SRSLY. YAY FOR HAMS

Lines I Should Use In A Story

Mon, 19 May 2008 02:31:03 GMT

a: "It's better to regret things you have done than to regret things you haven't done."

b: "Kind of tough to regret things when you're dead."

HOLY CRAP

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:49:19 GMT

A frigging JET MAN.

http://www.sciam.com/video.cfm?id=DFE39D5D4EE92B93BC2D064830092465

A. FRIGGING. JET MAN.

The world is on the verge of creating superheroes and supervillains... holy crap.

Symbogram

Sat, 17 May 2008 14:30:06 GMT

CAVE makes me think of being inside a cave, being surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites and looking out at a big opening.

I don't think there are a lot of symbograms in English; I tried looking up a bunch of two and three letter words to see what I could see, and didn't find much. One could write text though in such a way as to present a more graphic representation of the described thing - much the same way that ambigrams are rendered in order to provide symmetry of transformation. In other words, someone could write the word house in such a way as to resemble a house; making "CAVE" a "natural symbogram" versus a "rendered symbogram".

I suspect Egyptian heiroglyphics are nearly all symbograms. If I knew any Kanji, I'd bet I'd realize what the symbograms in that language are too...

Help, Etymologists and Logophiles!!

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:53:07 GMT

What is the word for words that look like what they describe? I know there's got to be a word for that...

(FYI, my example is "boob")

Is YouTube The Tubes Sen. Stevens Was Talking About??

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:34:46 GMT

Check out this great Net Neutrality video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBrbNybU6XU

I Wicked Like Kongregate

Fri, 16 May 2008 19:53:21 GMT

There are some really cool puzzle games on there... Chronotron is fun, but I've also discovered the "Portal Flash Version" game and also the "Shift" games. Eep, I'm addicted...

(join us...)

http://www.kongregate.com?referrer=mik3cap

Fuck off, Pope Satan the Fiftieth!

Fri, 16 May 2008 18:32:46 GMT

http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKL1627550020080516

Go and protect some more pedophiles, Pope Jerk. We'd like to actually raise humanity a bit higher than your slime level and actually promote equality amongst all people.

What about aliens with more than two genders?? Will they also be our "brother"? Will alien unions of more than two genders be "free from original sin"?

Idiocy.

CRAYZEE

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:17:21 GMT

I have this crazy notion that Steve Jobs will give away free iPhones at the WWDC this year. I don't know why, exactly, it just seems like something that would be ridiculously awesome. I'm imagining that there'll be about 7500 or so developers at the conference; they're apparently "sold out". (last year there were over 5000 in attendance)

Apple's given stuff away at WWDC before: iSight cameras, software, other swag. I know it'd be expensive to do... what, like a couple million bucks? But wouldn't it be neat for him to pull an Oprah? And show a committment to the first generation of iPhone developers by giving them a real device to experiment on?

Losing Fat

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:04:30 GMT

So I recently learned that I had gained back the weight I'd lost last Fall. I was doing really well there for about 4 weeks; I was active, I was eating well, and I got down to about 278 pounds. Unfortunately, right near the end of the thing, I got the flu and dropped down to 270 in about two weeks, and I think that wrecked everything for me... that and the holidays. My body crashed, and then I just ate like a nut at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In the beginning of April, I started using the treadmill at the office every day. I started off slowly and built up, and I'm now *almost* actually JOGGING at about 4mph. This is a very new thing for me. I'm doing a vigorous, sweaty half hour of treadmill and stairmaster every day during the week.

I'm currently at 298 with clothes on (so I figure I'm 295), according to the scale at my office. I know I've gained weight, but lately I feel like I've lost fat and gained muscle. I KNOW I gained muscle, because now that I've been on the treadmill for the last three weeks I'm walking faster and taking stairs more quickly and I can feel the muscles in my legs are more defined. So I don't entirely feel bad about a couple pounds of muscle, but I clearly need to keep on with the activity to get leaner.

Today I worked with the nutritionist at the office and used this device called a Body Gem to measure my base metabolic rate. I fasted for about half a day (no food or drink) and it measured the ketones in my breath. I topped out at 2950 calories! I was fully expecting to be about 2400, but I have a feeling that I've knocked my metabolism up a few notches with all the exercise I've been doing.

So now the nutritionist is going to get back to me with some ideas based on other numbers I sent her way. I have a feeling I know what she's going to say:

1) Sleep more
2) Drink more water
3) Increase the activity
4) Eat no more than 2300 calories a day (I'll lose a little over a pound a week that way)

Honestly, 2300 is a lot of calories. I'm pretty sure I only had 2100 calories today, and I don't feel hungry right now. And my revised exercise plan is to do the treadmill and stairs thing at the office three days a week, and then do strength training at my gym two days a week. My goals are to reduce the body fat percentage, generally increase my health and feel stronger, and that's all I care about.

