(no subject)
Back to crappy wake-up times ... the trick seems to be to, when the alarm goes off, I need to actually get up, and not just kill it and go back to sleep.
In practice not a hell of a lot really.
Yesterday was more interesting, my father showed up to get his computer cleaned up, and say hi. This is more significant then it may otherwise seem, as him and me seem to have this 'see each other about once a year' kind of relationship, so it was kind of cool. Glad to see he seems to be doing well, and I'm seeing him again at a dinner party at my mother's place tomorrow. Mom and Dad do seem to have gotten past the whole separation thing (it was about 24 years go, so they should have), which is good, though I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a more traditional mother and father family kind of thing.
This is another one off SlashDot, human echolocation, which does raise some interesting ideas, though as the comments in the SlashDot article showed, it's not that hard to train yourself up to do it. I've never tried, but my flat mate apparently once trained himself to use a 'clicker' to navigate around a house. Downside was that the constant clicking tended to drive everyone else nuts ... the advantage of this approach is that it takes it up into the high ultrasound where, with luck, it shouldn't cause people much annoyance.
The possibilities as a feedback system is also interesting, while they mention fighters, myself I'd want to see this thing in cars if they can make it work, yet another way to avoid the 'blind-spot' problem, and if you can get precise enough with it, could help with the parking issues as well.
Of course would not want to use Infra sound instead, apart from needing speakers bigger then you, there are the oh so interesting side effects it has on people. Though some of the effects have been known for a while, including the right frequencies to cause feelings of fear, doom, and if you hit it right, incontinence. Well, I think I know how Spider's Bowl Disrupter could have worked now. :)
In less happy news, this bothers me on a lot of levels. The idea of Honour Killings are something I find deeply repugnant, and so do any of my friends ... at the same time it's fundamental to some of these cultures. Is this a sign that western culture and these groups will just never get on on some fundamental levels? I'm all for 'religious tolerance' on a theoretical ground, but in practice I do find at times I'm a lot more comfortable with largely secular countries then I'll ever be with highly religious countries. Of course I come _from_ a very secular country, so that may be understandable.
I think on some levels it's a bad thing that I find the increasing fundamentalism of Iraq, post war, as one of the more disturbing features of what's going on over there, though that may be favoured by Riverbend being one of the main views I get into the middle of that area, and she is not happy about it either. Of course, she's right on the sharp edge of things. I really do worry about her safety ... it's funny, this is a person I've never met, almost certainly never will meet, and all I know about her is what she writes in an online journal, but I find myself really wondering what she's like, and deeply worried about her safety. She of course doesn't know I exist.
Speaking of Iraq, what is up with the situation of under equipped troops there? Disregarding any questions of why they are there, or should they be there, I want to know if this situation is actually true, and if it is, what the heck are they thinking? I think the thing that's gotten me about this entire mess from the start, at least as much as my misgivings about the 'why' of this whole mess, is my ... faint amazement as the very haphazard way it seems to have been happening.
Ok, a lot of this is probably because I'm a total civilian, and really have no idea how hard this kind of thing is, but still, there seems to have been a lot of ... messiness in how this has gone forwards. And I note a bunch of current or ex military types seem to also have doubts how about how well this has been done. I'm sure all the people on the ground over there are doing the best they can, but ... I do get the strong feeling that there are too many politicians running this, and not people with real experience. Though it does look like the British experience with the Irish mess has given them a good start, comparing the styles, and resulting levels of unrest in different parts of Iraq.
Again, I watch, wait, and hope, oh how I hope.
Ok, anyone out there with artistic talent and a copy of Photoshop, here is the perfect base image, you should be able to do something amusing with this. Sieg Heil! :)
Money, it's one of those things that is, in theory an arbitrary concept, yet it controls the world, and the lack of it controls my life. Things wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have or power supplied by companies that work on the 'if they aren't slitting their wrists, we aren't charging enough'. It's things like this that inspire people to try and develop good alternative energy forms, if anyone wants to suggest some good ways to build a fusion reactor in the garage out of household supplies, I'd love to know.
We've got another game about to fire up, maybe ... in theory we have a game running, but the guy that runs it hasn't showed up for 3 weeks. Blair (one of our two main GMs) has got his hand on this really fun module called 'Three Days to Kill' which is all about what happens when an adventuring party has three days in town, and wants to make as much money as they can before they leave. It seems like an 'expert' grade module, in terms of the GMs it's targeted at. From comments made by Blair, a lot of is things like 'and at this point something really dangerous should come though the gate, you know your party, give them a really tough fight'. It's a very good module for an improvising GM, which suits Blair down to the ground.
I may try out the new 3.5 Bard as a char concept, though I still don't have a way yet to use 'Bardic Performance' in a fight, and not feel really silly. This will be an interesting challenge.
