Drill bit comparison

When I finally got to start assembling my ambitious shelving I needed some drill bits that could drill a large hole. I'd bought a single 7/8" version of the blue drill bits below and lost it. So I got a replace 7/8" and a 15/16". Almost all Home Depot had of this kind of drill bit were the blue ones.

Notice the tips of the drill bits. The silver ones have a pointy tip while the blue ones have a screw tip. I don't care that the company calls it a drill tip. It's a screw. And when used it screws itself into the wood until the flat of the bit hits the wood and then stops dead. I hoped it was just the weaker battery powered hand drill that was the issue. Brought the drill press up and put the bit in there. Exact same results. It screws in and stops. Which was a problem because the drill press doesn't have a reverse button. I had to unplug it and manually unscrew the bit. But not until after it pulled the spindle loose. I did get a different bit to drill a hole in the middle of my intended hole. Then the screw tip bit worked great. That little flare at the edges of the flat face really does help prevent splintering as it exits.

So I returned the blue bits that were still in their packaging and got a whole set of the silver dagger tip bits. They chewed right through the boards. It did jam a couple of times, but I just backed off and came in slower. Nowhere near the problems of the drill tips.

I was using them on plyboo which is a fairly hard wood. Results on other kinds of wood may differ.

I'm calling them screw tip bits.

I'm calling them dagger tip bits.

Movie review: Edge of Tomorrow

A popular theme in science fiction is the day that repeats until some goal is accomplished. The most well known example is "Groundhog Day" where Bill Murray has to keep reliving Groundhog Day until he can get Andie MacDowell to fall in love with him. Fans of Stargate: SG1 will remember the brilliant season 4 episode "Window of Opportunity". Taye Diggs had a series called Day Break where he had to solve who was setting him up for a major crime. It's also been seen in Star Trek: TNG, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Eureka, Farscape, Fringe, Haven, Lois and Clark... oh, fuck it. Here, look it up yourself [link].

Edge of Tomorrow is a military sci-fi take on this idea. I'd compare it most to the Stargate episode. Not because of the military sci-fi aspect, but because it's funny. Both the movie and the Stargate episode make me laugh out loud.

There's a high speed montage at the beginning that gets the audience up to speed. Short version: Aliens came; Europe is lost. There's a big counter attack planned and they want Tom Cruise and a camera crew on the front lines to built something that will safe the asses of the commanders if the public turns on them later. Tom refuses to go and wakes up on a bag of luggage with his rank stripped away and deploying as a grunt instead of as a PR planner. As they reach shore they're attacked. The aliens knew they were coming. He's dropped in with no training on how to work the equipment, no combat experience, and a life of expectancy of less that it's taken you to read this far. But something happens in combat that resets his day, but only if he dies. He eventually finds someone who knows what's going on, can train him, and goes on to save the world. Along the way there's a series of humorous montages of him dying in funny and/or painful ways.

I think I will get this one on DVD. It's an old plot device, but well done and funny.

Movie Review: Maleficent

Shortly before moving to DC a girl suggested that I read "Wicked". It wasn't a book I normally would have picked up, because I'm from Kansas and years of overexposure mean that I think Dorothy should die in a fire. But I read it and liked it. I rather like the idea behind the books that the success of Wicked spawned even if I didn't like enough of the actual books to keep up on the series. So I was intrigued to see that Disney was giving the retelling treatment to their own Maleficent.

I was expecting a twisting of the Disney's Sleeping Beauty story (as opposed to everyone else's Sleeping Beauty story). Neil Gaiman's "Snow Glass Apples" figured prominently in my mind [part 1] [part 2]. Then, as I heard descriptions of the movie, I thought they were rewriting Shrek with Angelina Jolie playing the part of the tall, slim, and beautiful swamp troll. I can assure you, that's not what happens. Rather than twisting the story horribly they seem to have tried to tell the same story from a new viewpoint and include much that went on off camera.

I'll admit that it's been a long time since I've seen the original movie and I remember it less than perfectly, but there were scenes that felt disconnected from the rest of the movie. And I think that it was because they were reproducing scene and dialog lifted directly from the original movie. This required the camera to move differently than in the rest of the movie and the characters to be a bit more dramatic. I'd be interested in seeing the scenes played next to each other.

There were other things that had to be twisted. Maleficent doesn't turn into a dragon herself, but turns her lackey into a dragon. A few other tidbits like that. Nothing really altering the story.

I'm not likely to get it on DVD, but I'm glad that I saw the movie. I'd happily watch it again.

Ambitious shelving

This is my new bookshelf.

Almost. It needs a bit more work. I stopped here last night because the top shelf that you see needs to have an inch shaved off the right side since the wall is uneven. Then the pipe will go through the holes correctly. There will be one more shelf above that.

The bottom three shelves are 14" deep 128" long. The rest are 7" x 96". I had to extend the lower three to make them work the way I wanted. I used a good strong glue on the ends and a reinforcing rod hidden underneath.

Once they're assembled I'll still need to sand the ends of the boards to get rid of the burn marks from the saw. The pipes need to be painted black. And I'll need to touch up the walls where I've scarred them up assembling the shelves. And, of course, screw everything down.

Notice the weird bit of pipe out of the support to the right of the laptop. That's going to be a reading light before I'm done.

Before putting the shelves up, I put the pipes together to triple check that they'd fit. I brought Gandolf in to see my work. She hadn't seen the room since before the mudding was finished. Her reaction was pure surprise. It was a whole new room. She looked at the pipes standing on top of the assembled 14" shelves and asked hopefully, "perches?" I'll have to get her somewhere to hang out in this room, but I don't dare leave her in here. The books would prove too much temptation to chew on.

Friday Links: June 20

Star Trek shaking scenes stabilized. [link

And, if you're one of the two people who haven't seen this warp drive design in the last decade or so, here's NASA trying to test if it's even possible. [link]

MORTAL VIDEO GAME COMPANY EXECUTIVE COMBAT!!!

Saturo Iwata (Nintendo’s CEO) vs Reggie Fils (Nintendo’s COO)

Jazz version of the Game of Thrones theme.

Proper jazz with lots of brass.

By the end of this clip you'll be able to understand digital gibberish. [link]
That description is misleading.

WWI aerial warfare photos. [link]

Tesla releases it's patents into the wild. [link]

14 year old kids hack Canadian ATMs. [link]

The woman who invented Iraq. [link]

More about what I said the other day about ISIS and organized crime tactics. [link]

Who was the worst person in history before Hitler? [link]

The Illuminati were pretty good guys. [link]

Pictures from the new California Dust Bowl. [link]

Poor bald aminals. [link]

I can't even...

I hate the heat. I hate it so much. I can't even... I can't even tell you.

So, it's Friday night and I'm done with my paying work. I usually take this time to try to get some early work done on the house. Let me set the scene for you. The future library is full of crap. Along the front wall is scrap metal I've been wanting to send off with some scrap metal dealer. On top of that is some wood covered in lead paint with big ass nails sticking out. Long pieces of plyboo lean against this pile of crap. Across the middle of the room is a large plank of plyboo that I've been using as a level surface to piece together other plyboo into a shelf. Cans of paint and water and large batteries and anything heavy sits on top to help keep it flat. This blocks most of the entryway to the room. And other odds and ends like a coat rack and ladders and pipe litter the floor.

