Lichenyote

Future Watch: Bioengineered anti-pollutant flowers

2009-11-02T10:34:30Z

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.

Roadside Picnic.

2009-10-29T11:44:35Z

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.

sowelu @ 2009-10-21T05:05:00

2009-10-21T12:05:45Z

Insomnia getting worse.

>.o

I'm alive!

2009-10-16T08:23:47Z

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.

Hooolee shit.

2009-08-25T12:34:12Z

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?

I'm a dork

2009-08-22T12:10:53Z

Best flash game ever.

2009-06-19T06:09:41Z

It's fun for all the wrong reasons.

Chocolate Coyote!

2009-06-10T19:45:35Z

http://www.chocolatedeities.com/deity.php?deity=coyote

(also see http://www.chocolatedeities.com/deities.php for their index)

So, uh.

2009-04-26T02:13:17Z

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.

Anyone remember E-Sheep?

2009-04-23T09:25:03Z

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.

There is Calvin & Hobbes on the web.

2009-04-22T09:33:05Z

It's better in book form, but books are so frequently in inconvenient boxes, or other rooms...

http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/

Has it really been almost fourteen years now?

Life update

2009-04-21T05:34:52Z

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.

sowelu @ 2009-04-12T06:19:00

2009-04-12T13:20:26Z

"We're going to Monday in a handbasket!"

Heh.

2009-04-03T08:00:35Z

http://i.gizmodo.com/5195630/iphoto-discovers-face-in-delicious-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough

Cheap webhosting today only.

2009-04-02T01:03:59Z

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

Poking through my old portfolio...

2009-03-31T09:19:27Z

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.

Must remember to drink milk more often.

2009-03-12T14:06:32Z

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.

Computer be ALIVE!

2009-03-01T06:31:34Z

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.

Computer be ded, part II

2009-03-01T01:30:39Z

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.

Computer be ded.

2009-02-28T03:06:56Z

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!

Because I'm working hard, darnit.

2009-02-24T10:33:20Z

http://img93.imageshack.us/my.php?image=itworks4.png

The models and model textures are courtesy of maskedretriever, but they're intentionally quick little prototypes and not supposed to be good. (I still like them.)

This is two days into a game project written in XNA (C#). It uses the Quake 3 BSP map format to render the bridge of your ship (through a handy little rendering library), with my own little custom entities on the map to say where the control panels go. The models are rendered in their own little ways. There's a fun little system where your bridge and outer space (out the window) are rendered completely different... Anyway, it's barely even recognizable as a ship's bridge now, but I'm quite happy with the way it's coming along. I have until March 29th to finish this... My eventual goal is to be like Puzzle Pirates in space, with little minigames and stuff. But with substantially less awesome (but still present) online multiplayer. Expect more posts as time goes on.

whee engagement!

2009-02-23T08:48:05Z

Me and Grace got ENGAGED on Saturday :D

We are looking at sometime in October!

I am the happiest thing ever. I am stealing from the cookie jar or something.

Also, I'm taking part in a TIGSource indie game competition. Which is also making me extraordinarily happy (it's going really well). So I'm kind of overloaded on happy right now.

sowelu @ 2009-02-20T00:06:00

2009-02-20T08:06:17Z

witchesgrace: I have the Folgers theme stuck in my head
witchesgrace: the best part of waking up!
witchesgrace: is yotes in your cuuuup!
soweluww: XDXDXD
witchesgrace: you have to admit, getting your face bitten every time you took a sip WOULD wake you up pretty damn fast!
witchesgrace: *sipNOMF*

sowelu @ 2009-02-04T00:29:00

2009-02-04T08:37:49Z

So I've been seeing these banner ads on msnbc, fark, webcomics, just about all sorts of random other sites too. Ads for a diet program. And they're starting to weird me out. It's the ones that say 2 Flat Stomach Rules: (Obey).

It's REALLY CREEPY to see that 'Obey' part floating around. They can't seem to decide if it's 2 flat stomach rules, or 1 simple rule, but 'Obey' is always there. What the fuck. It's almost like they're fnord trying some bizarre form of hypnotism.

In happier news, apparently some people are starting a university with the specific purpose of bringing on the Singularity. What strange times.

Negotiating rent...

2009-01-29T17:26:56Z

Ok, so I could use some advice:

A month or two after we moved into this house, they had to start doing some construction work. Legally mandated due to previous construction screw-ups that impacted other houses here. As part of this work, they had to tear out our backyard (a little 10x10 plot that was kind of walled in, no grass but nice stonework), seal up our backyard, and seal off our deck (above the backyard and no longer structurally sound, according to city inspectors). This gives us no private "outdoors" places we can go to. They also tore out our driveway and even our front porch for a couple weeks...that's better now, but the missing backyard and deck is still an issue for who knows how long.

It's a three story townhouse, I think 3 bed 2.75 bath. Rent's around $1400. What I want to figure out is, what's a reasonable amount to try and get the rent lowered by? What's a tiny-little-backyard and a deck generally worth? I really have no guidelines for this kind of thing. The owner (well, PM) sounds like he's willing to talk--he didn't even know about this beforehand--but I want to have some idea before I go in.