Something for rich Pen and Paper gamers…
I remember back in the foggy vastness of the past how valuable having a decent gaming surface was when playing Dungeons and Dragons. My friend Chris and I eventually hacked…
Black holes, LHC, Star Wars, quantum uncertainty… if it is of general geek interest, but doesn’t fit into one of the other categories, it lands here.
If the study is from Nemertes, it is Telco astroturf
Once again the media is full of reports of the impending collapse of the internet. Apparently we users are to blame, as we are using too much bandwidth watching movies and so forth- thus says yet another study by “respected” think tank, Nemertes Research. They tried to push this line of bull on us in 2007, again in 2008, and now in 2009. Only the dates of the “impending” collapse have changed: always a year or two in the future. But anyone who knows much of about the internet and infrastructure behind it knows this “impending doom” is a fallacy. So why is Nemertes repeating it over and over and over?
Clean Air = Reduced sulfates = Arctic warming?
Recent NASA research suggests that warming trends in the Arctic during the past 40 years aren’t due to CO2 emission increases. Instead, the spike in Arctic temperatures during the past forty years appears to be due to reduced aerosol particulates, specifically to reduced sulfates in the atmosphere. The sulfate reduction is believed to be the result of improved emission standards that were implemented to, ironically, improve the environment through reductions in acid rain. Aerosol sulfates reflect heat back into space, reducing temperatures, whereas different aerosols, termed “black carbon aerosols” and produced largely by burning coal, have the opposite effect: holding heat in.
Sometimes evil makes me laugh…
I have been reading Looking For Group for several months now. It is a webcomic from the same minds that bring us Least I Could Do, Ryan Sohmer and Lar deSouza, and is an ongoing saga involving some rather unusual fantasy characters. Initially, these characters were loosely based on races and professions found in games such as World of Warcraft, but the connection is rather tenuous. Mostly it is about the “good” guy, Cale’Anon, and his twirl-your-mustache evil friend, the undead Warlock Richard.
Sci Fi channel renames itself SyFy, insults all current customers
The cable content provider formerly known as the Sci Fi channel has renamed itself “SyFy”. Here is their reasoning for this rather bizarre change:
The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular. We spent a lot of time in the ’90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it’s called Sci Fi. It’s somewhat cooler and better than the name ‘Science Fiction.’ But even the name Sci Fi is limiting. … (Changing the name to Syfy) gives us a unique word and it gives us the opportunities to imbue it with the values and the perception that we want it to have.
So in one giant leap, the SyFy channel has both insulted their entire existing client base and devised a new name that sounds like a sexually transmitted disease. It also means nasty things in Polish, apparently.
Earthquake monitoring…
I was recollecting my first few days in our house here on the west coast tonight. We took possession of the house on September 2, 2000, and I was out…
MIT discovery could “supercharge” lithium ion batteries
One of the big problems with existing battery technologies is the charge and discharge rate. A battery that powers a device for several hours can take nearly the same amount of time to recharge, making it difficult to develop “continuous use” devices. There has been a lot of research into new technologies like super-capacitors, but production use of these approaches is years if not decades in the future. Thanks to the folks at MIT, however, we may soon have a simple alternative: quick-charge (and discharge) Lithium Ion batteries.
Green tea…
I’ve been drinking a couple of cups of green tea each day. It has become a habit of mine to have a mug of green tea each night to gear down before going to sleep. But until today, I basically just bought green tea bags from the Chinese grocers not far from us and dunked them in hot water. Today, I became “enlightened”, and that simple mug of green tea will never seem the same again.
Impact of Google page rank
My site’s Google “PageRank” dropped in January, from a 3 to a 2, which is pretty much as low as you can go. Smaller numbers mean less “relevant”, at least as far as Google is concerned. I’d like a higher page rank but when I think about it doesn’t matter all that much to me. I’m more curious, however, to observe the impact of the ranking drop.
A few months without Steve is a good thing…
One of the big news items during the past week has been the fact that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, is taking a medical leave of absence for several months. The media has been frothing at the mouth over this: speculation regarding the death of Apple in the absence of this one man, guesses regarding the nature of Mr. Jobs’ illness, and even retrospectives of the man’s life as if he is already dead. Frankly, it is too much, and I personally think everyone, the media, the investors, and the public, should be ashamed. I also think that Steve’s leave will be a good thing for him and for the company itself.