Baby Comma Cry

Wed, 14 May 2008 20:07:10 GMT

It was a decent show, fun, pretty standard as Broadway shows go - especially good dancers actually. I'm kinda glad I didn't pay to see it though...

WHY??

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:26:39 GMT

WHY IS OUR GOVERNMENT BANNING THE IMPORT OF Abbaye de Citeaux CHEESE???

FUCKING CHEESE HATING REPUBLICAN ASSHOLES!!

Cheese does not come from TERRORISTS, you pricks. Why aren't you doing your job instead of leveraging political advantages for multi-national corporations???

Why Am I So Lucky?

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:49:52 GMT

I went to the PIT tonight to see Dr. CocaColaMcDonald's 21st century protest music played on old Casios and game boys. I was one of five audience members... and three of us were actually staff / members of the PIT. It was kinda funny, kinda not, a performance art kind of thing. I give the guy lots of props though for playing to a five person audience.

Anyway... so I go there, get there about a half hour early, and the ticket guy walks up to me - right up to me - and asks me: "Hey, do you want a free ticket to go see Cry Baby? Tomorrow night at 7:00p.m."

And this is where my great-grandfather's advice comes in handy - "Whenever someone offers you a gift, you take it and say 'Thank You.'" So I say, "Why yes, thank you!" And he says, "Here, take two."

So there you go. I go out to see a show, and I come home with over a hundred dollars worth of tickets.

And Dr. CocaColaMcDonald's will probably be sitting next to me, because he got free tickets from the PIT too.

Some days I feel like the dude from Intacto (rent it, watch it, love it). I'd almost say that I should start buying lottery tickets, except it never really works that way... so I need someone to surreptitiously follow me around and drop lottery tickets on the ground in front of me so that I'll randomly pick them up and they'll be winners...

Dr. CocaColaMcDonald's It Is Then

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:01:06 GMT

If anyone wants to join me in a little comedy tonight, I'll be at The PIT (W 29th btwn 6 and 7) from 6:30p.m. until 9:00p.m. (I'm going to stay for the show after Dr. CCM)

Your Chance For Democracy

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:18:17 GMT

View Poll: What Do I Do Tonight???

FWIW, I did do work on the third option this weekend, so it's really a question of working *more* on that stuff than I already have...

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:09:18 GMT

When I really enjoy a meal, especially one with a delectable sauce, I always use a piece of bread to clean the plate. I consider it me giving a complement to the chef when I get every last morsel off like that. This was pretty much a learned behavior on my part, something everyone in my family just did.

I didn't realize though that there was a term for it in Italian: "scarpetta", meaning "little shoe".

I really do love having a rich heritage that celebrates food so much. :)

Carbon Footprint of your Food

Mon, 12 May 2008 01:51:46 GMT

It turns out that beef and cheese create a much, much worse carbon footprint that even eating produce imported from overseas. Because ruminant animals (cows, bison, sheep, goats) create methane gas and nitrous oxide from their excretions, those greenhouse gases combined with the CO2 produced from grain growth and fuel usage actually add up to WAY a lot more (from this past week's Science Friday on NPR).

Obviously the best thing is still to eat locally grown produce - but it also turns out that if you ate beef and cheese from a local grass-fed cow, you're actually doing an even worse thing than eating corn-fed beef imported from halfway across the country... because grass makes the cow produce MORE methane and NO2.

The suggestions are basically to avoid red meat and cheese as much as possible, and switch to non-ruminant livestock like chickens and pigs and fish for meat. Vat-grown meat would also immediately fix this problem too, but that's a way off.

This makes me really sad, and makes me rethink my penchant for enjoying cheeses imported from France and Italy. Those are actually the worst possible carbon footprint foods I can eat, and that's depressing.

Check out this "food carbon calculator": http://www.eatlowcarbon.org/Carbon-Calculator.html

LOST spoilage

Sat, 10 May 2008 04:30:56 GMT

I knew the island fucking moves. I KNEW IT.

I can't find the LJ post where I wrote that right at the moment, but I totally called that one like two seasons ago, way back when they found the plane from Africa.

So what... the island has a warp drive?? It can displace itself in space and in time? Wacky.

ONE CUP OF COFFEE KEEPS ME AWAKE

Fri, 09 May 2008 21:19:57 GMT

You know you haven't been sleeping enough when the dulcet tones of Ira Flatow on Science Friday are carrying you off to La La Land.

See, I Knew The Market Was There

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:05:35 GMT

You missed your shot on the streaming iTunes thing, Apple!

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/stream-itunes-p.html

Why Buy Mac?