It's warm and still inside despite several days of rain and fans trying to blow the cool air into the house. Within 10 minutes of getting off the couch I am dripping sweat on everything. Sweat is supposed to be there to evaporate and cool us off, but it's failing that completely. It makes my clothes stick to me. The heat makes working my muscles require more energy and focus for the simplest task. And while some people think I have an unshakable temper, all that goes away when I'm hot. Since it's harder to move I'm more likely to make mistakes which causes the temper to explode.

I step over the boards to open the window and cool things off. As I'm stepping back I can't get my leg high enough and hit the paint can. It tips and dumps paint all over the floor. Obscenities fly. I grab a dust pan and start scooping the paint back into the can. Paint is everywhere. Most of it is on parts of the floor that still need scraping, but there's much that is in areas that are supposed to be cleaned. And it's getting between boards, which will never clean out. My best hope for much of it is that there's so much dust and debris that it'll clean off easily without excessively difficulty once dry. And where's the lid? Where's the LID?! WHERE'S THE [obscenities edited for length] PAINT CAN LID!!!!?! It's gone. Not really sure how that's even possible. It's not a large room. The boards are off the ground high enough that I could see the lid under there if it were there. It's just gone. Well, I'll use the lid off this other can that I refilled with water. It doesn't fit? HOW CAN IT NOT FIT?! It's the SAME paint from the SAME brand bought on the SAME &*$#@%^ DAY! Fine, I'll just let the paint dry out and throw the whole gallon away. I'm literally dripping sweat onto the paint from my eyes and nose and eyebrows and I'm trying not to start shrieking in rage and ... I'm getting the fan. Take off the paint covered shoes so I don't track paint across the filthy carpet. Get the fan and the extension cord which will try to knock over everything in the living room as I move it and somehow even knock over things upstairs which should be impossible since the cord doesn't even go up there. Why then? Because it's HOT and this shit happens when it's HOT! The extension cord isn't even this big of a problem in the living room when it's cooler. So I set up the fan and point it directly at me. Feels good, man. Until it falls over for no damn reason. Set it up. Back to the paint. New rag, wipe, toss, repeat every 5-10 seconds. This plastic caught some of the paint. Let's cut it off and throw it away. NO FAN! You can't tip over. I haven't even done it, yet! At least let me do something to cause you to fall over even though it shouldn't. Cut away the plastic. Try to pick it up without dumping paint on the ground or on the plyboo. No paint! If you go on the plyboo I will end you and all civilization! Do NOT EVEN THINK I AM KIDDING! Wow, I made paint move with the force of my rage. I am the Kwisatz Haderach. Maybe that's where he got his power. He was so fucking pissed to be trapped on a hot shit hole of a world like Dune. Paint in bag. Set fan back up. Wash hands a second time. Set fan back up. Mop up paint. Take tension straps off board. Set fan back up. Yes, there are feet on the fan. It's just trying to blow air that's extra dense because it's full of water. Let me put the fan in the window. But first, let's try to untangle the extension cord. Let's drag the wiring out in the rain where it's cooler and do it there. Bad idea, you say? IT'S COOLER! IDON'TCAREIFIDIE! Spend 10-15 minutes in the rain untwisting extension cord. Put fan in window pointed at me. Flip the shelf and sand away the excess glue. Stand before the fan. Should the sand paper get so hot after only six strokes that I need to set it down? I moved 6 inches to the right, gotta get back in front of the fan. That doesn't seem right. The board looks less than ideal, but the glue is gone and I can clean up the edge later. Be sure to stand in front of the fan. Let's get this debris in the car so I can take it to the dump in the morning. Hello to you too, strange drunk man. Nope, I'm not moving, just getting ready to go to the dump. Actually, do you know a scrap metal scavenger? Across the street? That's his truck? Ok, all my scrap metal goes in this pickup and nail filled lumber in my car. Trash bag covered in drying paint can come out in the morning. I get in my car and turn the AC as low as it will go. Literally five seconds later my breath manifests itself before my face. I love my car and it's AC. I sit there and reprogram the address book in my GPS while I bathe in the direct blasts of the air conditioner. My skin starts to crack and pull from the drying sweat. I finally get out of the car and the windows all fog up instantly. One more large piece of metal to put in the pickup. He thanks me and I thank him. New route is now open to the fan. I take it out of the window and lock up. I take a cold shower. Cold being a generous term.

It's not even that hot inside or out. I just can't cool down. I run very hot. My metabolism is high. But I can cool down if it's dry enough for sweat to evaporate. I need moving air. I designed my bedroom so I have a ceiling fan pointing right at me at night. I shouldn't need the AC in that room most of the time so long as the fan is running.

Anti-war folks

My spam account gets lots of e-mails from activist groups every day. Some want money, some provide news links, and some have petitions to sign. Over the last few days I've been getting petitions not to invade Iraq.

In the days after September 11 I went to some protests. I supported those who didn't want to invade Iraq. I mean every bit of evidence linking Iraq to AlQaeda was debunked as soon as it was created. Anyone paying attention could instantly discredit at least 60% of what Colon Powell said before the UN Security Council. Most of the rest might take a couple of hours. Anything else needed security clearance, but was easily questioned.

But those protesters and I were on opposite sides on the invasion of Afghanistan. Which was weird, because it wasn't long before that many of those people were supporting invading Afghanistan for women's rights causes. They were anti-war for any reason. It was wrong always and in all cases. While I saw that they were housing the real terrorists and that Saddam Hussein could be one of our greatest allies.

Syria is a tough call. Nasty evil brutal dictator on one hand and Muslim extremist terrorists on the other. If we could be sure the people who started the revolution were in control at the end it'd be great. But they've been pushed out by monsters.

More recently I've been watching the Russian invasion of The Ukraine. I don't want to invade and fight their war for them, but I do want to be asking "How can we help? Arms? Troops?"

Iraq is now being taken over by ISIS. While it may sound like a cartoon spy agency, ISIS is a terrorist group that makes AlQaeda look like moderate Muslims. Saddam would have been able to keep them out. He was brutal, but effective. Most of all he wasn't religious. Considering what he was fighting he had to be brutal. And we took him out and softened up the country for any future invaders. We tried to train them and hand control back to them, but clearly they're not ready for prime time, yet.

This is our fault. Remember how Afghanistan becoming a terrorist haven was because we walked away after helping them throw out the Soviets? Same thing here. We WILL have to take care of this eventually. Whether we do it when they're in Baghdad or not is the only real decision here. Believe me, I'm not thrilled about it. At least if we go in now we're working with the Iraq military instead of against the ISIS run Iraq military. We can send in supplemental forces instead of a whole damn army.

This is being branded a religious civil war. This is an invasion. They may not have a home country, but like every other conflict in the region, one side is manned with religious extremists coming in from outside the country. Some have been in country for a long time and infiltrated the cities to soften them up. That doesn't make them Iraqis. If this were internal it would have shown in the polls before now. It's a regional conflict acting as an internal struggle. These people are pulling arms, money, troops, and support from organized crime activities inside and outside of Iraq. Protection rackets and drugs and whatever else. We should at least be providing similar resources for Iraqis. And due to the corruption, we may need to provide people to keep the resources in the right hands. Maybe those smart guns that shop owners in the US are being threatened about if they dare sell them.

