atomic-raygun

 
             

   
 
 
----------->vivian-oblivion<--------

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31 August 2011

 


 


 
OBJECT_SCRIPT_TIME

The script info in the land pane has been very useful to me since it arrived last year (Babbage wrote it I believe). Most recently I've used it to cut down script impact on pieces of my robot avatar (whgich has things like an arm that has a rotating spiral and pincers that clench/unclench when I walk, etc.). The most recent script impact assessment tool came out last week, though, and it's the ability to find out OBJECT_SCRIPT_TIME with lsl.

Chalice Yao has a nice forum post with scripts for objects and avatars over at SLU - thank you, Chalice.

Here's the one for objects:

key kTarget;
string sTarget;
integer iTemp;
string sTemp;
list lTemp;
default
{
state_entry()
{
llSetTimerEvent(0.01);
sTarget=llKey2Name(kTarget=llGetObjectDesc());
}
timer()
{
llSensor("","",ACTIVE,96,PI);
}
sensor(integer foo)
{
iTemp=0;
do
{
if(llDetectedType(iTemp) & SCRIPTED)
{
sTemp="";
sTemp+=llDetectedName(iTemp)+"\n";
sTemp+="Time: "+llGetSubString((string)(llList2Float(lTemp=llGetObjectDetails(llDetectedKey(iTemp),[OBJECT_SCRIPT_MEMORY,OBJECT_SCRIPT_TIME,OBJECT_TOTAL_SCRIPT_COUNT]),1)*1000),0,4)+"ms\n";
sTemp+="Memory: "+(string)(llList2Integer(lTemp,0)/1024)+"kb\n";
sTemp+="Amount: "+llList2String(lTemp,2);
llSetText(sTemp,<1,1,1>,1);
jump a;
}
}
while((iTemp=-~iTemp) < foo); @a; } no_sensor() { llSetText("",<1,1,1>,0);
}
}



 
Wacom just put an Inkling page up (it's not available yet, but soon).

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I'm trying to stay off my arm as it's grotesquely painful.


 
Platters

I found a *great* record site online a few years ago and lost it - been looking ever since. Molly Montale sent me the link to this one: similarly laid out showing record labels, but the first is much huger and encompasses more. This one isn't as good but it's *pretty darn good.*

When I'm Gone

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30 August 2011

 


This was good.

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The pounding explosions of practise shelling at Fort Lewis has bothered me the past few days but it is very bad at the moment. What are they up to?


 
Kill Comic Sans

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'Hear Our Houston,' an interesting project of public-generated audio walking tours.

Here's one.
Here's another.


 

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29 August 2011

 


I know you are, but what am I?

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28 August 2011

 

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Lush mesh-scapes inside the artist's 3d canvas that is Second Life.




 


Last video from my newly-dead camera...

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27 August 2011

 


Naked
Awesome Mike Leigh film. This is a fan-made trailer for this underrated film.

Update: Someone uploaded the entire thing HERE.

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26 August 2011

 
Fibonacci Solar Array Update
from The Capacity Factor

'Solar-panel "trees" really are inferior (or: "In which hopelessly inept journalists reduce me to having to debunk a school science project")

Some poor 13-year-old kid is all over the news as having made a "solar breakthrough". The news is to blame. All the usual suspects -- popular environment blogs, tech magazines -- blindly parrot the words of this very misinformed (not to blame him, he's an unguided 13 year old) kid.

Usual suspects:

This is his writeup:

[AMNH] The Secret of the Fibonacci Sequence in Trees

Essential summary:

  • He's comparing arrangements of solar panels to maximize total electricity output
  • One is a conventional, flat, 45°-tilted (roughly latitude), south-facing array
  • The other is an oddly-arranged "tree" with panels facing all directions: up, down, towards a wall... (some Fibonacci mysticism involved here)
  • (Writeup has photos of both setups, and graphs of data)
  • Both experiments have equal numbers and types of solar cells
  • He measures the (open circuit) output voltage over the cells connected in series
  • He thinks the "tree" is superior (generates more electricity) than the optimal flat array

This is, I'm sad to say, clear nonsense. I'll take this in two parts: one, why his experiment is, unfortunately, completely broken (sorry again). Two, why the imagined result is impossible nonsense.

