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| Friday, April 30th, 2021 | | 11:59 pm |
message drop box
If you either need or want to drop a message off for me, here is the best place you can do it. Just reply to this post. All posts will be screened and purged after they have served their purpose. | | Monday, August 17th, 2009 | | 12:17 pm |
Tricksy Humorses
 The layers and depth of humor in that is quite good. I wonder if the person who put that together had in mind all the amusing connections I spotted in it. Current Mood:  amusedCurrent Music: They Might Be Giants - Minimum Wage | | Monday, July 28th, 2008 | | 10:29 am |
| | Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | | 8:56 am |
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Just in case any of you who are interested in Whedon projects and have not seen or even heard about Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog stars Neil Patrick Harris as the villainous mad scientist and Nathan Fillion--who is known best as Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly--the arch-nemesis superhero Captain Hammer. Here is the teaser trailer... ...and Act I is already up for viewing with Act II due out on the 17th and Act III on the 19th. Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog | | Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 | | 5:28 pm |
Spore is finally drawing hearer to the real world. Today a demo version of the creature creator has been released. This demo version has a limited selection of all the options that are available for creating creatures in the full version of Spore but is still a great deal of fun. A full version of the Creature Creator will all the elements in the full game will be made available for $10. Here are some of the oddities I have created so far. Non-flash version here. Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: Claire Voyant - Majesty "Premonition" [Assemblage 23] | | Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 | | 3:32 pm |
Alternative Screen-based Text Input
 Above you can see Dasher predicting the words
"please", "Years", "Yes, and "You"
Above is the slightly more packed predictions of the
words "you", "Aladdin", "China", "Miss Tayl",
"Nature, and "Scie" A few months back while looking into the Nintendo DS homebrew offerings I stumbled on an article about better methods of screen based text entry than the standard virtual keyboard for keyboard less devices. I thought the ideas the author had were very interesting but I did not have any reason to follow up on it until recently when we picked up a PDA. Sadly the tech the author put together as a prototype was only available for Palm OS devices and the similar thing that IBM was working on (SHARK now ShapeWriter) is not yet available but another input method mentioned is. Dasher is simply the alphabet top to bottom on the side of the screen where rather than the standard tapping of letters the cursor is used to move through the letter starting a new alphabet behind the first to move on to the next letter in the word without having to lift the stylus or finger. What makes this more interesting and actually a pretty good keyboard alternative is that the size of the letters is increased or decreased depending on how likely it is to follow the previously passed through letter. The predictive ability of Dasher is astounding in easing the process of flying through words at a rate that while not as quick as a standard full sized keyboard is extremely good. Speed is very much dependent on how common the words being written are as well as the users recollection of the alphabet and such things. A big trouble spot is the lack of most punctuation marks other than the obligatory period and the paragraph mark for line breaks. After having written this entire post —sans spelling correction, URL linking, and embedding of images and videos—with Dasher I am pretty impressed but am not empirically sure if it is any faster than pecking at a virtual keyboard but it sure seems more fun. So if you are at all interested in alternate text input methods have a look at the following links and give Dasher a test drive. Original article on HexInputIBM's ShapeWriterThe Dasher Project- Java applet to test it without downloading anything Current Music: Deep Forest - Katharina | | Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 | | 3:31 pm |
| | Thursday, April 26th, 2007 | | 5:29 pm |
Who's on First? meets the Gonzales testimony...