Friday Links: June 13

Logic gates illustrated with weights and pulleys. [link]

Cat give passing cyclist a high 4. [link]

This is how you play Dance Dance Revolution. [link]

The first manmade object in space was actually a manhole cover. [link]

Computer passes Turing test. [link]
Or doesn't. [link]

Bill Watterson returns... briefly. [link]

Synthahol invented! [link]

Damascus steel included carbon nanotubules. [link]

Hippos like licking crocodiles.


How anti-vaccine believers are causing the return of Polio in places it had been eradicated. [link]

Arc lighting towers from the 1800s are still in use in Austin, Texas. [link]

Eating ice is a diet plan. [link]

Detroit agate. [link]

Gun control laws of the wild, wild west. [link]

Combine Harvester. I might have to play this at my brother's eventual wedding.


You Are My Sunshine in a minor key.


A history of maps of the internet. [link]

Why are there so few conservative comedians? [link]
Because polluting rivers, starting wars, stealing the life savings of senior citizens, and gay bashing isn't funny. 

A dimetrodon (the dinosaur toy with a fin on it's back) is not a dinosaur.


Google admits that Google Plus was a bad idea. [link]

Salads without leaves. [link]

Chiquita is blocking a bill that would allow people to sue companies that fund terrorism. 3 guesses why. [link]

Sweden to experiment with 6 hour work day with 8 hour pay. [link]

Impressive hail storm damage. [link]

Pig the dog. [link]

Comments on a first viewing of Star Wars. [link]

Chimp playing a memory game.


Building an Inception hallway style room on the cheap. [link]
Gives you some idea how much practice they needed to walk in the hallway in the movie.

Atlas has to change to reflect new polar caps. [link]

The vanishing islands of Kiribati. [link]

Friday Links: June 6

I POSTED THIS! TWICE!

Winnie the Pooh and Darkwing Duck reading lines from Star Wars. [link]

It took me entirely too long to get around to watching this. The Five(ish) Doctors. Several of the original series Doctors plot a way to get involved with the 50th Anniversary Special and pull in a load of cameos along the way. [link]

Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD, talking about his What If page at TED. [link]

Everything wrong with "Gravity" with guest star Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Female named hurricanes kill more people than male named hurricanes because people don't respect the female hurricanes as much. [link]
Note: Hurricanes have only been named after men since 1979. I thought it was more recently than that. Hurricanes have had names since 1889.

This kid is going to kill a lot of people some day.


So... does she like him or not? [link]

More Stargate films! It's a reboot. [link]

“I need to put a sign here that says `white people only.” [link]

Library progress

I do a crap job with before and after pictures. Otherwise I could show you what I'm dealing with in this library I'm working on.

Let me lay out the room for you.
There's the front wall with two big windows.
Turn to your left and there's the side wall. It's plaster over brick.
Left again, and there's the main wall. Future home of bookshelves. On the other side are stairs.
Left once more and there's a big archway with the front door on the other side.

The front wall is a mess. I'm doing almost nothing with it because I eventually want it framed out and insulated.

Once I got under the wood panelling and wallpaper of the side wall I found that, for some reason, the plaster was popping away from the wall about chest high. And near the front wall was a big crack that let you see into the neighbor's house once the wallpaper was taken away. I knocked away the loose stuff and started packing the holes with drywall mud as well as giving the rest of the wall a skim just to fill tiny cracks and pits. This all helped, but the wall was still ... textured? It bowed and flexed and rippled. I took time to even it some, but there's only so much one can do. Finally, last night, I painted the wall. Mostly. There's a radiator near the bottom of the crack. I couldn't get all the wallpaper off or paint, completely. Once I find my edger I should be able to do more. I got some undrilled, featureless doors that I plan to put wallpaper on and hang on that wall to give it some character and cover up some of the other character.

The main wall I tore out completely and put up new drywall. It will have the bookshelves soon. Half inch black gas pipe supports with plyboo shelving. Three levels 14 inches deep and six more 7 inch deep shelves the rest of the way to the ceiling. The bottom three run all 11 ft across the room while the rest are 8 ft and alternate which wall they're touching. This leaves space to display larger things as well as making sure I don't have to extend the boards.

The arched wall I tried to punk out on, but in the end I still tore it down and put up new drywall. It's just a wall, but I should be able to hang some pictures on it.

I mention all this because I got to paint the room last night. I wanted to put up shelves several weeks ago, but I couldn't quite do it. Just a bit more to do, which turns into one-more-thing and then another-thing and then... well, you know how it works. I have 6 inch baseboards which I hope to install no later than next weekend. Hopefully, tonight or tomorrow. With them in place I can start putting up shelves, which gets my books out of the basement, and much of the rest of the house starts falling into place from there.

Friday Links: May 30

The invention of tie dye caught on film. [link]
A bit different than I was taught to do it.

MSNBC reporter refuses to read Paris Hilton news.


Google Maps maps forbidden parts of a deserted island. [link]

An old plan to flood Africa. [link]

Australia burns from space. [link]

Blood is a passable substitute for eggs. [link]

The bench that isn't anything but a bench. [link]

Why the walls in Wolfenstein 3D were blue. [link]

How the Jedi got it's name. [link]

Cartooning over reality.


Ladies. Want a happy relationship? Then chill the fuck out. The faster you calm down the happier everyone is. [link]

A balance debate on global climate change. 97 to 3.


A tornado going through a North Dakota oil camp.


Jim Henson's Creature Workshop is not involved with Star Wars 7. But that doesn't mean their people aren't involved. Here's a history of the relationship between Star Wars and Jim Henson. [link]

The original Star Wars will be the first movie every translated into Navajo. [link]

Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, Spaced, etc.) is no longer attached to the 2015 Ant-Man movie. [link]
This is troublesome since his involvement was the one thing that made Ant-Man seem like is had a chance at being good.

Watson, the Jeopardy playing computer, has developed a BBQ sauce. [link]

Short on lethal injection drugs, Wyoming considers re-legalizing firing squads. [link]

Take a world war, add 95 years, have another look at the landscape. [link]

Forgotten Apple prototypes. [link]

Drone survival guide. [link]

A 9 minute film about the study of fire. [link]

An old spacecraft to be reactivated for a new mission. [link]

How to write on the Moon. [link]

Self driving cars

I heard on NPR yesterday that Google is building self-driving cars for a wider audience than their Google Maps cars. I'll get to that, but first I want to give you some background.

This first video runs about 50 minutes. It's an episode of NOVA about the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 or so. They had two of these challenges. The first was a complete failure and the second had several cars complete the race as well as some really innovative also-rans. I've watched this episode a bunch of times. I love it.


I saw additional video at a Smithsonian museum where a couple of brothers who were developing for the competition created a truck that ended up being able to drive in the beating rain when the humans lost all visibility.

That was followed a couple of years later with the DARPA Urban Challenge where the self-driving cars had to navigate a city and obey traffic laws instead of just navigate a route in the country like in the first challenges.

Development of the vehicles continued after that and people who participated in these challenges started getting jobs at car companies interested in exploring the idea. Stanford in particular became a major partner in these projects.

A couple of years after that, Google started using self driving cars as their Street View cars. Mostly just on the highway and the drivers could take over at any time. They only had 3 accidents. Once when the human was driving and twice when someone hit them. Recently Google started taking these cars into the cities.