Broken experiment

Most importantly, by mistake he did not measure power outputs from the solar cells. Instead he measured voltage, without a load attached ("open circuit"). They are barely related -- in solar cells, voltage is actually almost a constant, independent of power.

The actual power delivered by a solar cell is not linearly related to the open-circuit voltage; actually, as a semiconductor, it has a horribly nonlinear relationship. Here's the current-voltage (I-V) curve:

[National Instruments] Photovoltaic Cell I-V Characterization Theory

VOC denotes the "open circuit" voltage: when there is no load attached, and no current flows (I = 0). Power goes as V*I; a real solar system will maximize efficiency, by working at the point on the I-V curve which maximies power (PMAX).

The kid is measuring VOC. As it happens, this is practically independent of power output! Here's how the I-V curve changes with incident solar power ("irradiance", areal density of radiation in [W/m2]). As this solar module datasheet shows, VOC is almost a constant, regardless of incident light!

[BP Solar] 3 series solar panels Polycrystalline (Data sheet)

In this module, VOC stays close to 35 V, over a 5-fold range in irradiance. Whether the incident light is bright or dim, the open-circuit voltage is the same.

Of course, PMAX (not shown) goes up roughly linearly with solar input. You must expect this: when you have 5x more solar power input, you have ~5x more electric output. But in Power = Voltage * Current, it is current, not voltage, which increases. (For those who are familar wiht physics, this is reasonable because: twice the brightness doesn't mean twice as much energy per photon, but twice the number of photons. The voltage reflects the energy of individual excited electrons: an electron with 1 eV energy can travel against a 1 V potential difference. The maximum current depends on the number of such excited electrons. More light means more excited electrons, but each with the same energy.)

End result: measuring the solar cells' VOC over time, and adding them up, is garbage data, and has nothing to do with energy production.

Unreasonable theory

As for why the result is impossible. I'm not sure I understand the confusion by which people think there could be some advantage, to orienting panels at sub-optimal angles. That somehow combining sub-optimal panels, together, makes them generate more energy in the net. Here's my argument, in case it helps clear up misconceptions.

Take an collection of solar panels (indexed by 'i'). Their power output is the some of their individual outputs. So, their total energy output (power integrated over time) is also the sum of their total energy outputs.

Ptot = Σ Pi

∫ Ptot dt = ∫ (Σ Pi) dt = Σ (∫ Pi dt)

Etot = Σ Ei

Suppose some orientation of a solar panel, 'OPT' (maybe south-facing, latitude-tilted), is superior to some others, index them by 'i' (say, facing north, down, up, towards a wall...) Then adding together 'N' such panels, in any order, is strictly worse than a uniform array where all panels are at their individually-optimal angles:

Ei < EOPT (for i <- 1..N)

Σ Ei < N * EOPT

So: if the individual angles in the "tree" are worse then the 45°-tilted south-facing panels in the flat array (they obviously are), so is their combination.

(Implicit assumption: that the panels are non-interacting, e.g. they do not obstruct (shade) each other, or heat each other, etc. The panels in the "tree" do actually shade themselves, which makes them strictly worse and does not change this result).

How did this confused science project became international news?'



 

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Edith Heath
Eva Zeisel

SJ just turned me on to dynamo Edith Heath, but my midcentury pottery designer fave is Eva Zeisel, who as far as I know is still designing. She'd be what - 104? ===:O Design was wonderful back then - not just rarified but for everyman. Both women were uncompromising in their search for good design, approaching it from different angles but achieving perfection, both.

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I've always taken it as given that doctors and nurses would stay with their patients. The abandonment of the elderly in Japan in the wake of the earthquake/tsunami/radiation disasters and now the abandoned Libyan hospital filled with dead patients are shocking.


 
Nice shot of Irene by NOAA/NASA weather satellite.



