Friends
Nov. 24th, 2009
12:07 am - SDholic
My life this past week would have been a lot simpler if I wasn't determined not to lose my copy of as many of the scans from SD 1.0 as possible. I blame Pattern Recognition for implanting within me the dream of one day creating a self-contained archive of an online community.
Nov. 23rd, 2009
06:38 pm - Opera Unite
I keep looking at Opera Unite and thinking I should do something with it. However, as soon as I do, I immediately think that Adobe AIR has 90% of the same features, will have 100% when I can launch external applications with it, and can run independently on all major platforms. So as neat an idea as Opera Unite is, considering Opera's market share, my incentive is kind of low.
However, the one caveat to that is Opera is an all but native app on the Nintendo Wii, and if they were to ever upgrade the Wii's internet channel to include Opera Unite, things could get very interesting. Disruptive technology interesting. Put a web server on every Wii, assume a bulk of them are online, and you potentially have a platform for something like the XNet, maybe not as underground, but an alternative, independent social network.
Until, then, I may poke at Unite, but given that the bulk of the world is still using IE or Firefox1, it still seems easier to use AIR, .NET, or AutoIT which can run without needing the overhead of a whole web browser2. Unite is cool, and the proxy service it offers is nice, but it still seems more complex than I think building widgets should be.
I'm still going to study the SDK and try to think of some way to use it, though.
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1. Which lets you use Plain Old Webserver similarly.
2. I say that, but if you embed an IE browser in an app, you've got the same overhead, it's just an overhead people have already accepted that ships with Windows.
11:55 am - Peak Oil
I don't doubt a lot of the Peak Oil talk, I just hope light-weight, nuclear-powered mech suits get put on the general market before everything collapses. I don't think the Dark Ages were particularly, shall we say, handicap accessible.
09:37 am - Re: Birthers
My theory: if you can't disprove that President Obama was born in Hawaii, your next best step is to deny Hawaii exists, and keep going from there. At some point you'll get to a level where you convince people that it's dangerous to trust a person who won't tell you both the velocity and position of their atomic composition. "He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know where he's going, yet we're supposed to follow him? No, absolutely not."
Nov. 22nd, 2009
08:31 pm - Top 8 Favorite Supercomputers (Real and Fictional)
Things seem to have quieted down, so while my backup system (which crashed) is backing up, allow me to present...
Top 8 Favorite Supercomputers (Real and Fictional)
1. Storm botnet - This was the first botnet as a major computing entity that was brought to my attention, so it has a special place in my heart. This is a similar model I plan to use in my future attempts to build my own.
2. JARVIS - JARVIS, from the movie, places because he's everything I'd want out of a powerful AI system: workshop majordomo, holographic interface, dry wit, and capable of being loaded into a portable armor system for a quick getaway. If I couldn't have a completely distributed AI, I'd want one with a built-in escape plan.
3. Intersect - I already have a pretty powerful supercomputer knocking around in my skull, so if I could apply a little better interface atop it, I'd be pretty happy.
4. Second Life grid - I once did a rough count, and at the time, by my figures, the network of computers that compose the Second Life grid was actually bigger than a few of the low end systems on the Top 500 list. I'm not a big fan of SL or Linden Lab, but as this is the biggest grid I've ever played with, it makes the count.
5. Cortana - Because Cortana is awesome, that's why!
6. Ancient database - Not so much because it ever showed itself to be that great of a computer in the show, but because I like to daydream about being the IT guy that gets sent to Atlantis to index all the files on various activated and unactivated systems, so people can search through everything...for, you know, like ZPM specs.
7. Worldmind - One of the reasons I like Nova so much is because they have a really fun, oddly powerful supercomputer for a character. Worldmind falls somewhere between JARVIS and the Intersect in terms of my ideal system, a snarky cloud computer that exists beyond physical space.
8. HERBIE - From the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes cartoon, because he makes me laugh. You can't beat a lovable, neurotic supercomputer when it comes to comedy relief.
