super luminous velocity

Entries for September 2005

Panda Bot 6000

Man I Love Japan!

Also cute is a giant robot panda character, of which many toys and T-shirts have been made. This is, as you might expect, a giant robot panda, which I guess might do battle with other robots or something. The beauty part is that when you lift the top of the robot panda's head, it reveals a control room, from which the robot panda is operated, and sitting in a chair in the control room, pushing buttons and pulling levers, is a real, non-robot panda�presumably one gifted with superb mechanical skills and a deep understanding of robotics. I take strange glee in imagining this clever panda constructing himself a giant robot panda with which to dominate other robots. Wackiness level: red. Severe!

OASIS AND JET TONIGHT

Laura and I are going to see Oasis tonight and I AM PUMPED! Additionally, Jet is opening, which is pretty sweet too. Prepare for a massive onslaught of photos.

Voyager Phones Home

The NASA space probe Voyager I has reached the very edge of our solar system, and reported some data back.
The probe, launched some 27 years ago crossed termination shock last december and has now reached the very edge of our sun Sol's sphere of influence. Soon Voyager will actually exit fully out of our solar system and enter into interstellar space. It's kind of like crossing over into international waters except Voyager is 27 so it could drink here anyway, and there's no one to gamble with.

The craft should continue to operate until about 2020 (the future, ooooooh).

Been Busy

School is hard. Have my last test of 3 on monday. (wednesday, Friday, Monday) Obviously it's been a little busy to keep up around here. I may be including many more video blogs very soon.

Syrup Chug

Me Chugging Syrup on YouTube

Entering New Era

I have entered a new era of nerdiness. My beloved beastly behemoth of a computer, IG88, endured yet another "open-heart-surgery" as I infused it with a brand spankin new 250 GB SATA hard drive. Supplimenting my already 260 GB in place, this puts me within the range of an entirely new measurement: 0.5 Terrabytes. That's right. Five hundred gigabytes of space for my multi-media, multi-operating-system pleasure.

I ordered the Maxtor drive from newegg, and they angered me quite a bit by neglecting to include even the cable required to connect the drive to my machine. Luckily, dave sabens had a spare, so I was in buisness in no time.

Jargon Rampage

I love jargon. Jargon seperates the amature nerds from the hardcore prostyle geekaletes, hell, laywers have created an entire industry out of jargon. But sometimes companies apply the technobabble a little too heavy.

For example:

"Sprint inked a deal with Sirius, allowing 21 channels of the company’s music to be downloaded from any of its multimedia handsets—all for only $6.95 a month." - Gizmodo

"multimedia handsets"!? What happened to cell phones! Was that not good enough?! Now everyone is going to have to ditch their old-fangled 3 month old cell phone and buy a shiny new "multimedia handset", or at least that's the idea.

I think those SCSI (scuzzy) bastards in the industry should REFRESH (wake up) because I'm certainly not EBAYING (buying) this WINDOWS ME (crap).

Funk in The Trunk a Success

Funk in The Trunk went extremely well. We had a kickass show, and a great turnout of about a hundred people in and out.

We also got a multitrack recording of the event, and even a video. The video will be up on the share.case.edu network as funkinthetrunk asap. The audio is being mastered even as we speak (maybe) and will be online as soon as it's in my hands. Till then, the action shots during the dark performance will have to suffice.

My poster (shown in flickr) never saw the light of day due to either humidity causing tape failure, or sabotage, combigned with a Nord employee deciding to dump it. 3I'm not spiteful.

x86 Tiger Leak Challenge

I think I have found a legit leak of OSX for x86 processors. For non nerds out there, this is a Mac Operating System, but it works on pc's. This is huge.

What I want to know, is can anyone get this to work! I have a new SATA drive on its way so I can free up enough room to test this out:

http://www.uneasysilence.com/os-x-proven-hacked-and-running-on-an-ordinary-pc/

Funk In the Trunk

Tonight at 7pm DKE will be holding the first ever Funk in the Trunk party on the Elephant Stairs. Live music (a funk band called Funk in the Trunk, imagine that) Free food (Quiznos) and prizes.

Take the Greenie, or walk over!

The Funk is coming, be there or be square.

The Universe As an Infant

Everything goes in stages. If there is anything that the human brain does naturally it is break things into pieces. For example: time, colors, races, etc. It is interesting to note the similarities between the developement of an individual's perception with that of the entirity of society.

Shortly after birth, infants have no concept of self or surroundings, they often hit themselves with their own limbs and then panic, this is very similar to the animalistic lack of understanding humans began with. The next thing that developes is a sense of self, this is similar to the social tendancy to identify and name society itself (IE tribes or Europeans or whatever). Infants quickly develope a sense of self importance similar to being the center of the universe;

"I cry, they run over. I smile they coo. I must be the most important thing."

As age increases, perception becomes more complicated, it remains largely self centered but the concept of others (other planets in this metaphor) becomes evident, and eventually leads to the understanding of a larger order in surrounding.

One of the most important and critical steps is the ability to think logically, and displace one's self to view situations from another's perspective. We have only just gained this skill through the discovery of relativity. On the human scale, our society has the perception abilities of a 13 year old.

Mazel tov society. You're now a man. (/woman)

Mighty Mouse Lizard Style

Remember how cool it was when a bad guy could regrow their limbs like Medusa, thus making them one of the hardest villians to quash? (Maybe that's just me) Modern science has found a way to allow super villans and videogame bosses to regrow their limbs, oh, maybe us mere everyday villians as well. An ability existing naturally only in lizzards and other such "lower" life forms has now been applied to a mouse by australian researchers.

With the ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tails, maybe the Island isn't so realistic after all.

Body Worlds and Air Show

I spent the day before laybor day out in the warm Cleveland sun (never thought I'd say that) walking around and peering at the azure sky. Stokes Laura and myself took the rapid to Tower City mall, and walked to the Great Lakes Science Center to see the air show and Body Worlds. We spent a good hour and a half looking at the actual bodies of plastinated dead people. A Dutch (corrected by Nicole Sharp) artist by the name of Gunther von Hagens invented the technique whereby the actual organic structures are replaced by polymers much in the way fossils are organic material replaced by minerals. It was quite an interesting exibhit traveling the world (stopped in Cleveland at the moment obviously) and I hightly reccomend it if you have the means. Unfortunately the only portion of the exhibit we were permitted to photograph was a frenched (as in the way it was sliced) camel. Check it out in my Flickr Photostream

The second part of the day consisted of watching the Thunderbirds and a tricksy biplane perform aerial stunts of death defying magnitude over lake Erie for our enjoyment. Ah the joys of an F-16 screaming by in formation. I love watching engineering in motion, especially when it's Aerospace engineering, and even more so if that motion happens to be just below the speed of sound (at sea level).