 
Selah Fairport:

' I am a tiny from Raglan, and I wanted to share my thoughts on this issue. I came to SL and was a “biggie” (what tines call regular human avatars) until I met some tines and fell in love with their lifestyle. For me, being tiny is being more authentic. It’s moving beyond what I want to look like, or used to look like in my glory days (ie, many of the perfect human avatars are reflecting that for their real human at the keys). It’s choosing to move beyond the limits of gender, body shape, age, race, etc. by choosing instead to embrace an avatar that avoids all those limits. It’s about a community of tines that comes to SL to really connect, care about, uplift, each other while being fun and lighthearted as much as possible. Its about avoiding the drama and pitfalls of online sexual relationships and sexual objectification that SL has a lot of. It is about taking the time to enjoy the simpler, and goofier, things that we may overlook or be unable to do in real life. It’s about honoring that internal innocent child while also using our adult abilities to be creative and using our kindness and acceptance to really get to know the core being in those who make up our community. Being a tiny is an awesome opportunity and a gift I am so grateful to partake in. Welcome to Raglan Shire. *Riverdances*'

Not sure why 'tines' instead of 'tinies' (makes me think of a fork community) but the rest of it makes perfect sense.

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25 August 2011

 
Back to Being a Noob

Surely uninstalling a mere lowly mesh project viewer shouldn't result in everything (all data: settings, skies, chatlogs) being deleted for every single SL viewer.

Once more unto the breach...


 


Sock Monkey!

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24 August 2011

 
Today

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This is getting to be incredible.

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23 August 2011

 

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I don't have an addictive personality and although I'm a risk-taker and will try anything that catches my fancy (Jump of the cliff? Sure! Inject that unknown substance? Oh, OK!) and although I feel like I have fewer than the optimum number of bad habits, nothing gets its hooks into me. The most addictive thing I ever done (much moreso than heroin - hey, it was 1972, OK?) is cigarette smoking, which I did for a few years then stopped cold one day, then took up ten or fifteen years later when two friends wanted me to smoke but stopped doing again as it was obvious what it was (i.e. an activity chemically engineered to create a strong desire that it never in fact satisfied - and where's the upside in that?). Smoking is thoroughly stupid, however it's got something in it that helps mentally ill people, so I suppose it will linger.

Many games are exactly like that now - the addictee trades hours of his/her life in exchange for... well, nothing. Like smoking games create a strong desire that's never satisfied (there's always another level, another game). I hear the Sims on FB is horribly addictive; have a nice time playing, everyone. Sounds like purgatory to me.

I do play my little goofy goat knee cap game, but it doesn't even create any desire to play it. It's more like feeding your friend's cat while he's out of town. For me 99% of the fun is that Enjah is there too. However, I'd forget about it completely if I stopped for a day; it keeps me occupied so heigh ho.


 

[only embeddable trailer I could find]

I just watched The Contenders: Series 7 and enjoyed it. It's not a fabulous masterpiece of film, but it's well done for what it is.

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I have a sketchbook somewhere that has a grid of classic chair designs on the front, black plastic with white ink. This reminds me of it. I love chair designs! I'd love to have a near-empty wooden-floored loft with just some of these awesome seat solutions like Pony and Amoeba Highback and Wiggle Stool.

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I just rang my sister to ask if she and Richard survived their 5.9 earthquake, and they did. Their house didn't fall down, apparently :-D

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Ancient Portraits

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22 August 2011

 

Duck Tron from Ryactive on Vimeo.



Ooh - yay for the Tron Guy!

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I love this poster :-D
H-57 on First Floor Under

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Facebook is now streaming movies.

Everything gets boiled down to bedrock human desires to watch Sleepless in Seattle, play Farmville, reconnect with someone from 30 years ago, and comment, "Wow! Great haircut!" on someone's page. Is that all we want? The cartoon with a character exhorting another character to sign up for G+ because it's like FB but it isn't FB holds much truth none of it good.

It's long been apparent we've gone through the Wild West best part of the internet and are now in the middle phase where everything is monetised, lowest-common-denominatored, paywalled, and made into a predictable experience (where have I heard that before). Originally it was sort of exhilarating but funky, then it became useful and exciting, then ubiquitous and fun, now it's been broken by design and meh but still has good parts.

Meh.


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21 August 2011

 



20 August 2011

 
This is really an annoying, long-term animation bug that needs to be fixed.


