What Eyebrows Taught Me
Two fistfuls of cuteness plumetted to the floor wedged shoulder deep into a blizzard cup and all I could think was, “We’re a lot like cats.” How inevitable our failures must seem from the outside. That’s what Eyebrows taught me.
Eyebrows, a pint of kitten fuzzy wuzzy awesomeness which strayed into my life a couple Wednesdays ago by molesting Justin’s legs trying to scamp her way into my apartment for a handout. It worked. We fed her some of my Strawberry Cheesequake Blizzard, and let her hang out for the rest of the night.
Once Matt and I were asleep, that sneaky little wench proved as rougish as she was coquettish, working her way around my place much as she had our hearts. Eventually she jumped on my chest and snuggled up, purring in mock contentment. But she knew what her true goal was: Remnants of Cheesquake on my nightstand.
And I was feeling a bit devilish myself, annoyed as I was at being kept up. So, I let her get up on the nightstand, which is only big enough for a few glasses. Eyebrows balanced carefully as she found it more precarious than she had thought, thanks to a nice wobble from the uneven table. She decided to risk it all though, going head first as deep as she could, gravity proving an able ally, albeit it a fickle one. Because it totally switched sides.
Realizing she was now stuck, Brows leaned back and begain trying to shake the cup off, with ever increasing fervour. Obviously a n00b at gravity, her center was quite high and the table wobbled to and fro with motion from the now desparate thief.
Finally, she tumbled backwards, careening downward realizing all too late that the risk involved was not quite worth the reward she thought contained in that glorious treasure cup, which popped off as kitten and ground collided.
Rather than lie there with her wounded pride, she got up, pranced over, and hopped back on my chest. She had decided to move on to her next goal. Pawing at my arms, and prodding me a bit with claws, she annoyed me enough that I put her outside. Which is what she wanted. She pranced off into the night, in search of more standard fare for a stray cat… something a little more on her level.
And we’re a lot like that. 
Filed under: Random Musings, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place.
- Liet-Kynes quoting OC Bible in Frank Herbert’s Dune
One of my favorite quotes from Dune. The power of desires over humanity permeates from it, nevermind God. Or even keeping God in, what are desires but another tool of God? I feel a cynical view festering towards the rear of my mind… coming to the fore. The hedonistic nature of man is on my mind, and I want to write about it.
Desires fuel life. You want that promotion. You want that apartment with a sweet riverview. What do you want to do for them? Not what are you willing to do. All willing means is that you want to do something more than doing without what you want, and will receive. It all boils down to wants.
Life functions (or is designed, if you’re a big Creator fan) around the carrot on a stick. And we are slaves to it. We are mice given cookies. We are given life, we want to eat, and then we want more.
Needs? Needs are wants in disguise. You need to eat because you don’t want to die, so you want to eat. Need to die? You want a gun because you don’t want a painful death. Need leads to want and is guilty by association.
Everything boils down to what we want or don’t want, and how these wants balance into the most desirable course for us based on our situation. Maybe you don’t want to fuck that crazy cock-eyed red head with a zit you’ve named Daniel Whitehead, but you don’t want to go another night without sex. Who knows, she probably looks better with the lights off.
Some people think they have control over their desires. They’re at peace. Maybe they are, but they simply have a strong desire to control other desires.
And that’s my little pointless faux-philosophical dribble for the day. It’s 530am and I’ve been sipping on rum and dr pepper all night. I had an unusually strong desire to have some chocolate. Unusual because I’m not even big on chocolate. Oh sure, I enjoy it as well as the next fatty, but hey, I like salty better.
But this was incredibly strong, like… nagging me completely crazy until I got up and drove to the BP. So I did, and it got me thinking about all this stuff.
:: Related Extras ::
- Dune Quotes – Oh man.
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… Totally locked myself out of my apartment today. And this wasn’t like, “Hey, I just forgot my keys!” locked out. Oh noooooo… this was, “$*#$#%@%*$(@)!@!, I just locked myself out and forgot my wallet, keys, and cellphone. And my car is locked, not expecting anyone ever, and everyone in my complex is asleep because it’s 6:30 AM.” locked out.