12:45 pm - The new Star Trek film
Between the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novels and Trip Tucker1, my respect for Star Trek engineers had pretty much been drained. They all struck me as being too clean. Too nice. What Jimmy Palmiotti and Matt Fraction think engineers should be like.
However, I liked Simon Pegg's version of Scotty. Granted, my opinion is largely biased by the set designers' work. When I saw his outpost, I said aloud, "That's where I want to live." Whatever else I think of the movie2, I have to say this Scotty reminds me why I used to think Geordi La Forge was cool3.
I wonder if anyone's using that Starfleet outpost anymore. Seems an ideal setting for writing fanfic about the young Starfleet officer named McKay who got sent there for misusing tractor beam technology. Hmmm.
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1. Not to be confused with Connor Trinneer, who can play mad scientists quite well.
2. Not too bad of a movie, but I watched it with the same expectations that I watched Revenge of the Sith, i.e. a long-form, live-action episode of Robot Chicken.
3. While I had seen TOS before TNG, I distinctly remember by earliest Star Trek fantasies involving TNG characters, not TOS.
Nov. 21st, 2009
08:42 pm - SGU, Life
Okay, anyone who doubted my drawing comparisons between Rush and Doxes can stop doubting, since Rush just did the same thing B5 did in "Legion Lost." You know what I mean. Yup.
Also, man, I really want Phineas and Ferb to show up on the Destiny. It'd be like:
Phineas: So we're trapped a billion light years from home on an ancient space ship and you can't get access to the main computer?And then maybe the stupid show could get people who were meant to be there or whatever. At this point, I think Icarus Base was where they sent people who accidentally discovered the Stargate program but were hard to kill. The SGC sticks them on a planet with an unstable core, lets some mad scientist plug a Stargate into said core, and wait for their problem to disappear.
Col. Young: That's pretty much it.
Phineas: Hey, Ferb, I know what we're going to do today.
Eli: Heh, but aren't you two kind of young to fix an ancient ship?
Phineas: Why, yes. Yes, we are.
Rush: It's not that simple you know, we haven't managed to break the master code.
Ferb: My spaceship master codes are always One Two Three Four.
Eli: Like it'd be that...
Sound F/X: Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Bip. Bing.
Eli: Simple?
Rush: Yes, well, we still don't have hyperdrive. The FTL drive will take eons.
[Outside the display, a giant wormhole opens up, sucking the Destiny through. A moment later, Earth zooms into view.]
Sound F/X: Shwooop! Cooosh!
Phineas: Oh, there you are, Perry.
01:40 pm - Okay.
At first I was a bit irritated that DisneyXD was putting Kid vs. Cat between episodes of Phineas & Ferb, but now that I see there's a block of Prototype This! episodes followed by Some Assembly Required, I see the wisdom of their scheduling. It's a comparison and contrast between inventors in fiction and reality. You start out with the cartoon, finish the hour with the documentary, and see that while engineering in reality is more complicated, the spirit of adventure that drives both real and fantasy inventors is similar.
Nicely done, cable television. Nicely done!
10:18 am - Turtles Forever
[The turtles have just landed in a black-and-white dimension, Turtle Prime, based on the original Eastman&Laird comic. The four original turtles attack them, their Leonardo speaking a thought-bubble-like monologue as he fights another Leonardo.]Why can't comic books be this cheeky with their irony during cross-overs?
Donatello: Why is he narrating? Is he crazy?
Michelangelo: Hardcore crazy!
Raphael: I love it here!
12:52 am - Planz, I has them
My plans for this weekend are:
Saturday: get my Linux machine back.
Sunday: work on project for teacher.
Some time in between, combine that code I was prototyping the other morning with this to create a screensaver widget/app that'll display pics with or without a network connection.
For now, go to bed.
Nov. 20th, 2009
08:34 pm - I. M. Coder
You know the best reason for not needing Power Girl on my pull list?
The Flickr API.
Heh heh heh heh.
BUG REPORT #00001: Pictures of Geoff Johns and Dan Didio are showing up, please add some kind of filter.