 
UFO spotted over the lake.
Luckily I managed to avoid abduction.
It emitted a strange, burning radiation.

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Screwed up but oh, well. I'll do better next time.




 
Confused and conflicting reports are coming out of Libya.


 
o.O

7.5 earthquake near Vanuatu.

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3d milling machine made of Legos

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This young man has demonstrated that the Fibonacci sequence in trees applied to solar panel arrays results in the capturing of 20-50% more energy.

'Collecting sunlight is key to the survival of a tree. Leaves are the solar panels of trees, collecting sunlight for photosynthesis. Collecting the most sunlight is the difference between life and death. Trees in a forest are competing with other trees and plants for sunlight, and even each branch and leaf on a tree are competing with each other for sunlight. Evolution chose the Fibonacci pattern to help trees track the Sun moving in the sky and to collect the most sunlight even in the thickest forest.'

--Aidan (Grade 7)



19 August 2011

 
Wow :(

That New York steampunk apartment is excrutiatingly badly done.


 

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AudioTool


 
It seems the Synchronised Knitters Precision Unicycle Drill Team (seen here starting at 1:20) had a kindred spirit as pointed out by Lucy Tornado:

Unicycling
At some point after his end with the Wailers, Peter Tosh developed an interest in unicycles and knitting; he became an accomplished unicycle rider, being able to ride forwards and backwards and hop. He often amused his audiences by riding onto the stage on his unicycle for his shows. His teacher for unicycling was Kelly Carrigan. They rode side by side for years

(thanks to Evan Strauss for finding this!)

read more...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tosh

Update: TY, Lucy - I fixed the link!

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17 August 2011

 
Google maps carpets



 


Finally got mail after three weeks or so,and the Netflix dvd in the wad was Source Code, a fairly absorbing but very simple film that like a mating of Groundhog Day with The Taking of Pelham 123. I enjoyed it on its own level, which is not exactly exalted. It's sentimental, which I don't like, but I was in the mood to watch something blow up several times so I ignored that. Concept/writing: 2
Execution: 3

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16 August 2011

 
The Secret Code




 
I was sitting outside in the sun a bit ago and had an acute feeling of having my brain stuffed with information that, when it comes down to it, the living organism that I am has no need of. I wondered what it was like for someone a thousand years ago, whose head was only full of useful information necessary for day-to-day life. Mine's bursting with information about things I can't see (atoms, germs, black holes, dinosaurs, etc.), entertainment trivia (the photo of Franco Corelli cooking soup with his dog, flux capacitors, the costumes for a 1958 production of Il Barbiere with Maria Callas and Tito Gobi, Muffin the Mule, etc.), people I'll never meet, some of whom are dead and some were never alive at the same time as me (Hitler, my mother's friend Morag who was married to a pilot, Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin), internet culture detritis (TIL, Foreveralone, 404, numa numa, nyan cat, BSOD). My head is like those inflated zentai suits: never intended to be treated in that fashion the risk of explosion or at least leakage seems high.

No wonder my head buzzes like a beehive and no wonder, too, many people have skewed priorities and unrealistic views of the world. I wonder what it was like long ago. It seems as though there'd be no distractions from the concentration on real matters at hand, such as smelling the breeze, planting seeds, stalking game, sweeping, and so on, except for actual, real distractions like sudden hailstorms, a friend shouting, nosebleeds, etc., which would cause a bifurcation - not the mind-split-in-a-million-directions-at-once that we have all the time.

When I'm creating stuffs I am single-minded, though. It's always been quite a refuge.

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Oooh - I love all the llLink script functions and the new ones like llLinkSitTarget, llAvatarOnLinkSitTarget look like things even I (in my dunce-ishness) can use. Also this: Add ability for llSetLinkPrimitiveParams* and llGetLinkPrimitiveParams functions to switch link targets
[PRIM_LINK_TARGET, integer link_num] Will cause subsequent parameters to effect link_num prim independent of original prim being effected. Compatible with all PrimParams functions.
looks cool.

