was a comic strip and comic book first so there'd be as much of a caricature in terms of action as there is in the characters' faces. And Spielberg made sure that with everything going on in an action scene that you could still tell what was happening. No shaky camera, lens flares, or excessive chaos covering up poorly planned action. It moves fast, but you get to see it all unfold and can follow the action.
The movie begins with Tintin buying a model sailing ship for a pittance. Almost immediately people start offering him huge sums of money for the ship. Fortunately for the movie goer, they won't take no for an answer. It turns out that the ship is part of a puzzle that leads to a sunken ship full of treasure. This, of course, is a huge summation of the plot. The movie is about the hunt for the other ships so they can keep them out of the hands of the villain of the movie.
I loved the movie, I'll get it on DVD, and I'll be waiting eagerly for the sequel.
Look like a brilliant programmer just by pounding keys. [link]
Pictures by a girl who snuck into a Russian rocket factory. [link]
How to make your own Doritos.
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about a game pigs can play with people via an iPad.
Gandolf, my african grey parrot, has a switch on her cage that she uses to turn the radio on and off.
Oliver Queen, Yummy's green cheeked conure, plays Baby Balloons on her phone.
Prozac (Rosie), her other conure, attacks the cursor on her laptop.
Hobbes, my old cat, would search the ground for Mario whenever he fell down a hole on the TV.
Orangutans using iPads. [link]
Bearded dragon playing "Ant Crusher" on a phone.
But this is more of the owner playing with the cat than the cat playing with the computer.
Action figure technology has come so far since I was a kid. This Steve Jobs action figure is amazing looking. Mind you, in about two minutes those hands are gonna be hiding in the same place as that lightsaber you lost back in 1982. [link]
I'm thrilled that Santorum did so well in Iowa. A wackaloon like that doesn't have a chance in hell of winning. Enjoy these lovely displays of bigotry and ignorance from his own mouth. [link]
Can Montana's Supreme Court challenge the United States Supreme Court on the question of the personhood of corporations? They're gonna try. [link]
Orchestral version of "Still Alive (the theme to Portal)". [link]
Anti-whaling activists are now using drone technology to track Japanese whalers, most of whose work is illegal. [link]
I wasn't gonna mention the new crab named after David "The Hoff" Hasselhoff, because I thought that the nickname was their only appeal, but these pictures are rather impressive. [link]
10 pretty slick Christmas trees. That Lego tree must have some non-Lego supports. And I want a closer look at that plastic bottle tree. [link]
Superconductive maglev track.
This guy is drinking 42 litres of Diet Coke a week. Yummy's addiction isn't that bad, but not for a lack of trying. [link]
Fractals and music and it's a game and... I dunno. Have a look. Perhaps with some weed and a black light. [link]
Ok, now that you're already a bit stoned check out Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, and Weird Al performing "Come Together".
Ok, it's better in concept than in execution. So is this a cappella rendition of "Du Hast".
The movie adaptation of "World War Z" is gonna be a trilogy. I suddenly have a lot more faith that it'll be good. [link]
Some time back we saw these quad-rotor flying robots doing some impressive flying. Now they're working together to build a monument. [link]
If that's not Skynet enough for you, these guys have self healing computer chips. [link]
Hamster powered (and sized) sub.
If what I'm reading in this article is right you should be able to use a black light to help check for scorpions. If you try it out let me know how it works. [link]
12 ft model of Serenity used in the movie has been found. [link]
Depictions of snow in 100 different video games. [link]
Could automobile exhaust be making mid-week storms and tornadoes worse? It's a hypothesis worth considering. Add some research and it could become a theory. [link]
I've seen ladders turned into book shelves, but not like this. [link]
Matt Smith and Gillian Anderson talking about their ComicCon experience on Graham Norton. I've seen the picture of Matt with all 11 doctor costumes. I love that he has that picture on his phone.
There are three really big space museums. One is the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum here in Washington, D.C. Another is in Russia somewhere and is spelled with characters not on my keyboard. The third is the Kansas Cosmophere located in a remote backwater called Hutchinson.