11:27 am - Top 5 Things I Want (But Will Never Have)
Top 5 Things I Want (But Will Never Have)
My Own City - Maybe it's because I've always lived in little towns I have a naive view, but for some reason metropolitan areas fascinate me to no end. They're such complex and beautiful machines that seamlessly blend biology with technology, cybernetic superorganisms. I'd like to have my own city. Maybe not as the mayor or defender, but as someone who knew the streets inside out, who knew the people, who mapped the flows.
Warehouse Lair - I love open spaces, but I also like the privacy of an enclosed area. A warehouse easily provides both of those features. It's large enough to house many, many tables for projects; it would have installed wiring for my computers, displays, and other stuff; and an open floor like a warehouse is completely wheelchair accessible.
My Own Supercomputer - Actually, in my life time, with my hobbies and profession, I may end up owning a supercomputer, by definition, one day; what I mean here is something like the Batcomputer, the Asgard computer core on the Odyssey, or JARVIS. A one of a kind computer that wraps around a section of the room and looks like a coral reef mated with an organ and that offspring put on a plasma screen display for a hat. Ideally it's not just given to me, but something I built...likely during an adventure where I somehow gained a super-heightened intelligence that I knew would have to be removed or I'd die, and armed with the knowledge my even more vast than usual intellect was temporary, I'd spend my time building my supercomputer so once I returned to normal, I'd still have access to a portion of that enhancement by way of the fruits it bore.
Gravity Wrench - It's kind of like a Sonic Screwdriver, but not as omnipotent. The Gravity Wrench lets you set and shift points of gravity so you can lock onto tight bolts and apply nonlinear force, it creates gravity wells that attract pens that fall behind desks, and if you tweak it right it can slow your descent in free fall. It's an Unobtanium-powered multitool, and it has "wrench" in the title, because I like wrenches more than screwdrivers.
Cute, Blond Nemesis - The nemesis relationship is my ideal, a way of intimately connecting to another human sans the bothersome time and attention sinks of actually dating and it comes with deathtrap privileges. So, instead of a love interest or side kick, I'd like someone like Power Girl, Liberty Belle, Lady Lawful, or Sarah Walker to foil my schemes on a regular, maybe weekly, basis.
Nov. 19th, 2009
02:20 am - Why am I awake?
Yes, it's nice I finally prototyped something that's been bugging me for a while.
No, it's not nice I did it at 2:00am.
Nov. 18th, 2009
03:41 pm - Is my math correct?
This NY Times interactive graphic says the following:
* 48.5% of black men ages 15-24 without high school degrees are unemployed.
* 25.6% of white men ages 15-24 without high school degrees are unemployed.
Over on Reddit it was implied that the worst showing in that chart was the 48.5%. However, if I'm reading that chart right, that's percentage people of a specific demographic. If you consider that, acording to this, whites make up 75.1% of the population and blacks 12.3%1, isn't that 25.6% represent potentially2 a larger number of people than the 48.5%?
I don't mean to imply anything3, just want to check my grasp of the numbers. Thanks!
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1. According to this there were 18,761,162 white men ages 18-24 and 3,804,437 black men ages 18-24 in the 2000 census, which is still roughly 6-to-1 of the general population.
2. I say potentially because I'm not factoring in drop out rates of the two.
3. EDIT: Okay, I do want to imply it's for shit for everyone these days, I amend that to this post.
Nov. 17th, 2009
11:27 pm - Anonymous
10:15 am - Is Wonder Woman a Technical Pacifist?
(Cross-posted from CBR.)
Full disclaimer: I don't read Wonder Woman or any books she's in these days; anything I know of Wonder Woman comes from JLU, the Lynda Carter series, Golden Age scans, and various ScansDaily stuff.
As the topic says, is Wonder Woman a Technical Pacifist? She's not on that page, but I ask due to her mission of peace and (at least in the Golden Age) typically reforming villains instead of killing them. I get the impression, she fights mostly because evil would prevail if she didn't, but she'd be just as content using her skills to dig irrigation channels somewhere if it helped out.
So, again, yea or nay? Am I close?