Luckily, I didn’t have to work today. Fantastic.
So, I went ahead and accomplished what I came outside to do in the first place: Taking the garbage around. This served me two-fold: If anyone happened upon me I would look slightly less like a slob, and, secondly, it gave me time to think about my predicament.
I didn’t have many tools available to me… None, in fact. Well, I had a box cutter from work that I threw out while I was still raging about locking myself out, but by the time I thought about it I had already covered it up in nastiness. Nothing left to do now except scour the ground in search of something to “card” my door with.
Item 1: flattened beer can
One of the characteristics of living in a “college” habitat is the party lifestyle, which inevitably leads to alcohol containers strewn flippantly around the ground. And I found one very flattened can that I thought I might be able to use, but it was too thick. So I tried ripping the end off, but the middle of the can wasn’t sturdy enough. Time for plan B.
Item 2: Byer’s and Harvey for rent sign Hey, by this time I was getting a bit desperate. Not finding anything else useful in my parking lot, I extended my search to the road and came upon a “For Rent” sign that I thought I might be able to get away with. But, after a careful survey of the area, and being mindful of how bored the campus police get… I chose to move on.
Item 3: Twenty ounce water bottle
It was sticky. It was disgusting. And I was just a little embarassed about picking it up out of someone’s yard, but I didn’t think they would mind. However, it was plastic and, when flattened, was close enough to the required stiffness to “card” my door. I was delighted. I trekked back to my place, cradling this glorious piece of rubbish, and cautiously, but firmly, applied it rougishly to the latch of my humble portal. I admit, there was a moment of panic when I thought it wasn’t going to be firm enough, but I closed my eyes and did the little Thomas freak out thing and pushed… which resulted in a satisfying “click” and the fogging of my glasses as it was unbelievably warm in my apartment when I made it in.
Groovy eh? OH! Here’s a pic:
My hand will never be clean again.
:: Related Extras ::
Filed under: Life | 1 Comment
I’m a Microsoft guy. I admit it. I actually miss the blue screens of death from win98. And I grudingly switched to firefox after taking loads of abuse from Internet Explorer, and it wasn’t easy. Bill Gates… I think it’s the fact that he’s a blonde guy with glasses like me, but he’s a hero of mine. Well… perhaps an anti-hero type of guy.
Needless to say, I’m a big defender of WinXP. It’s like an eccentric uncle you only love because he takes you to the Dairy Queen to get ice cream… and runs off the road half the time. I can do everything I care to do on XP.
It’s a good thing too, because I’m too broke to buy a Mac, and Linux distros always look ugly to me. Not to mention hardware support is still lacking. And then there’s the gamer deal: Most games don’t get official ports to Mac or Linux… Unless they’re from Blizzard: They do hybrid discs. Hopefully, that’s going to be a non-issue in the near future with Win-API “emulation” such as Wine on Linux.
I do like to check in with these alternatives every once in a while to see how they’ve improved. So, I downloaded Ubuntu Linux and got it all installed. One of my pet peeves with linux has been the lack of hardware support, especially video drivers. Ubuntu totally surprised me by actually nailing both of my sound card drivers, which has never happened before. The video drivers were a bit of a challenge, but Ubuntu has a great community… which I guess most Linux communities are pretty ok since it’s all open source.
But, I’ve got everything up and running, and, besides a few sputters with Networking and DVD playback, I’m pretty happy with it, despite the total lack of video games. That’s what dual booting is for.The sheer amount of customization to be had is really impressing me right now, as well as the gigantic array of software provided by the open source community, most of which is totally free, including my browser of choice, Opera.
So… I actually wrote this while I was on Ubuntu, and it’s working ok. Opera actually seems to work better in Linux. Firefox is about twice as fast as well, which isn’t surprising since it’s developed on Linux.
The tenative verdict: I don’t see Ubuntu totally replacing XP based on video games and hardware. However, for development and server tasks: I’ll be using Ubuntu or some other Linux variant.
If I ever get a laptop, it’ll be a Mac. My web server/development comp’ll be Linux, and my gaming rig Windows.