Google has been buying robotics companies like made lately. Presumably with these cars in mind.

This is a demonstration of a couple of cars in Google's new fleet.

I love the blind guy feeling the car so he knows what he's driving.

And here's the NPR article that talks more about them. [link]
No steering wheel, no gas or break pedals, and no windshield wipers.

They're restricted to 25 MPH until confidence in the tech builds. At those speeds I'm picturing them on college campuses, military bases, airports, and the like. Cities like Washington DC, which are pretty much just giant campuses, anyway, could make good use of them.

My Prius watched the cars in front of me and knows which lane is mine. It does some gentle steering and hits the brakes for me when it needs to. I fully expect my next car to be able to drive me to Kansas without me paying attention.

I went to the deeeeeeentiiiiist

As a kid we went to the family dentist a lot. He didn't look like Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors, but boy did he act like him.



He's the kind of guy who would drill holes in your teeth and then tell you you have cavities. And he didn't really feel comfortable unless he could get his whole arm in your mouth. When installing the metal band around my teeth so the braces would stop coming off I had bits shoot out and damage the window.

Of course, I had real dental problems, too. I jammed a tooth which damaged the circulation. It changed colors for awhile and went dark. "It's dead." he said, and covered it with an enamel shell that still didn't match the other teeth and made that one tooth protrude. All the teeth in my head want to sit up front where they can get a good view. So things got a bit crowded and twisted out of shape. Braces were put on, but my teeth put up a fight and would routinely shake them off. Thus the aforementioned metal band. Teeth were pulled to make room for everyone. Before I left for college and left the tooth tyrant behind the braces were removed and placed on the back of my teeth. "Don't worry." he said. "They'll come off on their own with time. All the cement will come off."

I went to the dentist this week for the first time in 20 years. Partially because they hurt and partially because I sold a house and can afford it.

The tooth cleaner said my teeth were surprisingly clean for having gone this long without dental care. She was done pretty fast. What took the longest was trying to remove the remaining cement from the back of my teeth.

The cavities that exist are obvious. There are no minor cavities. And the ones that I have are the result of poorly filling the ones the last dentist drilled. One tooth may or may not have to go. I'm seeing a consultant Wednesday to evaluate our options.

My front tooth is actually still alive. The enamel coating on my front tooth is further from the color of the rest of my teeth than the actual tooth. So we're gonna have it off.

All my wisdom teeth came in. They're not really a problem. One of them is sideways, but since we'd have to break my jaw to get it out we're going to try doing nothing. In fact, if we have to take out the tooth that's a problem, the sideways tooth may be manipulated to replace it.

But for what I got charged for a cleaning, X-Ray, and diagnostics I don't know why I waited so long. It was only a few hundred bucks. The upcoming work will cost more, but I wasn't hearing numbers that would worry me even before I sold a house.

EDITED - Movie Review: X-men: Days of Future Past

EDIT: Be sure to sit through the credits to see a teaser for the next movie.
While Stan Lee wasn't in this movie, Chris Claremond and Len Wein were. Claremont wrote the comic book version of Days of Future Past while Wein created Wolverine as well as several other mutants.

It's tempting to compare this latest X-Men movie to The Avengers. After all, both are borne from a string of other movie series that all come together in this one. Both would be considered bold new moves in movie creation. But when the first X-Men movie came out back in 2000 they were not deliberately building to the movie that came out this weekend. The Avengers was part of the plan when The Incredible Hulk came out in 2008. And in both cases, they managed to make a pretty damn good movie.

So let me catch you up so that you may properly enjoy X-Men: Days of Future Past.

The series so far:
X-Men (2000) directed by Brian Singer
X-Men 2 (2003) directed by Brian Singer
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) directed by Brett Ratner

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) directed by Gavin Hood
The Wolverine (2013) directed by James Mangold

X-Men: First Class (2011) directed by Matthew Vaughn

The first two movies were pretty good. Patrick Stewart was the obvious choice for Professor X and Hugh Jackman got his big break as the perfect casting for Wolverine. The movies showed the establishment of the school for mutants and fighting off an anti-mutant attack led by William Stryker. We also saw flashes of Wolverine's forgotten past by Professor X digging around in his memories.
But X-Men 3 is generally accepted to have been a disaster. They killed off a lot of main characters including Professor X, Cyclops, and made Wolverine kill Jean Grey, the woman he loved. They changed the personality of Magneto from someone working for the betterment of mutant-kind to someone willing to throw hundreds of mutants at the enemy to die needlessly. So you can understand there was some excitement when Brian Singer returned to direct Days of Future Past. And, in the end, this movie pretty much erases X-Men 3.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine shows his history running through several major wars and involvement with a Canadian special ops program led by William Stryker. It shows how his claws went from being bone to being metal. And then he lost his memory after surviving being shot in the head.

The Wolverine was a so-so movie that really contributed little. It did hint that Wolverine and Jean Grey may have had a more physical relationship than shown in the

X-Men: First Class was thought to be a reboot to the series. It took place in the 60s and climaxed during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It introduced the young Professor X, Magneto, and Mystique as well as many of the characters we see dead and dissected in that we see in Days of Future Past. And it ends with the accident that should put Professor X in a wheelchair.

Days of Future Past does an OK job of keeping someone new to this world informed. It has to. The world being in ruins because of a war with these advanced Sentinels is new to this movie. There's flashbacks to the other movies, but it does more to refresh the memory of people who have already seen them than to really explain things to newcomers. If you haven't seen any of the original trilogy then the sudden influx of characters at the very end doesn't mean much. Wolverine's freakout when meeting Stryker is briefly explained, but it's not really sufficient for newcomers to the series.

I wouldn't take my parents to see this movie. Mom knows enough to know that Patrick Stewart was brilliantly cast, but didn't know why I called my brother Logan when he grew muttonchops. And they haven't seen any of the movies. This movie relies on fans of earlier movies coming to see it while The Avengers can be walked into cold. Both movies are better if you've seen the background material to catch the references, but X-Men: Days of Future Past has parts that are just puzzling without certain earlier movies. Much like how the first Hobbit movie is just bizarre if you haven't seen the Lord of the Rings movies.

I will get this movie on DVD and will probably get a few others on DVD, too. My copy of X-Men (2000) is on VHS in full screen. That needs to be fixed.

Friday Links: May 23

Game: Argument Champion - pick a word and try to link other words to it to win your argument. [link]

Bees' can make nests with plastic. [link]

Buddha is in the Bible... sorta. [link]

The best seats on a Boeing 777-300. [link]

The littlest yo-yo master.


What we actually know about the guy who accidentally lanced his own frontal lobe. [link]

Teller's magical version of The Tempest. [link]

Dean Kamen's new prosthetic arm is OKed for market. [link]
I saw his prototype demonstrated years ago. Small and light enough for a 5' female but can be scaled up for a 7' muscular guy. 

A running robot.


How to explain programming to normal folk? Like this. [link]

Extended trailer for the new "The Flash" TV series.

Watch for the Ferris Air truck at the airport. Ferris Air is where Hal Jordan worked before becoming Green Lantern.

Are animals who can recognize themselves in mirrors more self aware? [link]

Why are Apple chargers so much more expensive than counterfits? [link]

High doses of modified measles virus can combat some cancers. [link]

This lawn "mooer" would fill my whole yard.