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:45:58 GMT

I guess there's some truth to the saying about the people being hardest to convert becoming the fiercest evangelists. I'm now a very rabid Mac enthusiast, and there honestly are a ton of good reasons to be one right now. Don't take my word for it either - Consumer's Union, publishers of Consumer Reports, are also in agreement:

http://blogs.macobserver.com/userfriendly/2008/05/07/consumer-reports-gets-it-right-at-last/

To be totally honest, I really do think that Mac has reached critical mass in terms of applications and ease of use, and have delivered a superior product. I think that if you sat down the average PC user and asked them what their common problems are, you'd get something like this:

"It crashes a lot. I have to reboot often."
"My data gets erased all the time. It's hard to make backups."
"Things don't work the way I expect. I don't understand the behavior of the PC."
"I can't find what I'm looking for."
"The computer doesn't have the software I really need - or it's some kind of pre-installed trial version and I have to pay more for it."

Apple has addressed all these issues with the stable Unix-based OS, Time Machine one-button backups and restores, maintaining intuitive user interface standards, Spotlight search integration with all files regardless of type (also integrated with Time Machine for searching DELETED items saved in your backups), and totally free iLife software that does 80% of what most home users care about (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, Garageband)... how can Apple lose here? This isn't even counting the tight and clean ecosystem-like integration with the most popular mobile devices in the world (iPod and iPhone).

I suppose one argument against Macs is always going to be price. Well, frankly, you get what you pay for! People would never argue that it doesn't make sense to pay more for the advantages of an Audi versus a Kia, or for a BOSE sound system over a Wal-Mart brand. People I think are just used to the commoditization of computers and PC clone computer parts, and expect everything to be cheap and interchangeable, as if that somehow gives them "control" over their computer or something. This to me makes about as much sense as picking McDonald's over filet mignon for dinner - McDonald's is cheap and commoditized, sure, but it has a bad aftertaste and is extremely bad for you.

I truly believe the only things propping Microsoft up now are momentum and monopoly. They'll have to completely gut themselves and radically transform to get anywhere near where Apple is going.

Stoopid Guberment

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:08:40 GMT

I'm supposed to have gotten my stimulus check by now. I filed before the deadline, like a month before, and my SSN digits indicate I should have gotten my cash direct deposited. Other people have gotten their money... WTF yo??

Chronotron!

Thu, 08 May 2008 04:24:30 GMT

I am now addicted to this great little puzzle game called Chronotron on Kongregate. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of Lemmings or any of the Rube Goldberg type puzzle games.

If you like the Kongregate site and decide to sign up for it (I like it so far, fun and free)... do me a favor and do it through this referrer link?

http://www.kongregate.com?referrer=mik3cap

Cosmic Rays and bacteria?

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:08:13 GMT

I was listening to a story on NPR where they said that kim chee on a space station exposed to cosmic rays could become toxic.

Wha???

Apparently it has something to do with bacteria? Once the bacteria were neutralized by irradiation (but cosmic rays make it toxic??) it was safe to bring onto the space station.

Any of you biologically inclined folks have any idea what the heck they're talking about?

Iron Man

Wed, 07 May 2008 03:54:15 GMT

They should have called it "AWESOME MAN" but I understand the whole licensing thing and whatever...

It was very well done. It wasn't quite the same level of blockbuster for me that Spider-Man was; somehow it just didn't have the same directorial joie-de-vivre and depth that Sam Raimi injected into the Spider, but Jon Favreau gave it a good go and treated the character with a lot of respect. Kudos also to the screenwriters who managed to put a lot of fun into one of my favorite comic characters.

I will say though that it would have been nice to have some darker moments; maybe Tony's alcoholism will rear its ugly head in the sequel, or even the third film (I'm sure there'll be a third). Mandarin is totally the bad guy in the second movie.

Also, if they somehow pull off an Avengers movie, that will be fucking amazing. Ed Norton and Robert Downey Jr. and whomever ends up playing Thor? That'll be just mint. It looks like The Ultimates is totally making the big screen transition. I'm hoping they throw in Hawkeye too... maybe they'll fight Ultron?? That'd be fun, just a totally different story instead of what's in Ultimates.

So, let's see... we'll have a Thor movie, a second Iron Man, and then The Avengers - or will they call it The Ultimates? At least three more movies in the pipe!

Today's moment of zen

Tue, 06 May 2008 21:18:17 GMT

what if everything around you
isn't quite as it seems
what if all the world you think you know
is an elaborate dream
and if you look at your reflection
is that all you wanted to be
what if you could look right through the cracks
would you find yourself
find yourself afraid to see

what if all the world's inside of your head
just creations of your own
your devils and your gods
all the living and the dead
and you're really all alone
you can live in this illusion
you can choose to believe
you keep looking but you can't find the words
are you hiding in the trees

(brought to you by Trent Reznor)