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Blue Mars Lite 3D Chat - San Francisco




15 August 2011

 
I admire the way Avatar Reality is constantly looking for a niche for Blue Mars. Now they are integrating their mobile av app with Google street view which is a novel concept. It reminds me a very tiny bit of those funny little avatars we had clomping about on webpages - what was that called? Weblings or something. I deleted it as it was noisy and I never wanted to talk to the other people. This Blue Mars thing sounds much better.


 

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Snow on Cuba Mall in central Wellington (HD) from Ro Tierney on Vimeo.

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14 August 2011

 

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Sits Up and Looks Around has this to say:

it is too much to be too long anywhere*

we always moved before 4 years, and usually not that long when i was a kid.
but i've lived HERE many times that now.
now everywhere HERE tells me stories. where cats are buried, where we played softball, where houses stood, where my friend was killed in a car accident, where my baby learned to swim.

everything is impermanent.
when you move around you don't notice this.
when you stay still things change around you like a slow carousel or a fractal kaleidoscope.

now a new baby has been born to a village family, and i am one of the few in the village who might recall that once upon a time another baby was born to that house.
that house has had a few owners since then.

the tiny years-ago baby died of crib death, so heart-breaking that now i irrationally fear for this new little boy.
i tried for days to remember the name of the other little boy, to assure myself they don't have the same name! finally i remembered -- and to my relief it is not the same.
i'll never say anything about this to anyone if i can help it, but it's a hard thing to know.

* said gimme the ax in the rootabaga stories



13 August 2011

 
Disobey Hipster
Well, to tell you the truth I wouldn't like it either if some stranger with no stake in the issue came onto my turf and painted a semi-pretty design on a site that has a sensitive recent history.
That's also the funniest tag line ever.

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12 August 2011

 




 
'If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.'
---more here.Link


 
My iz a monkeh standing in Enjah's shop in Inworldz.



 
CCSVI Pilot Study - AbstractLink

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Pokepublican Politics As Usual

“A poet once said, ‘life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line’.”

–GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, at last night’s Republican debate, inadvertently quoting from the Donna Summer song “The Power of One” — better known as the theme song from Pokémon: The Movie 2000.

---NYMag


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11 August 2011

 
Data Scraping

The New Yorker is a mixed bag these day with too many Vanity Fairesque pieces about celebrities I don't know and too many iPhone paintings on its cover, however when it's good it's good. Recent standouts were a quantum computing article, one about the development of the novel, and one about the rise of an Orwellian state. An American spy agency has in the past ten years developed the ability to monitor every email sent in the USA [and elsewhere but that's not the issue here], as well as store them all in case they need a light snack later. The data of their own fellow citizens! In former times they were unable to legally scrape their own citizens' data, however they can do anything they please now.

That doesn't even seem possible, yet through the magic of sifting and sorting by algorithm, with their unprecedentedly immense data storage facilities, and empowered by the post-Twin Towers attack paranoia as well as a 70 million dollar per year electricity bill, they somehow manage to do what is evil to terrorists (what, 25,000 of them, tops?) and evil also to the entire population of the United States (312 million + ~11 million illegal aliens). Nice.

And we complain about Facebook and Google.

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“I come to Secondlife to communicate with people, no other possible venue would allow me the instant intimate connection available here with incredible people from all over the world.”
--Brinda Allen

RIP, Brinda.

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10 August 2011

 
'Solar flares like the huge one that erupted on the sun early Tuesday will only become more common as our sun nears its maximum level [in its 11 year cycle] of activity in 2013, scientists say.' --MSNBC


 


Now we know: Ed Manray's father must've been a muffler man.



09 August 2011

 


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08 August 2011

 

Opensource Obscure: Hanging in Violet Infohub with a NYMDAY sign



 
Cold :(

It's overcast and about 60 degrees F (my homepage widget says 59F/15C) - low of 50F high of 67F. It's been like this for days. Bit chilly for August.

The huge CME the other day probably made the aurora visible in the sky here from some clear places; I'm under a thick blanket of clouds, though.

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Enj told me this film, The Green Beautiful, is interesting, so I'm watching it on yootoob. Thanks, Enjah!


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07 August 2011

 
EarthPorn


 

Apparently Anonymous has taken over the Syrian Ministry of Defense's website - so sez Reddit.