From the great online Pacific-Northwest centric newpaper, Crosscut: Who, What, and I Don't KnowThings were pretty confusing during the Senate testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. You need to know the secret code. Here it is. Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: Qntal - Winter | | Thursday, April 12th, 2007 | | 3:55 pm |
So it goes
Through out his life Vonnegut has dodged death in one form or another to survive the carnage unfathomable of the allied firebombing of Dresden, an attempt on his own life in 1984, a house fire in 2000 that put him in critical condition for four days, but finally it was finally severe brain injuries cause by a fall several weeks ago that has sent him on his way. So it goes. "The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"
Vonnegut flew the coop April 11 Current Mood:  sadCurrent Music: Funker Vogt - Fortunes of War | | Friday, January 19th, 2007 | | 3:33 pm |
The Diamond Age:
Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primerin which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, &c.Apparently the Sci Fi channel is planning on making a six-hour miniseries of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age that thankfully Stephenson will be adapting his own novel for this project. Oddly enough, Clooney's Smokehouse Productions will be involved in the project. Here is hoping that it is good, and that Snow Crash will be next. Current Mood: excitedCurrent Music: snog - we decorate your life | | Friday, January 12th, 2007 | | 12:24 pm |
Pirates on the high Sealand
Well the Principality of Sealand, the worlds smallest nation, is apparently for sale. The legal status of its sovereignty is sketchy at best, but at least not completely illegitimate. Interestingly enough, The Pirate Bay, a Sweden based BitTorrent tracking site, has plans to scrounge up the £504m (€750m or $968m) to buy Sealand in an attempt to avoid copyright laws completely. Though with the sketchy legal status of Sealand's sovereignty, combined with International Laws regarding High Seas Piracy I do not think it is going to work out very well for them. Time will tell. Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: Assemblage 23 - Anthem | | Thursday, January 4th, 2007 | | 7:39 pm |
static encephalopathy of unknown etiology
" When parents face such trying circumstances, it is small wonder that they consider desperate measures." -Agnes Fletcher of the Disability Rights Commission I pretty much just stumbled across this story from Scientific American blog on one of my science related RSS feeds. A local, as in Seattle area, family made a very tough choice when they opted for their six-year old daughter with a debilitating mental condition leaving her at the permanently mental development level of a three-month old to go through a series of procedures to limit her physical growth as well. Her uterus and breast buds were surgically removed, and she is undergoing a oestrogen treatment to limit her physical growth to limit her height to no much more than her current 4'5" at nine years of age. Why did they decide to do this? " The central purpose of the treatment is to improve Ashley's quality of life" " Free of menstrual cramps, free of the weight of large and fully-developed breasts, and with a smaller, lighter body that is better suited to constant lying down and to getting moved around" The bio-tech behind this is very interesting and the ethics are very sticky, worth watching to see what comes about from it in the future. Current Mood: ambivalentCurrent Music: Regenerator - Blink (Rave in Black Mix) | | Friday, December 22nd, 2006 | | 7:02 pm |
Suffolk Strangler formally charged.
While it may not be as glamourous as the Litvinenko story, I have been watching this story for the last couple of weeks and just a few days ago by the Suffolk Police, yesterday formally charged a man for the murder of the five women. He will be facing his first day on trail in the Ipswich Crown Court on the 2nd of January. All five women--Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Annette Nicholls, Anneli Alderton and Paula Clennell--were prostitutes working in Ipswich, and were found naked with no evidence of sexual assault. One was killed of asphyxiation and another of compression to the neck, the others the info is more sketchy. Three were mothers, one of which was three months pregnant. Rest in peace, and my sympathy to the family and friends left behind. Current Mood:  relievedCurrent Music: mind.in.a.box - Light & Dark | | Friday, December 15th, 2006 | | 7:10 pm |
when it rains... it pours...
Just a quick update - Death toll rises to at least four
- State of emergency in 17 counties
- Police lay claim to last gas station (not Seattle, but Bothell), which is here (upper right corner)
- Sewer system overwhelmed, something like 11 million gallons dumped into the Sound
oh, and Microsoft lost power, which I heard from other non-text sources as well. I am surprised that my place of work would have power and MS not, but who knows... Current Mood:  blahCurrent Music: NamNamBulu - Faces | | 11:03 am |
A massacre of old trees
... was a great line from Danny Westneat from the Seattle Times on KUOW's Weekday today. They had guests from various DOT and Power related officials on the first hour of the show, and people from the Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer on for the second half for mostly non-storm things. Apparently the Times got out about 10% of their papers today, and the PI got none of theirs out at all. If I memory holds, they print at the same plant just down the road from here. Some of the highlights were things like somewhere around 120k outages in the Seattle area, down to just under 70k outages in Snohomish county by 11am today. Reports from callers about seeing a car on the i90 floating bridge sunk up to its headlights, a corner of a neighbour's basement flooded around four feet deep in a corner, Madison Park getting hit pretty hard, and all sorts of other things like some old and impressive trees being lost. Today's report from the times includes such things as - Three deaths, two in a car accident, and the one horrific drowned in the basement one I mentioned last night
- mudslides
- 520 bridge out of action, sheared off hooks
- reports of people taking fallen wires for the copper?!?!