Hmmm… got a little off topic there. I’ll try for more detail when I’m not sleepy.
Filed under: Linux, Tech | 2 Comments
Colors on the Eve of Revolution
![Autumn. A landscape near the village of Gorki. Borodino [Battlefield]](http://pnezzy.files.wordpress.com/2006/07/20374r.jpg?w=358&h=358)
I’ve never delved into the mysteries of photography any further than to learn that if you over-expose a picture you’ll capture more light and get cool wiggly effects if you move the camera around while you do this. Seriously, I played with this feature on my friends cam for like… hours.
Thanks to the wonderous digg.com, I came upon some pre WWI pics of the Russian empire taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. These photos, such as the one on this page, were taken prior to the Russian revolution as well; So, you history buffs might get a little something out of this.
I had no idea that color photography had existed this early, but apparently experiments had been going on since the 1800s. Prokudin-Gorskii’s method of taking color photos is actually similar to today’s digital cameras; Just without the transistors and such. Today’s digital cameras actually take three grayscale exposures when you take a picture: One sensitive for red (R), one for green (G), and another for blue (B). Once these are captured, there’s some behind the scenes compositing and you’re left with your beautiful color picture. Prokudin-Gorskii’s camera had three lenses, each with a R, G, or B filter. When he took a picture, he was left with three glass plates with grayscale exposures filtered for RGB, which he could then present overlayed, which would give the color effect. There’s a much better and detailed description of his method here.
Anywho, I thought these were some amazing shots. Prokudin-Gorskii’s negatives were bought by the Library of Congress in the 40s from his heirs after his death in 1944.
:: Related Extras ::
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Rock Chick/Silouette cut out
I was bored, so I took this pic and made a trendy Apple-ish silhouette thing in Photoshop. Actually, I made it a long time ago at the Pooh Bear’s place.
Pretty simple: Just desaturated the image, used the cut out filter. Then I had to smooth the edges and get the image to pure black and white. Added the text and made the background green. Nothing real exciting.
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Hans Bethe
If I asked you to name some famous physicist (If you had asked me the same question, as well), you would probably generate a list of the giants: Newton, Einstein, Hawking… perhaps Bohr, or Oppenheimer; The “Rock Stars,” of Physics. (Seriously, Stephen Hawking gets a rock star’s welcome everywhere he goes. Except maybe an American classroom… but that’s another story. Check him out in Beijiing.) But you probably wouldn’t have named the German Hans Bethe, who’s career “spans the evolution of nuclear physics as we know it today.”
Bethe came to America as a refugee from Nazi Germany, and was part of the Manhattan Project. Basically his entire career has been spent building up the Cornell University Physics department, who still remain cutting edge in the field of high energy elementary particle physics… er… that being the study of the basic “stuff” everything is made of (elementary particles), the reactions between matter and energy (radiation) of such particles (physics). These particles don’t occur normally in nature, but can be created and detected in high energy impacts. That’s why we have particle accelerators: Like seeing what a car is made of by smashing two together. Just a lot smaller.
Even in his 90s, he was still active in educating physics newbs on Quantum Mechanics (How things work at extremely small scales). Anywho, I think he was a cool guy and wanted to share some links with you all.
:: Related Extras ::
- Cornell Lectures – Given at age 93 in 1999, 6 years before his death. The topic: “Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple.” A play on words? Probably not. I got a giggle out of it though. O_o
- Wikipedia – A more detailed biography than the one at Cornell.
- Bethe-Bloch formula – “approximates the energy-loss by ionization of heavy charged particles traversing matter” At least that’s what they say. I just think it’s cool he’s got a formula named after him.
Filed under: Physics | Leave a Comment
You have no idea how bad I wanted to make a completely immature joke about pee. Apparently I do have a conscience.
So, unless you’re a total feral child who’s been living out in the woods for the past… well, a long time; You’ve probably at least heard of a CPU (Central Processing Unit for those wild children). If you’ve bought a new one recently at a store, the sales rep probably said something about a GPU (Graphics) and playing video games and watching movies. Anywho, here’s another acronym for ya: PPU (Physics PU).