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f.lux

Not new but new to me, this free program adjusts your monitor to fit better with the expected light intensity of the room your computer is in, throughout the day.

'f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you're in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.'

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Sonic

I first bought a Sonicare toothbrush in about 1996, having been introduced to it by my dentist's office. It was for my mother but as she wouldn't use it I wound up with it and found it an excellent product which made teeth so clean the hygeinist praised me for my dedicated flossing (haha!). I had that brush for many years, replacing brush heads and battery and as I lost dexterity it became more and more important.

The little independant Washington company that'd invented it was bought out by elecronics giant Philips, and for a while everything was the same. Then they made it an all-in-one sealed systen so the battery was not replaceable. The brush heads became shockingly cheap, with straggly bristles.

The end came for me because the last two I've bought lasted about a year each. A year is not long enough as the initial expense is quite a lot of money. When the last one died a couple of weeks ago I switched to an Oral-B sonic toothbrush, which had a 50% rebate and which seems to have decent customer service.

I've been using it for a week now and I can say it works very well, the brush head is well-made, the design is sleek (the battery alas, is not replaceable, but I knew that). We shall see how it operates in the future. It's too bad that Philips ruined the Sonicare, but at least I had an alternative.


 
Enjah's Triumph!

Hunneh Bunneh premiered at Raglan's drive-in, and was a smash hit!

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Interesting house.


 

India's Oldest Sunken Garden Found

Must've been pretty.


 
I've decided today is Indulge Me day, and I'm going to do only things that please me.


 


Pretty comical

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06 August 2011

 


This was good but if you watch it don't stream from Netflix as both sound and picture quality are *extremely* bad.

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New York Times:

'The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has found a novel way of raising badly needed cash, according to the South Korean authorities: unleashing young hackers on South Korea’s immensely popular online gaming sites to find ways to rack up points convertible to cash.

Despite its decrepit economy, North Korea is believed to train an army of computer programmers and hackers. The police in Seoul said Thursday that four South Koreans and a Korean-Chinese had been arrested on charges of drawing on that army to organize a hacking squad of 30 young video gaming experts.

Working from Northern China, the police said, the squad created software that breached the servers for such popular South Korean online gaming sites as “Lineage” and “Dungeon and Fighter.” The breach allowed round-the-clock play by “factories” of dozens of unmanned computers.'

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Given that China has done every kind of protectionist manipulation it possibly could to ensure that things were grossly tilted in their direction, their unhappiness with the current situation now makes me roll my eyes. Although the blame for how screwed up everything is lies in all directions it rests solely upon the ruling forces not the common man. It was obvious ten years ago that things were streaking towards economic melt-down. I feel sad that there are millions who have lived their entire adult lives in a world that is insane and think this is normal or how it's always been.

Euronews
:

'China has expressed strong concern at the downgrading of America’s triple A credit rating by Standard and Poor.

Statements were issued through the official Xinhua news agency. In one it says that as the largest single creditor to the US China has “every right to demand that the US address its structural debt problems to ensure the safety of Chinese dollar assets.”

The statement also calls for the “international supervision of the issue of US dollars”, and suggests a “new, stable and secured global reserve currency could help to avert any future catastrophe”.

Francis Lun, Managing Director of Lyncean Holdings, said: “The price of government bonds will fall. China holds about 1.1 trillion US dollars in government debt…if the price drops by one per cent then China will suffer an eleven billion paper loss immediately.”

Clearly worried about the level of exposure to American dollar-debt, the statements are very critical, accusing the US of leisurely squandering unlimited overseas borrowing. China says that America has to re-establish what it called the “common-sense principle that one should live within one’s means.”'

Yes, they should, but it's a little bit more complex than that.



 

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05 August 2011

 


Everyone with MS has been awaiting the results of the CCSVI procedure Montel Williams had recently, and here he hints a bit...

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04 August 2011

 
Sublime Stitchery


 
whenindoubt by even-star
whenindoubt, a photo by even-star on Flickr.

Cross-stitch pattern

Bwahaha!



 


 

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MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.



Candide: preemtively sending you these 3 moovies before you send it to me, as i expect them to be all over the internets shortly
and no, i don't like 'em

Os: That was just one - there were two more?