- so on and so forth
Current Mood: blahCurrent Music: Epsilon Minus - Protection | | Thursday, December 14th, 2006 | | 10:47 pm |
...and home safe from the storm!
Got home in forty or so minutes, prety good considering... I checked google's weather report for Bothell on my way out the door of work to come home. Wind was reported at 39 mph from the south, just the way I was headed. Many of the buildings near work were rather dark, and all the street lights were out of action for a block or two. I saw a lot of lightning, mostly over downtown Seattle, but did not hear any thunder at all. The wind slowed me down to a crawl a few times, might have been faster walking. A patch of road was scattered with concrete debris, not sure what happened there, but there was a seemingly straight line narrow gouge in the road about twenty or so feet long. It was like a seam in the road had come undone. There were also at least two downed trees along the way. The Seattle Times report on the weather, is quite something... the worst of which includes - Seattle woman dies after being trapped in flooded basement
- 30,000 Snohomish County homes, businesses lose power (hopefully
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) anchiale has power) - Landslide reported in Capitol Hill, and a sink hole in West Seattle
- I5 and I99 flooded in places
- SR520 floating bridge and Hood Canal Bridge closed (mind you, they spell it Hood Canal Bride closed...)
...and with the wind crashing like waves against my third floor window and the lights flickering, time to turn off the computer. Good night, and good luck. Current Mood: blahCurrent Music: the wind in the trees | | Friday, December 8th, 2006 | | 2:05 pm |
| | Thursday, December 7th, 2006 | | 9:00 pm |
Firefly to be Reborn as a MMORPG?
So a company called The Multiverse Network, Inc. has struck a deal with Fox to bring us an MMORPG of the Firefly series. Mind you, Multiverse is not a game dev company, but a tool/platform developer, so they will not be designing the game or the content, just providing its underlying tech, which by the way is a beta product. I am just a little apprehensive about all this, but only time will tell. Current Mood:  apprehensiveCurrent Music: NamNamBulu - now or never (distant) | | Monday, November 27th, 2006 | | 7:28 pm |
Snow...
Well, here I am at work and we have about four inches of snow out there now. I have been watching the traffic on the streets out there at a near dead stop for the last hour or more. just_another_me left about hour ago, leaving his car in the lot, to help rescue another friend of ours who in the half hour he had been on the road had not made it the two big blocks to the major intersection. One of our managers got back in after leaving earlier, she ditched her car and brought her toddler son back to the office, car seat and all. A co-worker 5pm just got back at 6 and reports that he got no more than two blocks before ditching his car and walking back to work, "22 different ways of bad" he says. The lead of another team over here just reported that the hotel across the street and up the block is full, and it is a pretty big building. And I work till 10pm. Just under four hours left, but thankfully I live about one and a half miles away and can walk and do not have the car today to get stranded here. Traffic for everyone else... well "22 different ways of bad" describes it nicely. ( Seattle traffic map ) Current Mood: ambivalentCurrent Music: Wait, wait... Don't tell me! - 2006-10-21 | | Sunday, November 12th, 2006 | | 9:38 pm |
White Wolf now a wholly-owned subsidiary of who?
...CCP (or Crowd Control Productions), the Icelandic developing company behind the Sci-Fi MMO EVE Online. What surprises me the most is WW being a subsidiary of CCP, but I guess that is better than being bought out by Hasbro. Here's hoping some computer games better than the stuff Activition produced under various design houses will come about from this. I am encouraged by what I have heard about the good rep EVE has, and some of the very impressive intrigue I have read about happening in the EVE universe would be great in for Vampire , but I cannot imagine them being able to pull of Mage in an MMO setting. Current Mood:  contemplativeCurrent Music: Syrian - Vega Velocity |
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