Maryland was only able to decriminalize pot, not legalize it. Here's how legalization has been working out in Denver. [link]

World's largest track layer. Jump to about 2:20.


NSA is recording almost every phone call in the Bahamas. [link]

Trying to reproduce the cancer sniffing abilities of dogs. [link]

In the Third Age of Man I was a legend. In the Fourth Age of Man no one seems to care.


A tank modified to put out oil well fires. [link]

Book Review: The Long War

I find it interesting that Terry Pratchett waited until he developed Alzheimer's to delve into writing non-Discworld books. OK, yeah, it was Good Omens that got me reading Pratchett and Gaiman in the first place, but that was a one shot. With "The Long War" he and Stephen Baxter have turned their collaboration into a series. Since Pratchett can't read or write anymore it amazes me how productive he's been.

In the Long Earth books someone figured out how to step between alternate Earths using a device that anyone can build from parts they picked up at Radio Shack. Which these days means it was probably a mobile phone and remote control truck. Anyway, as of The Long War, none of these Earths have Humans on them. Just untouched wilderness. You could spend the rest of your life moving between worlds hunting and gathering and living well on the resources at hand. And many people do. Billions of people have made like settlers and headed off across the alternative worlds to start new lives and new colonies.

Along the way they've met Trolls who can step across worlds naturally and love to be well treated slave labor. There's other intelligent life, too, but they're not important at the moment. Not everyone treats the Trolls well. Enough people don't that the Trolls have started leaving all the known Earths.

Earth Datum (or Earth Prime or Original Earth) is getting on reasonably well mining the neighboring Earths for resources. But, even with the drop in price the economy has pretty much been shot to hell by having a great whopping chunk of it's population head off across reality. And you know what kinds of politicians rise in those kinds of environments. Those who have left are the enemy and America Datum needs to assert it's control and dominance over those who have moved to alternate Americas for the glory and betterment of AMERICA! And, yeah, a few hundred thousand Earths away they're not sure why they need to pay taxes to distant people who hate them. But those from the Datum have no clue how things operate outside of their home world.

The title "Long War" implies a lot more fighting than actually occurs in this book. A few intelligent people in military command positions manage to keep the idiocy of politicians, home bound bigots, and violence loving troops from turning violent when they finally encounter the separatists. And things sort out with the Trolls pretty well. The most violence is when a race known as Beagles capture one of the main characters and hunt him for sport.

Really, this is an expansion on "The Long Earth". It's further exploration of the world(s) with more emphasis on the life, the politics, and overall development of life in this reality.

It also talks more about The Gap. The Gap is a series of realities where Earth isn't there. A space program pops up on the edge of The Gap and starts using it to explore. Presumably, that's the jumping off point for the next book "The Long Mars".

If you're looking for something like Pratchett's other work, this isn't going to be it. This isn't Discworld. This isn't Good Omens. This is serious science fiction in which those who know his work can still see Pratchett's thinking in play. I should warn you, this is a long (no pun intended) book that took me quite awhile to read.

Movie Review: Amazing Spiderman 2

I wasn't a big fan of the Spiderman reboot. I guess I'd like more it if it came before the Tobey Maguire version, but I really do think it's the lesser series. With that said, I did like Amazing Spiderman 2 more than Amazing Spiderman 1. This Spiderman is quicker with the wisecracks and is better at dealing with the public. And the story is good, if a bit over packed. That's my issue with this series. They have a whole lot of plot to jam in a very small space. They need to take it a bit slower. Even the Harry Potter movies didn't seem this rushed and they had massive novels to cram in there. It's kinda like many of the Matt Smith Doctor Who episodes. At the end you're wondering what the fuck just happened.

This movie ties in the disappearance of Peter Parker's parents to Norman Osborne and to the eventual development of Spiderman.
It also has the creation of the villain Electro and tries to make him a sympathetic character gone bad. Much like how the original movies did with Doc Octopus and some DC stories do with Mr Freeze. It almost works. The original person is downtrodden and lonely, but you never quite feel the level of sympathy that a more sedately paced movie could have provided. So when he goes bad you might feel he's justified, but more that an unstable character just cracked.
His story is there to provide a villain while the main villain develops. One of the big complaints about The Fantastic Four was that they had no villain until Doctor Doom finally shows his face near the end of the movie. At about the same point that The Green Goblin appears in this movie. So Electro keeps things rolling for the bulk of the movie.
And then the Rhino shows up. He's not a very deep character. He doesn't plot or scheme. He's a henchman. A really strong one. But there's not enough to him to center a movie around him. So he shows up at the end for Spidey to make a triumphant comeback and beat the fuck out of him.

So, 3 villains, two or three major story lines (depending on how you count), and all the usual Peter Parker relationship issues. There's a lot in this movie.

A couple of things I want to point out. While Disney does own Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, the movie rights to X-Men is in the hands of Fox and the movie rights to Spiderman is in the hands of Sony. So every computer in this movie was a Sony VAIO. The great thing about being such a large company is that you get to use your own stuff in product placements.
The other thing happens in the end credits. There's a clip of the upcoming X-Men movie. I'm assuming this is a response to Disney putting teasers in their end credits that lead into the next movie in the series. This wasn't a teaser. This was a clip. And not even a clip from another Sony movie. Sony showed a clip for a Fox movie. It's WEIRD, man. I thought it was great when Sony and Disney tried to work together and get Stark Tower and the Oscorp Building in the same skyline for an earlier movie. But this was just weird.

Anyway, I liked the movie. Not sure I'll get it on DVD, but I'm glad that I saw it.

Conversations with Gandolf

I was preparing to go spray weeds. Gandolf wanted to come along.

Gandolf: I'm a person now!
Me: Really? You've become a person? Can you still fly?
Gandolf: Yep!
Me: Because people can't fly. If you're a person, you can't fly either.
Gandolf: Oh.

I walk the neighborhood spraying poison ivy and whatnot. An hour later I return.

Gandolf: I'm a birdy!

Friday Links: May 16

Last week I showed you a trailer for "Gotham". Guess what else is coming to TV soon.

Oliver Queen has a new buddy named Barry Allen.


Steve Rogers left someone behind when he got frozen. She went on to be one of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[ซับไทย] Marvel One-Shot Agent Carter by thaisubjackal

Keanu Reeves' legacy has been cast aside for this new Constantine series.


How to get yourself banned from North Korea. [link]

Hiroshima was hit by a typhoon shortly after being nuked. [link]

Jigsaw puzzle versions of New Yorker covers. [link]

Gilbert Gottfried redubbing video games.


Cat saves boy from dog.


Talk show talk about Syria turns violent... ish. [link]

The Navy has developed it's own eReader. [link]

A very short history of the pocket knife. [link]

Ultra-collapsable bike. [link]

A man and his hiking cat. [link]

RIP H. R. Giger

From http://www.capesnbabes.com/

Movie Review: Transcendence

Transcendence is a modern retelling of a couple of very familiar stories in science fiction. The story of a guy who gets uploaded to a computer and the story of a super computer that becomes a threat to mankind.

At least as far back as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits you've seen stories of a house setup with a computer to run things and the house falls in love with the person who lives there and becomes homicidal. Isaac Asimov and others have had computers taking control of the world, often being designed for just that purpose. Much of the work of Robert J Sawyer has involved humans being transferred into computers with mixed results.