12:46 am - Junk
I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 on my sister's old P3 (700-ish) Gateway, which has 512MB of memory, 256MB courtesy of my late tablet, and a D-Link USB wifi adapter, an un-gift courtesy of my mom's recent upgrade. It's not a super system, some of the keys barely work, but it's nice to get something working after my failing to get Frankinetix finished this weekend.
I love recycling technology.
Nov. 16th, 2009
10:07 pm - Swish
12 hours later, at barely 25%, I'm thinking it was a bad idea to try an encode that WMV video into a SWF with Swish. *sigh*
07:35 pm - The beauty of DVD's
You know what's awesome about DVD's? Every time I start collecting a new tchochke, watching a TV show become a whole new game of "spot the shiny." I started watching Stargate: Atlantis last night, and during "Hot Zone" I realized the scientist who was escaping quarantine was using a Leatherman Juice to open the doors. Given that the guy ended up dead..."Good job, John!"...and this was before they could dial Earth, I can't help but wonder: who got his Juice?
Nov. 15th, 2009
05:51 pm - Heehee
It's not a Guild hoodie, but I'm going to wear it with pride.
01:25 am - 2 Become 1, part 2
Looks like my Frankinetix computer works. I took a slight processor hit, going from an AMD 1.7Ghz down to an AMD 1400Mhz, but in combining the two computers I doubled the memory and will now have 320GB + 60GB drive space. As long as it'll run my LAMP stack, Samba, Yaws, and handle backing up my LJ, I'll be happy.
Now I'm just waiting for Ubuntu 9.10 to finish downloading, and I'll be ready to backup my backups before a fresh install.
I'm only slightly disappointed I didn't get to use the new motherboard and processor (AMD 2x 3.0Ghz) I bought the other day. However, now that I have a motherboard, processor, spare case, and CD-ROM drive, I'm almost halfway to having a new game system. Just need a couple of 2Gb DIMM's, a hard drive, and a spanking video card. Maybe by spring, I'll be able to play CoH without having to take naps between load screens.
12:21 am - RLY?
Since when does it take six hours (more now) to download Ubuntu?
Nov. 14th, 2009
06:11 pm - Leap Gate
I am really trying to avoid putting my Linux machine back together. I am, I am.
Here's a question: Could you leapfrog across galaxies with two ZPM's? Plug a ZPM1 into a gate, jump to another galaxy, plug a ZPM2 into the gate where you land, have the people unplug ZPM1 from the first gate after they dial you, and keep the connection established with the ZPM2 connected to the incoming gate.
Also: new Empowered preview!
05:47 pm - There are million cities in the story...
Once Upon A Time stared at the charred corpse. There were a million stories encoded into his memetic structure, but none of them involved a half burnt body lying atop a bus filled with penguin trainers. This would require research.
"To The Library!" he cried.
"I knew you were going to say that," Conspiracy Theorist grumbled. Her hyperdetic memory was well accustomed to the outbursts of her partner. It was true what they said, there were only so many stories and we are all actors on a stage. When you understood large number theory as well as a quantum computer, knowing that your partner wold call out his catchphrase wasn't too difficult, especially when your partner was a sentient collection of story tropes housed in an amorphous processor gel.
Conspiracy Theorist sighed and put her notebook back in the pocket of her pink kitty backpack. Once Upon A Time wasn't wet by most standards, but his processor gel tended to stain the pages of her clue book. She waited for Once Upon A Time to assume a raft-like shape before climbing into and onto him. The processor gel could form rigid shapes for short periods of time by increasing processing power, which resulted in a more pattered thinking structure. It was a trade off. Conspiracy Theorist got a free ride, but Once Upon A Time would need to recharge sooner than later.
It didn't matter for two reasons: first, they were going back to The Library, where Once Upon A Time would merge with his larger, stationary processing lake; second, Once Upon A Time enjoyed bursts of rigid thought, and used the time to write Little Wonder/Cortana slash.
