| Future Watch: Bioengineered anti-pollutant flowers |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|02:22 am] |
I think I'm going to start making this a regular feature on my LJ, because I see it so often.
Nabbed from Slashdot: "Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. The flowers, derivatives of the cherry sage plant and the gardenia, were specially developed for the grounds of Toyota's Prius plant in Toyota City, Japan. The sage derivative's leaves have unique characteristics that absorb harmful gases, while the gardenia's leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling, in turn producing less carbon dioxide (CO2)."
There's an old strategy game called Alpha Centauri that chronicles the future development of humankind on an alien planet. We're building a lot of technologies today that were a lot more fanciful 10+ years ago, when it came out... In-game technologies like "synthetic fossil fuels", "monopole magnets", "neural grafting", "doctrine: air power" with the drone aircraft we have now, and stuff like this. I think it's kind of fun to track our real-life progress in the game's technologies, especially because we're advancing faster than you'd expect to in the game itself. File this under the "Gene Splicing" technology, which is kind of old news as a basic concept--but using gene splicing for atmospheric engineering, even on a small scale like this? That's future tech.
Now if only we had more of the social techs. |
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| Roadside Picnic. |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|04:43 am] |
Because sci-fi short stories involving horrific gravitational anomalies are even better when they are (translated from) Russian. Apparently it's actually public domain, too, because it was published in the USSR which therefore owned the copyright. Awesome.
http://www.cca.org/cm/picnic.pdf
okay short is relative, it's 126 pages, but I've been meaning to read it since forever
EDIT: Oh god, what the heck was I thinking. That story is nightmare fuel incarnate. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|05:05 am] |
Insomnia getting worse.
>.o |
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| I'm alive! |
[Oct. 16th, 2009|01:21 am] |
For some values of 'alive', I am indeed back up here.
Internet, quite spotty. And I'm not on my own computer. But I'm around! And happy to see you!
Also: Help! I've resorted to playing football video games! I may be hiding inside most of the time but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be happier outside!
I've started (chemical) treatment for my (chemical) depression, again, too. It's pretty rough, but...what can ya do. Much <3 to my family for helping me to get back on my feet. |
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| Hooolee shit. |
[Aug. 25th, 2009|01:20 am] |
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
That's way more dexterity than I've expected from a robot. Even its mundane tasks are more dextrous than many humans, plus incredibly fast camera tracking and tactile sensors that are comparable to humans. And humans can't dribble a ping-pong ball with a period of 100ms... Jesus, that's awesome. (at around 1:05 in the video)
Oh yeah, and it's not in that above video, but this movie of its grasping ability is clearly at a very high point on the Uncanny Valley. It seems very alive, even if it also seems more animal than human.
On the bipedal robot front, you might enjoy the Asimo walking around moving obstacles. The whole thing is good, but starting at 1:32 is my favorite part. Okay, we're in the future now. So when can I get my Asimo, equipped with that robot hand and cameras?
I haven't seen any bipedal robots that get their scene information from head-mounted cameras recently, but that's probably because, well...why on earth would you mount a camera on your head when you can mount it on the ceiling and get more information? |
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| So, uh. |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|07:10 pm] |
If anyone ever wanted all of Half-Life 2 (original + both episodes so far), and Portal, and Team Fortress 2, the Orange Box is $9.99 this weekend only. Normally $29.99. Seriously if you have a remotely modern PC, they'll all run fine on it--they did on my machine that was kind of new in 2001. Portal is a nice fun waste of several hours. And TF2 is as good as any other multiplayer FPS you're likely to play.
Steam has a habit of not repeating these sales, so it's likely your best chance to get it quite -this- cheap.
Here. |
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| Anyone remember E-Sheep? |
[Apr. 23rd, 2009|02:13 am] |
It went away a couple of years ago. I lost my archives... I liked my archives.
The sacriligious, if very literal, Apocamon--episodes 1 and 2:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031120114609/http://www.saturn5.com/~esheep/apocamon/APOCAMON_1.swf
http://web.archive.org/web/20050514134852/e-sheep.com/apocamon/APOCAMON_2.swf
(Episode 3 may be lost to time; it was behind a Bitpass thing for $0.25. Bitpass kicked the bucket. Shame, it was good stuff.)
The website used to be at e-sheep.com, and is supposed to be at electricsheepcomics.com as of this year, but that never came up online.