Till tomorrow, when hopefully I'll actually be away for midday! I can but hope.
Brett
In practice not a hell of a lot really.
Yesterday was more interesting, my father showed up to get his computer cleaned up, and say hi. This is more significant then it may otherwise seem, as him and me seem to have this 'see each other about once a year' kind of relationship, so it was kind of cool. Glad to see he seems to be doing well, and I'm seeing him again at a dinner party at my mother's place tomorrow. Mom and Dad do seem to have gotten past the whole separation thing (it was about 24 years go, so they should have), which is good, though I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a more traditional mother and father family kind of thing.
This is another one off SlashDot, human echolocation, which does raise some interesting ideas, though as the comments in the SlashDot article showed, it's not that hard to train yourself up to do it. I've never tried, but my flat mate apparently once trained himself to use a 'clicker' to navigate around a house. Downside was that the constant clicking tended to drive everyone else nuts ... the advantage of this approach is that it takes it up into the high ultrasound where, with luck, it shouldn't cause people much annoyance.
The possibilities as a feedback system is also interesting, while they mention fighters, myself I'd want to see this thing in cars if they can make it work, yet another way to avoid the 'blind-spot' problem, and if you can get precise enough with it, could help with the parking issues as well.
Of course would not want to use Infra sound instead, apart from needing speakers bigger then you, there are the oh so interesting side effects it has on people. Though some of the effects have been known for a while, including the right frequencies to cause feelings of fear, doom, and if you hit it right, incontinence. Well, I think I know how Spider's Bowl Disrupter could have worked now. :)
In less happy news, this bothers me on a lot of levels. The idea of Honour Killings are something I find deeply repugnant, and so do any of my friends ... at the same time it's fundamental to some of these cultures. Is this a sign that western culture and these groups will just never get on on some fundamental levels? I'm all for 'religious tolerance' on a theoretical ground, but in practice I do find at times I'm a lot more comfortable with largely secular countries then I'll ever be with highly religious countries. Of course I come _from_ a very secular country, so that may be understandable.
I think on some levels it's a bad thing that I find the increasing fundamentalism of Iraq, post war, as one of the more disturbing features of what's going on over there, though that may be favoured by Riverbend being one of the main views I get into the middle of that area, and she is not happy about it either. Of course, she's right on the sharp edge of things. I really do worry about her safety ... it's funny, this is a person I've never met, almost certainly never will meet, and all I know about her is what she writes in an online journal, but I find myself really wondering what she's like, and deeply worried about her safety. She of course doesn't know I exist.
Speaking of Iraq, what is up with the situation of under equipped troops there? Disregarding any questions of why they are there, or should they be there, I want to know if this situation is actually true, and if it is, what the heck are they thinking? I think the thing that's gotten me about this entire mess from the start, at least as much as my misgivings about the 'why' of this whole mess, is my ... faint amazement as the very haphazard way it seems to have been happening.
Ok, a lot of this is probably because I'm a total civilian, and really have no idea how hard this kind of thing is, but still, there seems to have been a lot of ... messiness in how this has gone forwards. And I note a bunch of current or ex military types seem to also have doubts how about how well this has been done. I'm sure all the people on the ground over there are doing the best they can, but ... I do get the strong feeling that there are too many politicians running this, and not people with real experience. Though it does look like the British experience with the Irish mess has given them a good start, comparing the styles, and resulting levels of unrest in different parts of Iraq.
Again, I watch, wait, and hope, oh how I hope.
Ok, anyone out there with artistic talent and a copy of Photoshop, here is the perfect base image, you should be able to do something amusing with this. Sieg Heil! :)
Money, it's one of those things that is, in theory an arbitrary concept, yet it controls the world, and the lack of it controls my life. Things wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have or power supplied by companies that work on the 'if they aren't slitting their wrists, we aren't charging enough'. It's things like this that inspire people to try and develop good alternative energy forms, if anyone wants to suggest some good ways to build a fusion reactor in the garage out of household supplies, I'd love to know.
We've got another game about to fire up, maybe ... in theory we have a game running, but the guy that runs it hasn't showed up for 3 weeks. Blair (one of our two main GMs) has got his hand on this really fun module called 'Three Days to Kill' which is all about what happens when an adventuring party has three days in town, and wants to make as much money as they can before they leave. It seems like an 'expert' grade module, in terms of the GMs it's targeted at. From comments made by Blair, a lot of is things like 'and at this point something really dangerous should come though the gate, you know your party, give them a really tough fight'. It's a very good module for an improvising GM, which suits Blair down to the ground.
I may try out the new 3.5 Bard as a char concept, though I still don't have a way yet to use 'Bardic Performance' in a fight, and not feel really silly. This will be an interesting challenge.
Till tomorrow, when hopefully I'll actually be away for midday! I can but hope.
Brett