Conspiracy Theorist leaned back against rear of the raft as it skimmed across the roadway. A burned man atop a a bus of penguin trainers was odd. Odd to such a degree that even the apparent connections left her with a near infinite list of possible murderers. Anti-Linux Jihadist engaged in a literal flame war, Metaphorical Abstractionists with a bent against Catholicism, it could be anything.
As much as it irritated her to admit it, Once Upon A Time was right in going back to The Library. There he could process better, trying to index all the possible cliches such a murder violated; she could work on whittling down possible backstories and forestories to nail down a smaller set of instances which could have led to the burned man's fate.
As The Library came into view over the horizon, Conspiracy Theorist felt a pang of regret at the death of the man. He might have had a family. He might have had friends. He definitely had a killer. Possible lives the man might have led, that would never be, split off and became nanosecond simulations in Conspiracy Theorist's mind. Whatever the true story was, it wasn't really her or Once Upon A Time's concern anymore. Finding a killer was the police's job.
Turning this homicide into the next episode of "CSI: Noosphere" was theirs.
01:07 pm - My fannist work yet
From here, performed closing day of Scans Daily 2.0:
Thank you. Thank you, everyone! Be sure to tip your Pedobear!foxhack: Oracle 1.0 knows computers...
Nov. 13th, 2009
03:09 pm - Crip Drag
I'd never heard of this. However, my initial reaction when faced with this is similar to Larry Wilmore's. Could we go back and see that picture of Dina Meyer in the wheelchair again...just to be sure I'm offended.
Nov. 12th, 2009
11:16 pm - 2 Become 1
Well, as far as I can tell, it was the motherboard that died on my Linux box (Kinetix). However, in taking the advice I'd been given and trying another power supply, I discovered that the power supply from the machine Mom had been using (Terpsichore) was the reason it died. There were a pair of nasty burns on the motherboard plug. I was going to look at it for her, but was under the weather that week, so she ordered her new computer before I could do much to it, thus I'd never gotten deep into it. By plugging Kinetix's power supply into Terpsichore's motherboard, I got a POST screen to come up (where it stopped due to no keyboard).
Which means this weekend, I'll be cobbling Kinetix and Terpsichore into one system. The spare processor (AMD, dual core, 64-bit 3.0Ghz) and motherboard I bought earlier today will thus become the first items in my collection for a new workstation.
Yay?
01:22 pm - Gothamweb.us
( ''I call it ORACLE.'' )
Now to figure out a way to have to have GODOT face off against ORACLE! Frankly is probably a better programmer than Software Pirate, but he's not as gonzo a cracker.
10:01 am - Schaedenfrude
You know what I like best about the Batgirl #4 preview? It's how everyone in Gotham City has a cheap, digital camera on them except for people working with Oracle.
"So, you're streaming my vital signs, GPS location, and audio?"
"Yep."
"What about a camera?"
"What about it?"
"Is there a camera in the suit? You know, in case you need to see what I'm looking at."
"That's ridiculous. When would that circumstance ever arise?"
Seriously.
09:39 am - More Power. Arr, arr, arr.
Cosmic Rod vs. Nth Metal, what happens?
I was thinking last night, you could probably really boost the effects of a Cosmic Rod if you built the head of it out of Nth Metal.
I wonder if a 31st Century Stargirl would be Thanagarian, replacing a Knight designed Rod with some Nth staff weapon.
Would Vibranium melt Nth Metal or transform sound waves into gravity waves?
Nov. 11th, 2009
06:52 pm - Hey, __marcelo...
Have you heard of this movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_Ro
It sounds right up your alley.
12:09 pm - *sigh*
So, the only reason there exists an "external backup" of SD is so they could move it.
There's an "Oracle as a role model to women" joke in there, and it goes: "I think Barbara Gordon is a role model to women, that's what scares me about her being a role model to the handicapped."
Nov. 10th, 2009
10:22 pm - TTGL doujinshi for sale!
Due to bills [and other expenses] murdering my bank account, I NEED CASH MONIES! There's anime, manga, doujinshi, cosplay items, and other misc things I need to get rid of.
(Come, have a look-see! 8D)
[if not allowed, feel free to delete]