It had been a long time since I last went there. Last time it had been recently overhauled. Among the changes had been making the lobby to look like the picture above. Yes, the SR-71 Blackbird is real. No, the Space Shuttle is not.
There's a number of shows to watch at the Cosmosphere.
Instead of the obligatory IMAX theater they have an OmniMax theater. The difference is that the IMAX is big an flat while the OmniMax is a dome that wraps around so the movie fills your peripheral vision and enhances the sense of motion the movie causes. But, it shows the same movies as the IMAX theaters.
The planetarium show was rather lacking. It was alright, but you've almost certainly seen better.
Robert Goddard's Lab, on the other hand, had a pretty good show. We've all seen those physics demonstrations with the super cooled liquid gasses and dry ice and foaming whatnots. That's what I was expecting and it's why I'd never bothered to go before. Instead the presenter talks about what problems Robert Goddard had when working on his rockets and the solutions he came up with and he does it while running a series of demonstrations to illustrate the problems and the solutions. The demonstrations include a number of things I haven't seen in other wizard's labs or physics shows.
Then there's the display area, the actual museum part. They've redone it since I was there last. Before it was mostly a collection of exhibits with a few rooms dedicated to specific subjects. Now the walk through the museum tells a story.
It starts with an actual V2 rocket from WWII. After all, if not for Hitler our space program wouldn't be nearly as developed as it is. This room tells about the scientists who developed the V2, the minions who died building them, and the madman who decided to make them instead of nuclear weapons.
The next few rooms talk about the aftermath of the war. How the Americans and Soviets agreed to divy up the rocket tech but grabbed all they could anyway. About Werner Von Braun and Sergei Korolev, heads of the American and Soviet rocket programs both had to lie and manipulate their way along so that they could make space craft and satellites instead of weaponry. About the space race the direct conflicts between American and Soviet leaders.
After going through those exhibits I'd really like to see a pair of movies about the drive to space from the views of Von Braun and Korolev. Each gets a movie. In each movie there would be appearances and footage from the other movie and each movie would paint themselves as the good guys and the other side as the bad guys. I've always wanted to see a movie like that, showing both sides of a conflict as they saw it. This would make a great subject to do that with.
Anyway, around the time of the moon landing the story fragments a bit. Without the conflict with the Soviets it becomes about space programs and their artifacts. And their artifacts are pretty damn good. It was at the Cosmophere that they did the restoration of the Liberty Bell capsule after they recovered it from the ocean floor. What I was looking for (but didn't find) was the tire from a Space Shuttle that they used to have. They used to have the wear pattern marked to show what parts were lost during what part of touchdown. They really only get one use.
And, as long as you're in Hutchinson, try to hit the Kansas Underground Salt Museum. Really, they need a better name for it. There's ongoing salt mining going on in that area. The active part of the mine is far from the museum, but you get to take the elevator down to the old part and spend sometime wandering around. They'll give you a hard hat and oxygen mask just in case. There's a train and an electric tram to take you around so you can see a bit more than you'd be willing to walk. Take the tram. You get to pick out a lump of unprocessed salt from a pile and take it home.
As they clear out space other things move in. The mine is used for storage for old TV and movie film and props. Some of them are on display.
If you go, be sure to get an appointment. People go down in groups and the groups are limited in number due to the limited size of the elevator. You wanna make sure you're not waiting for an opening. Also, you get a discount if you get tickets for both the salt mine and the Cosmophere.
I've been trying to get a potato barrel to work for several years now. I've grown a few very tiny potatoes, but nothing worthy of any respect. But while digging around in the barrel the other day I found two potatoes of respectable size. Whether they can be eaten is a subject for another time.
2 potatoes and a neighbor kid
I'm still recovering files (only 40,000+ processed so far) so I don't have the pictures of the barrel over the season. You have to hear me talk about it instead.