In Transcendence, an AI researcher is poisoned by Luddite terrorists. To save him, his wife has him copied into a powerful computer that they'd been developing. Immediately the debate begins about whether the mind in the computer is him or not. Is the computer pretending to be him, is it him with the humanity stripped away, or is it him, but with the changes that come with being smarter and more powerful? They generate some quick money in the stock market, buy up a nearly dead town in the desert, and turn it into a server farm with independent power supply. With the resources at his command he develops advanced nanotech that feeds on pollution and can heal almost all injuries. Honestly, the only real problem here is that he's also networking those he heals into a sort of hive mind. And he's deploying the nanotech worldwide. He can heal everyone. Save crops. End pollution. It's hard to figure out what the downside is. Oh, yeah, we're not sure how much of the networked people is really them and how much is the computer.

Oh, and the guy who gets uploaded is named Will Caster. I laughed.

Not sure if I'll buy this one. I'm on the fence about it.

Movie Review: Muppets: Most Wanted

I finally saw the latest Muppet movie in our local second run theater. I meant to see it sooner, but the bad reviews that I was hearing kept putting me off. And while I can agree that it's not as good as the previous movie, it was still pretty good. The last movie had some really touching and moving moments mixed in with the comedic stuff. It was a quality movie by any standards. This one didn't have the touching and moving moments. There was the usual conflict between Kermit and Piggy. And the rallying around Kermit when he thinks he's been forgotten. But nothing like seeing the Jim Henson picture in Kermit's office in the first movie. No, this is a funny movie. With an insane number of celebrity cameos. Gandolf will be disappointed that there's a shortage of Swedish Chef, but I'm still going to use this movie to show her more of Sam... The AMERICAN Eagle.

If you can still find it and haven't seen it yet and like The Muppets, then you should forget what critics have said and see this movie.

Friday Links: May 9

Game of Thrones theme played on wine glasses.

Also check out his rendition of "Happy".

The weirdest beach in NYC. [link]

Naturally occurring nuclear reactors. [link]

Pac Man maze fish tank. [link]

We've all seen the photo from the Star Wars: Episode 7 table read. Here's a list of who is who. [link]
Solo, Leia, Luke, Chewy, 3PO, R2, sure, sure, sure... Andy Serkis. He played Gollum and King Kong and a few other. So that's a good sign. And they got Lawrence Kasdan. That tells me they're actually taking this seriously. Screw the prequels. Lets get the guy who wrote Empire and Jedi. 
I know a lot of people think Disney is going to screw this up. But we all felt the same way when they bought Marvel. And they put out The Avengers and all movies and TV shows related to it. So, yeah, I have hope. I mean it can't be worse than Phantom Menace.

Footage of the Baltimore landslide that took place within easy walking distance of Yummy's old apartment.


The girl who rides a cow.


What do animals dream about? [link]

First look at the Satanist statue for the Oklahoma Statehouse. [link]

Should the last of the smallpox be destroyed. [link]

Earth gets buzzed by a big rock. [link]

Your DNA can be used to find where your ancestors lived 1000 years ago. [link]

15 best canned beers. [link]
I mostly drink bottles beers with pry-off caps, but that's just because I want to wash and reuse the bottles. I'll have to look for some of these cans and maybe try to rip off their recipes. 

Concept sketches from various car companies. [link]

Those who don't use e-mail are making major technology law decisions. [link]

Tattooing in slow motion. [link]

Global warming impact is already severe. [link]

Woman films her own abortion and puts the video online to debunk anti-choice myths. [link]

The first color swatch. [link]

Young Batman show coming this fall.


Consider buying the first album from Deathmole. It's from the cartoonist who makes Questionable Content. [link]

The house razing

About a week and a half ago our old family farm house was knocked down. It was built by my great grandparents along with most of the buildings on the farm. My grandpa and his sister grew up in that house. My dad and his siblings grew up in that house. Many of my cousins spent so much time there that they may as well have grown up there. So a lot of people had strong attachments to that place.

But the house had issues. Much of the kitchen needed replacing once the linoleum went soft from the termites undermining it. The plumbing wouldn't last long at a family gathering because it just couldn't handle all those people flushing in such short order. The lights upstairs would come on when the toaster was used. If you hooked up a computer the wiring would hiss at you. Hiss, not hum. The foundation was cracked. Snakes would crawl in through holes in the retaining walls. And when trying to rewire some light switches we'd find that the baseboards were held in place where the wallpaper touched them more than by the studs they were supposed to be nailed to. The studs were eaten and rotten. It was a problem.

So Mom and Dad are building their old age home. The original plan was to build in the yard north of the old house, salvage what they could while the new house was being built, and then, with the old house stripped, push the old house into it's own basement and bury it. But a septic tank can't be put in that soil, so they have to build a sewage lagoon. Several options were suggested, but the only one that actually worked was the place they planned to build the house. Which means the new house had to be built on the site of the old house. And since the framers were only available in early June AND the concrete must be a month old before framing could be done AND the old foundation had to be removed before the concrete could be poured it meant that the timetable for removing the old house was very fast.

Many people who wanted to say goodbye couldn't make it back in time to do it. So I made sure to be there to video tape the whole thing. There were technical difficulties. The battery was short lived and we had to rig up alternative power sources that restricted movement. There's a change in camera at one point that I edited in when the main camera was out of power. The wind was fierce and blew over the camera a couple of times.

The efforts to salvage the flooring were difficult. It was well installed and wouldn't come up without breaking. You'll see that when the wrecker tries to knock out the second floor ... floor. Similarly, the kitchen cabinets were built in and weren't going to come out for anything. The whole wall comes out, but the cabinets remain. The guy running the wrecker didn't want to have to scoop everything out of the basement, so he uses the floor of the main level as a platform to knock things on to and scrape off rather than knock it in. The floor and basement were handled the next day. Mom taped it, but I had to head back east. The video ends with everything above the flooring of the main floor gone and a look at the hole which all the broken concrete from the house and an old fallen silo will go into.



I also have footage of a tour of the house and the removal of the trees from around the house. If anyone wants me to post that, I will. I figured the demolition was the main point.

And here's the floor plan of the house with some hurried measurements. I got the room dimensions, but didn't get the placement of the doors and windows. And the basement is the size of the main floor so I didn't bother drawing it up. The little mud room tacked on the the bottom of the main room wasn't measured, but it's the depth of a window and the space at the lower left corner where the exterior walls meet was more or less square. With this, an architect can draw up new plans if anybody in the family wants to rebuild the house.

Conversations with Gandolf

Gandolf: You know what time it is?
Me: Hammer time?
Gandolf: Bigger.
Me: Bigger than Hammer time?
Gandolf: Yep.

Further deliberations determined that she wanted me to say it bigger. "HAMMER TIME!" Or not.

Friday Links: May 2

Emperor Hirohito was actually a pretty good marine biologist. [link]

Russia's nukes are powering the US. [link]

Magic for dogs.


Spiderman and tiny mirror image.