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03 August 2011

 
I don't want to stir up trouble but a 'copy bot' even as a joke probably doesn't belong on the SL from page.

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Universe:
Attention! The human race appears to be done using the planet now and it's free for any other being/species/whatever to use.
Human: lolwut? I'm still using it lol
Universe: Attention! Cleanup on Aisle 6.
Human: lol... wtf...
Universe: This is why we can't have nice things.


 


I didn't have a rabbit with a waffle on its head so here's a beluga whale being serenaded by mariachi.

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02 August 2011

 
Radio

My first radio was a black transistor in a leather case with a looping handle over the top that my brother brought for me on a brief, lone, trip back from Hong Kong in about 1964. We were living in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania at that time, and I'd listen to WFIL, WIBG, and at night when its signal came through, WNBC from New York. Philadelphia was a self-defined oldies/dance town, and was where American Bandstand began. I was used to being plopped down any old place and my inner identity had nothing at all to do with my physical location in the world, which seems to be the opposite to the current way of thinking.

I remember sleep-overs with friends, hanging around dancing, swimming parties - all to the tune of radio. Radio station published little pamphlets each week with their top ten. I believe I have some stashed somewhere.

I used to listen to radio in the car - still do, but now mostly talk not music. I switched to NPR-listening in the car in the Eighties, but the station it was on played jazz normally and I was about 25% a jazz radio enthusiast so would switch stations 75% of the time upon jazz start-up. It's funny how something you hear or see that stands out can form a touchstone in memory. I was driving down the Nisqually hill on the I-5 one day - that spot where the vista opens up most grandly - and on NPR they were talking about the centenary of Van Gogh's death, and how at a museum party (Van Gogh Museum? I can't remember.) ear-shaped canapes were served. That obviously startled me enough for the whole scene to burn itself into my memory.

In the past few years in the car I've mainly listened to somewhat irritating talk radio that would be switched off if my irritation crested too high. Last year (I think it was, or maybe the one before) I suddenly noticed that the talking people had begun referencing the internet. At first it was funny, as though the clouds suddenly looked like puddles or corn flakes had tiny newspapers on them. Then it got irritating, especially as it happened more and more until radio was a kind of description of the internet (useful for the blind) only a week or more behind the times.

Where once there had been two separate sources of interest, now one had become about 50% subsumed in the other. Well, that's not good, I thought. Simultaneously the New Yorker began doing a bit of the same, to better effect and not quite as laggy and irritating. I don't really listen to radio to hear someone describe a viral video from the week before. Anyway, the highlight of the actual radio-type blather to me is when one of the faceless voices recounts an incident from his/her life.

Recently someone-or-other told a story about his father's first sports car, and how he, as a teenager, had totalled it. When he stood before his father to say what'd happened his father asked him if he was all right. That stands out in my mind because I had a friend whose father was an NFL player with plenty of money. When my friend was to be shipped to fight in the Viet Nam war his father said, "If you come home I'm going to buy you any kind of car you want." My friend told me he didn't care about the car, he just wanted his father to say when. When you come home. He did return and his father bought him a super-duper expensive sports car and he totalled it on a stone wall shortly thereafter, nearly killing himself in the process. He's actually been dead for decades, now; his father is still alive as far as I know.

I R tired; I stop.



01 August 2011

 
We always thought it'd be cockroaches that'd
overrun the earth, but maybe it'll be fungi.


 
I don't understand why the FBI is still looking for D.B. Cooper. Even if he had survived the crime he'd be dead of old age by now (or close).


 
Very clear strategic moves in this economic game of poker of late. They aren't usually so large or so blunt.

I remember when the deficit was huge and weighed on everyone's mind, then was turned to a surplus by Clinton. Then was turned into a huge deficit again by Bush. I'm not sure how people are suckered in by the Republican line.


 
I know, I know - the Ultimaker itself is the real news (faster 3d printing), however I just like watching laser cutting.

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The Big Picture has shots from the ongoing rains in South Korea that have devastated the country with flooding and landslides, and in an awful twist have revealed buried landmines.

 

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I want to ask for thoughts about improving the world -- what do people need? How can things be organised?