I started with actual seed potatoes from the Ace Hardware near Yummy's place. First time I'd seen them for sale. They were put in a barrel with a few inches of good dirt and dead vegetation under and over them. I worried at first that they'd just rot, but after a week or two I saw the plant peeking up.
In a previous attempt I'd let the plant grow up, fall over, and then bury it. I wanted runners that went around and around. That was wrong. This time, as they grew up, I kept burying them so they'd always just have the upper most leaves poking up. Amazingly, I had to add dirt twice a week.
Then I waited for the leaves to die off. That's how I'm supposed to know to harvest them. But they didn't die. July came and cooked the plants, but it just grew new leaves. In late October they finally died. I could have harvested them then, but Yummy saw something saying that leaving them in the ground makes the skins tougher and the potatoes better able to survive long periods on a shelf without rotting. And I had no good place to put the dirt. So I waited. Yes, until a warm day in early January. Don't judge me.
I think I can still improve things, but I'm pretty happy with this year's results.
I've gotten a number of stories about these bottles from a number of sources. If you see some factual errors I'd like to be corrected.
I got these over Christmas when I was in Kansas. If you look south south west of Wichita you'll see a small town called Clearwater. At the intersection of the two main streets through town you'll find a burger joint called Walt's. That's where I got these aluminum bottles.
Walt's is a chain that currently boasts only three restaurant, each of which is very different from the others. So it's very likely that the one in Clearwater is the only one of the three that sells these. As far as the staff knew they were not only the only Walt's selling them, but the only place selling them at all. At least that's what the Coke sales rep implied. He said these bottles were exclusive to them. He must mean from the Wichita bottling plant.
My brother said one of the major beer companies (one of those that sell horse piss and call it beer. Budweiser or someone) had been doing them with limited success so they stopped. Now Coke is trying to make use of the machine.
They're new enough and rare enough right now that you can still flip the bottles on eBay for a profit. And you know where to get them cheap.
This is the second trailer for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." The first trailer showed a series of clip, a fraction of a second each, with words from the title thrown in. You had no idea what the movie was about. Since I'm one of the few people who haven't read anything in this series it was rather annoying.
The most important thing to know is that this movie is very, very rated R. Not rated X. Rated R with an R big enough that Stephen Hawking wrote his thesis on it. The book was brutal (I'm told) and they didn't pull back for the movie version. Nudity, yes, a fair amount of that. Probably more than you'd want to see in a movie you're watching with your parents. And then unblinking scenes of sexual abuse and rape. She does, however, get payback. Just not when you're expecting it if you're unfamiliar with the story.
The trailer I used above does a good job of telling what the movie is about without giving it all away. Our hero, a journalist of Woodward and Bernstein mentality, has just lost a case where he trusted the wrong informant. He needs to get away from things. Some millionaire hires him to investigate what happened to the relative who vanished back in the '60s. After some time he decides he needs some help and hires the girl who investigated him for the millionaire.
She's broken on many different levels. Socially she's rude and surly. She may have trouble knowing right from wrong, or she just might not care. It's hard to blame her as you learn more about how she grew up. But she has managed to turn her damage to her advantage. She's a pretty good hacker and a great investigator with as close as you can realistically get to a photographic memory. And god help you if she feels you've wronged her.
It was a great movie. I liked it a lot. Well, except for those excessively graphic bits. I will be seeing the next one and the original Swedish version. I'll probably get the audio book version, too. And that of the other books in the series. On DVD? Maybe. I'll see what mood I'm in when it comes out. But probably eventually.
My computer is having issues. It's called a Kernel Panic. Happens every time I start it. It's all "SHIT MOTHERFUCKER! DID YOU SEE THAT! HOLY MUPPET RAPING JESUS ON A POGO STICK! ETC. ETC. ETC. AND ON AND ON!!!" You'd think it'd calm down after a bit and get back to work, but no. That's why it's a Colonel Panic instead of a Private Panic. Still, you'd think it would know how to spell it's rank. Maybe the misspelling is part of the panic.
Anyway, until I can slap some sense into it you should expect continued not talkingness on my part.