The photographer and the leopard seal. [link]

Sabertooth squirrel found. [link]

A frog in a bucket of milk was a primitive form of pasteurization. [link]

What British villain are you? [link]

A fan series about Harry Potter's son that was okayed by J.K. Rowling. [link]

A castle being built using techniques used in 1229. [link]

Boris Yeltzin's already weakened faith in Communism was crushed by visiting an American supermarket. [link]

Boston's "lost" concert hall. [link]

"Vegitative" patient communicates via fMRI machine. [link]

Author's son got a bad grade when his class covered his father's book. The teacher disagreed with the author's interpretation of the novel. [link]

From time to time I look at missile silos and think of buying one. This guy did and shows how he fixed it up. [link]
If only they weren't so far from civilization.


For Batman's 75th anniversary we get a bit more Batman Beyond.


75 years of Superman in 2 minutes.


Saturn may be getting another moon. [link]

A map of where to go to be alone in America. [link]

There's such a thing as hamster sized deer. [link]

It's better for the fetus if you swallow. You love our future baby, don't you? [link]

How to drink without getting drunk. [link]

Have a dose of strange. [link]

A better way to board planes. [link]

Google cars take to city streets. [link]
I thought they had already, but...

Gandolf inna tree

Gandolf happily perched in a redbud tree.

Gandolf's travel perch

Gandolf is trying out her new car perch. It's 4 ft of rebar with the ends stuck in the holes for the head rest. Then some insulating tape and pipe insulation all secured with a tight wrap of string. I'll replace the string with zip ties, soon.

Friday Links: April 18

Free clinics are shutting down. Thanks to Obamacare they're no longer needed. [link]

You can judge a book by it's cover. [link]

A map of the deepest cave in the world. [link]

Captain Janeway says she was tricked to narrate a "documentary" about geocentrism. [link]

Lawrence Krauss doesn't know how he got in the "documentary". [link]

Cardboard remote control tank. [link]

The pickup that insurgents everywhere prefer to use. [link]
Be sure to watch the Top Gear video. 

Most crosswalk buttons in NYC are only there for show. [link]

Kermit Christ Superstar - Songs from Jesus Christ Superstar done by a Muppet impersonator. [link]

I didn't get picked for the Mars One mission. This article is by the husband of someone who did get picked. [link]

Boycotting the Kochs

If you haven't been paying attention, the Koch brothers are horrible, horrible business leaders who like to throw their billions of dollars at promoting pollution, denying health insurance, and generally promoting the sort of politicians that make the Tea Party look moderate. I don't want to give them my money and I'm betting that you wouldn't either if you knew them. But you never see commercials for Koch stores, so how exactly do they make money? Well, here's a depressingly large list of businesses and products that they own.

Koch Industry Gasoline:
-Chevron
-Union
-Union 76
-Conoco

American Greetings
-Angel Soft
-Angel Soft Ultra
-Brawny paper towels
-Dixie products
-Insulair cups
-Mardis Gras napkins
-Perfect Touch cups, paper products
-Quilted Northern
-Sparkle paper towels
-Vanity Fair napkins & paper towels
-Zee Napkins

Georgia-Pacific Products:
-Angel Soft toilet paper
-Brawny paper towels
-Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
-Mardi Gras napkins and towels
-Quilted Northern toilet paper
-Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
-Sparkle napkins
-Vanity fair napkins
-Zee napkins

Georgia Pacific Building products:
-Dense Armor Drywall and Decking
-ToughArmor Gypsum board
-Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood
-Flexrock
-Densglass sheathing
-G/P Industrial plasters
-Agricultural Plaster
-Arts & Crafts Plaster
-Dental Plaster
-General Purpose Plaster
-Glass-reinforced Gypsum (GRG),etc.

Georgia-Pacific Office products
-Spectrum paper
-Georgia-Pacific's enMotion paper towel dispenser
-Georgia-Pacific's engineered lumber

INVISTA Brands
-INVISTA’s PET polymer is used in oxygen-sensitive packaging for food and beverages.
-ADI-PURE® Adipic Acid
-ANTRON® Carpet Fiber
-C12™ Intermediates
-COMFOREL® Fiber
-COOLMAX® Fabric
-CORDURA® Fabric
-DACRON® Fiberfill
-DYTEK® Idea Intermediates
-FLEXISOLV® Solvent Solutions
-LYCRA® Fiber
-LYCRA HyFit® Fiber
-OXYCLEAR® Barrier Resin
-PHENREZ® resin
-POLARGUARD® fiber and
-POLYCLEAR® PET
-POLYSHIELD® Resin
-SENZAA™ Additive
-SOLARMAX® fabric
-SOMERELLE® bedding products
-STAINMASTER® Carpet
-SUPPLEX® Fabric
-SUPRIVA™ Fiber
-TACTEL® Fiber
-TACTESSE® carpet fiber
-TECGEN® Garments
-TERATE® Polyols
-TERATHANE® Polyether Glycol
-TERRIN™ Polyols
-THERMOLITE® Fabric
-TORZEN® PA66 Resin

Koch Fertilizer Company's AGROTAIN® nitrogen stabilizer fertilizer products are used around the world to improve nitrogen efficiency and enhance crop productions.

And, with that huge, impossible to memorize list I suppose I should point you to the Buycott app. You can pick your cause and it'll create a list of companies you should support or not depending on your pet cause. You can scan products in the store and determine if they're on your list.

House for sale

I've got a house for sale in Washington, DC if you're interested. It's not exactly move in ready. I mean, you could, but it's got a lot of half finished projects if you think you'll want to fix the house up yourself first.

The house is 12'x24', two stories tall, there's an attic, a deck, and a front lawn. It's ideal for one person or a married couple. You could have a kid, too, but for purposes of space and education you'll want to leave before the kid starts school.

It's only 3 blocks from the DC Metro. The Metro system is extensive enough that I went 9 years without a car.
Also 3 blocks away, the U st shopping corridor is full of restaurants, bars, furniture, and clothing stores. I'm really missing the easy access to everything.

I'm asking $350,000 for the house as-is. It's probably the cheapest house you're going to find in DC.

It's seen a lot of improvements since I moved in.

In October 2006 I replaced the back wall and bathroom

In November 2007 the roof had it's surface stripped and replaced. It has an estimated R-25 insulation value now and was painted silver to reflect heat instead of absorbing it. A new coat is recommended.
In January 2008 I finished work on the second bedroom/office. It has a bamboo floor, exposed and repointed brick, and is open to the roof. 

That was followed in February 2008 with me making the space over the main bedroom into an attic.

The deck was added in May 2008. It's made of composite materials that should last 50 years.
The furnace and tankless water heater were added in December 2008.

In August 2009 I painted the crawlspace with multiceramic paint. Additional insulation was added in November 2010.
I made the stones that make up the front patio in May/July 2010.

If you're just an investor, the neighborhood was rezoned a few years back to allow 3 story homes. Houses that have added the third floor have doubled in value. If I had the funds I'd do it myself.

If you're interested you can reach me via the comments or at douginbaltimore@gmail.com.

Friday Links: April 11

Why you shouldn't get a tattoo, but having a baby is fine. [link]

Why part of Canada is missing some gravity. [link]

Opt-out of a bunch of advertising trackers. [link]

"16 and Pregnant" is helping bring down teen pregnancy rates. [link]

Intact T-rex soft tissue found along with why it's been preserved this long. [link]

Switzerland is wired to self destruct in self defense. [link]

A high school prank using a tunnel that connects two parts of a school on opposite sides of the street.