Nevermind. There is a LIVE mirror of E-Sheep floating around.
http://e-sheep.sansara.net.ua/www.e-sheep.com/main.shtml.htm
The main page is up here but is a little broken, you need to click the "main table of contents" text link (not flash link) to make that work. OH MY GOD FULLY FUNCTIONAL E-SHEEP I HAVE MISSED YOU.
Look guys, it's like this. EVERY story on that site is required reading. A very few of them are very offensive (Apocamon), several are slightly explicit, but they are all TREMENDOUSLY good. "The Jain's Death" is required reading. "Overheard at the Rave" was a feelgood classic. "The Guy I Almost Was" made me rethink my career path. "Spiders" should not under any circumstances be missed. Don't read "Saturnalia" from work, specifically, and be careful with most of the others. Or, you know, don't.
(Oh yeah, and there's another one by the same guy here: Don't Look Back)
E-Sheep had the first really genre-transcending WEBcomics. It is still unique on the internet today. Patrick Farley defined a big chunk of what webcomics could do. |
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| Life update |
[Apr. 20th, 2009|10:27 pm] |
I'm going to the gym again!
I haven't gained any weight in the months since last time I went, I'm still around 255. And that means I must have been losing muscle mass. I'm expecting to gain ~5lbs once I get back in the swing of things, even with the quasi-diet I'm starting now.
I was in -decent- shape before, even if I was a bit heavy, and now I can tell I'm at the far end of that. Still plenty good enough to successfully work out, though. I just need to kick my sugar addiction.
I'm coping with stuff okay. It's been rough, but life is on an upswing again. If you need to know, ask outside of LJ.
Work moved me into a different, noisier cube that is near the epicenter of nerf fights. I miss my nice quiet cube, near the far-more-professional engineers (instead of "professional services"). Around July is when my temp contract expires, and they look at taking me fulltime...either that or I book it up to Seattle. Well, who knows. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 12th, 2009|06:19 am] |
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"We're going to Monday in a handbasket!" |
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| Cheap webhosting today only. |
[Apr. 1st, 2009|05:58 pm] |
http://dreamhost.com/
A domain name if you don't already have one, plus a full year of webhosting, for $9.24. Today only, IE for the next six hours...or less...who knows what timezone they use.
That's...kind of...really worth it. I adore their service, they're upfront, and their tech support is quite responsive. I paid ten times that for my domain name with 'em and it was worth every cent. And yeah their bandwidth and space really is unlimited, for as long as you actually run something resembling a website (and not, say, an enormous anonymous FTP server).
Get one. o.o |
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| Poking through my old portfolio... |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|02:17 am] |
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I'm doing some really fun web stuff (think Ajax) in my spare time. I'll have to unveil it at some later date. In the meantime though, I stumbled across this that I wrote early in my college career. It makes fun cellular-automata patterns in a Java applet! It doesn't do much, but it does it very well. |
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| Must remember to drink milk more often. |
[Mar. 12th, 2009|07:04 am] |
Because apparently if I don't drink milk for about a month or so, I become lactose intolerant, and going back to drinking it again is an extremely unpleasant experience that annihilates my digestive system for a couple days.
My life is JUST THAT INTERESTING. |
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| Computer be ALIVE! |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|10:30 pm] |
New hard drive, motherboard, processor, video card, and ram.
(The new hard drives made me get a new motherboard. And the new motherboard made me get the new everything else. Upside, my machine is now like 4x as fast! Woo!)
Still installing drivers. And Windows updates. |
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| Computer be ded, part II |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|05:17 pm] |
Update: Three dead motherboards, apparently, and weird dreams. One of the dead motherboards actually happened a few weeks back, and I'm only recognizing the symptoms now that I'm seeing it on my own machines. Will need new hardware, but not entirely sure what I need just yet.
It's POSSIBLE that it's actually a power supply issue, but, meh. In any case the machines won't post...everything is powered okay, but no monitor display, no beep, etc. The monitor and power supply work on my old machine, but it might not be delivering enough current. However it's a 450W power supply and this board says it wants 300W for a fully configured machine, so, ???
Options: New motherboard + chip, or, install different (old) hard drives as a temporary measure and THEN get a new motherboard + chip later. |
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| Computer be ded. |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|07:05 pm] |
So my computer died a couple nights ago. Two hard drives dead in the space of a month or so. Getting some new hardware tonight, don't know when I'll be back online proper--I might be able to salvage my important hard drive (I stopped fussing with it the first time it refused to boot), or I might be rebuilding from scratch.
So that's why I'm not around! |
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