Let’s focus on gaming, since that’s who’s being targeted mostly. AGEIA, the company who came up with the first PPU, envisions three gaming processing areas; As illustrated in their “Gaming Power Triangle” to the left. You can click on that to get to their website. The actual technology is being called PhysX.
As Physics major, as well as a gamer (Actually, mostly as a gamer), this is quite intriguing. Up to this point, even the most modern games have been limited to about 30 – 40 active bodies when it comes to Physics emulation. Not near enough for real-time explosions. By using a seperate processing unit for these processes, programmers will be able to emulate about 32,000 to 40,000 active bodies.
This isn’t just important for violence either: Realistic foliage, water, lava, hair… these will all benifit. Right now, most hair in games is still explicitly animated and pre-rendered. Bethesda’s Oblivion had one of the most intense physics systems out today (Half-life 2 was quite a bit better), but they’re still pretty clunky.
As of now, a BFG brand PhysX PPU runs about 299$… prices should be coming down soon. You can also buy a couple games that are PhysX compatible. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is one of these games, and I actually played the demo with PhysX software emulation. The Xbox 360 and PS3 also have PhysX software support. I don’t know about the Wii. Still too expensive for me.
Another step towards realism in gaming. Physics comes from the Latin Physis which roughly means Nature. Better Physics emulation = More Realism. Don’t worry, there’s not a post on morality coming.
:: Related Extras ::
- Gamespot article – About PhysX
- What is PhysX – Over at the AGEIA website
- GRAW – Newest Ghost Recon
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Worm Before I am a Man?
Sim games have never really been my cup of tea. By sim I mean Sim City, The Sims, and whatnot. I do love a good flight sim. And, to be honest, I did get into Sim City for a while, but… well… It was then I decided I wasn’t cut out for government.
Anywho, as I browse the web I come across some cool gameage from time to time, and Spore is one of those little gems I’m not so sure about; but I know it looks cool.
The game is about evolution and the website says there are five stages of civilization which you get to take a creature you create through:
- Tide Pool Phase – You start out as a microscopic… er… spore. You eat stuff to get evolution points which you use to upgrade. Sounds pretty similar to Sim Earth… except you don’t need an Amiga emulator to play it. O_o
- Creature Phase – Think ape. Except with the creepy creature you designed.
- Tribal Phase - Ah, the ol’ Hunter/Gatherer stage. It’ll be interesting to see if tribes will be patriarchal/matriarchal and if there’s any type of religious development. Personally, I don’t see the religious angle happening. It is interesting to note that Humans were mostly matriarchal at this stage, until they started warring with each other.
- City Phase – Think Anthens. This is where the game turns into Sim City, and we start getting into macro- instead of micromanagement. (That’s for you, Brideano).
- Civilization Phase - Now we’re into global interaction. Other cultures have been developing and you can now make peace or make war on them.
- Space Phase - Spread out across the universe like the virus you are: Find habitable planets and colonize (or conquer) them. Supposedly this is going to be mission based, which is sort of disappointing because it’ll really limit the game. I guess it’s open enough. *shrug*
So, that’s a little run down on the basics. We won’t be seeing Spore until sometime in 2007, but it’s shaping up to be a great game. It probably won’t live up to the hype, which is totally extreme. I mean, they have Robin Williams demonstrating the darn thing.
Spore will be released on PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo Wii. Didn’t see any word on a Mac version. They don’t need any more games anyways, with the market glutted as it is. However, there’s a little ipetition going on to try to get a Mac version here.
:: Related Extras ::
Filed under: Tech | 2 Comments
Recent Entries
- What Eyebrows Taught Me
- If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.
- A 70 in Lockpicking is required to open this door.
- My Linux(Ubuntu) experience: Part 1 – Beware the Penguins
- Because Chuck Norris Said So…
- Colors on the Eve of Revolution
- Rock Chick/Silouette cut out
- Hans Bethe
- PPU? Sounds like a personal problem to me.
- Worm Before I am a Man?
- Las dias azul conmigo solamente. Y mis papitas crujientes.
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