The smell of rain on dry earth has a name: petrichor. [link]

Smooooooth Game of Thrones theme.


The making of the Doctor Who version of Guess Who. [link]

A cake that looks like The Luggage from Discworld. [link]

I'd display this art in my home. [link]

The oldest known message in a bottle. [link]

Doctor Zhivago was part of a CIA plot to undermine the Soviet Union. [link]

Charge your iPod in 30 seconds. [link]

Unprofitable valley. [link]

Game: Super Planet Crash - Crashing planets for fun and prof... for fun. [link]

Court stenographer writes "I hate my job" over and over. [link]

Sloth rescue. [link]

Libertarian Police Force. [link]

What do you get when you cross a goat and a sheep? This. [link]

Using quotes to make book titles sarcastic. [link]

Wrath of Kahn storyboards. [link]

The Navy is making gasoline from sea water. That or we've spilled more oil than we thought. [link]

Gotham City may be worse than we think

What you see in the movies and comic books is Batman and friends stopping the smuggling of drugs and dangerous weapons into the city. That's some of the lower level stuff they show you. Nothing like stopping the Joker or breaking up the Penguin's latest scheme. They still break up muggings and car jackings and the like, but that's pretty basic for them. You can't keep an audience's interest with that. But it still happens. Think about that for a second. It still happens. You have a colony of creatures of dubious humanity who can swoop down on you at any moment, drag you into the shadows, beat the crap out of you, possibly cripple you for life, all for trying to steal someone's wallet or sell a bit of weed. And these people still choose to try to make a living that way. Which raises the question about how bad the economy in Gotham City really is. Sure, Bruce Wayne keeps opening shelters, funding free health care, scholarships, money for schools, creating jobs, and generally trying to turn things around for the poorest of the poor before they turn to crime. He works to elect politicians who will try to drive the city to do similar things with city money. But it seems to me that it's still a city with the density of New York with the economy of Detroit.

Pity the people of Gotham, for hungry African children send them money.

It doesn't help the people of Gotham, but you can give money to the Wayne Foundation. Their focus is on helping the victims of sex trafficking. [http://waynefdn.org/]

Super hero shortage in a super hero world

As it stands in the real world, there's lots of people of all ages who want to be super heroes. Not necessarily with powers. Just someone like Batman or Green Arrow or the like who is perfectly normal but fights crime. Even those who train to be able to fight almost never go the way of the movie Kick-Ass and actually try to pull it off. Those people we see in the news who have made costumes don't get into the physical stuff. They're helping people carry their groceries and whatnot. At most they might perform CPR sometime.

Now step into a different world. One like that depicted in comic books. One of the more recent Batman movies showed Batman-wannabes fighting Scarecrow and friends in a parking garage. Batman himself showed up and broke it up explaining that the difference between him and them was that he wasn't wearing hockey pads. Nor was he toting guns, but he didn't mention that. The fact that he'd inspired copy-cats is sort of the point of my thesis.

Batman has to remain a myth that only criminals know about because otherwise Gotham becomes filled with wanna-bes who Batman then has to smack around and send home. He's trying to protect people and barely trained and funded are just putting themselves in the middle of minor skirmishes and getting themselves hurt or killed. But in Boston, where Bats can't patrol, there's going to be nearly as many Bat-pretenders as there are cops. Sure, it's illegal to be a vigilante and the cops will be arresting them when they can, but it's still going to be happening a lot because Bruce Wayne proved it could be done.

This comic book universe has proved something else. Aliens do exist. Meta-humans do happen. How many kids do you know who have tried to use the Force after watching Star Wars? All of them, right? Often doing it well into their 50s and beyond. It's hard enough to keep kids from wrapping a towel around their neck and jumping off roofs now. How hard would it be when there are actually people who really can fly? Because how do you know if you don't try? Maybe you do have laser vision and you just need to figure out how to turn it on? We'd constantly be exposed to ads by con artists claiming that they can help you unlock your secret super powers. We might all be mutants who just haven't activated our powers. Around Chernobyl and Fukushima they'd need intense security to keep out all the people who just want to get exposed to a bit of radiation in hopes of unlocking some powers.

My point being that the comic book worlds are woefully under vigilanted. Superman HAS to stop all these accidents because otherwise a dozen other heroes are going to appear like lawyers on an ambulance.

Movie Review: Captain America: Winter Soldier

Typically we can have faith that the Marvel movies will be pretty good. But if you saw Thor: The Dark World (not bad, but a B- in an A or A+ movie tradition) or the dubious trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy then you may have some doubts about Captain America: Winter Soldier. So let me reassure you now, it's a good movie and you'll enjoy it.

I was wondering what they were going to do for a story. I mean Captain America is still too tied to WWII in my mind. To do otherwise you'd have to make this movie an origin story for a new villain. From what I've seen of the trailers Marvel doesn't want to give you too much of the movie and I'm going to respect that... mostly. I'll just say that some of the old baddies and heroes are manifesting themselves in new ways. And this movie will fuck things over royally for the Agents of Shield TV series. This movie may explain why Fury wasn't taking Coulson's calls. Or they may be unrelated.

Cap and Black Widow have better chemistry than Thor and stupid human played by Natalie Portman and Cap and BW aren't supposed to be a couple.

There are two clips in the credits to watch for.

Since this is a short post I want to share a story. While filming The Avengers Chris Evans sent out a text to the rest of the main cast with the phrase "Avengers Assemble". And they'd meet at a bar and party all night. Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) said it was his favorite text he's ever received.

Friday Links: April 4

One of the greatest jugglers in history has turned to masonry. [link]

Chimps have better numerical memory than humans. [link]

Just roosters. [link]

Anita Hill talks. [link]

Find out what song that was in that one TV show or movie. [link]

Creepy tunnel. [link]

Talented dog. [link]

Detroit and other cities have tens of thousands of unprocessed rape kits just sitting there for decades. [link]

Alternative scene for Gravity.


Yellowstone isn't about to explode.
In this video you see buffalo running to leave Yellowstone National Park. Some theorized that they knew the caldera was about to explode. The first issue is that the video was posted weeks ago and filmed awhile before that. [link]

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan's tourist pics from New York. [link]

Ford puts Cadillac's ad in it's place. [link]

Albuquerque police gun down homeless camper. [link]

The first trailer for Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It's fallen so far since it's early days as a spoof of the superhero genre. 
I will not be seeing this movie. But that was established the moment it was announced.

Artistic dog grooming. []

Cupcake vending machine doesn't work like a high speed EZ Bake Oven. [link]

Besides their land and ships, Russia now controls Ukraine's dolphin army. [link]

I've played games on an Oculus Rift. It's awesome. I have high hopes for the technology. So I'm really mad that Facebook bought Oculus. If Mark Zuckerwhoozit bought it I wouldn't mind. But I seriously dislike Facebook and will put off buying a Rift as long as possible. [link 1] [link 2]

High quality time lapse foodage of slow moving sea life. [link]

"Why do you hate porn?" [link]

Painting letters on the street. [link]

Disaster architecture. [link]

Bird coffee shop. [link]

The pneumonic plague. [link]

Smiley face screws and screwdriver. [link]
Are you kidding me? I need to buy ANOTHER kind of screwdriver!?