AltSci Cell

by Javantea Sept 28, 2008

If you like MPlayer, run Linux and you want to play movies in your Firefox browser, I can heartily recommend MPlayer Plug-in (click image above).

In case you're wondering how I tested the plugin, I went through my database looking for an embedded video.

mysql> select scene,pagenum from page where rant like '%<object%';
+-------+---------+
| scene | pagenum |
+-------+---------+
|   249 |      38 |
|   249 |      64 |
|   249 |      96 |
|   249 |     104 |
|   249 |     156 |
|   249 |     169 |
|   249 |     172 |
|   249 |     182 |
|   249 |     192 |
+-------+---------+
9 rows in set (0.07 sec)

by Javantea Sept 23, 2008

What could be more boring than a 3D box rendered in Blender with a stupid material and shader? Post processing said box in Inkscape, possibly. But this fine morning (night, whichever it is) I found that both tools are doing amazing things in just the place I need them. Blender's shading and import have improved quite a bit in the latest release, which means I can import all my assets from Hack Mars to Blender. The animation works perfectly. My assets from AltSci Cell are already in Blender and now that I know how they import and export animation, I can do more work in that area. One of the main reasons I gave up on Hack Mars and AltSci Cell (both projects are on indefinite hold awaiting interest and investment) was that I couldn't import, export, or create content in Blender. That's a pretty sad state of affairs compared to MS3D (which I haven't used since the end of Hack Mars dev).

by Javantea Sept 3, 2008

I went on Amazon and found a watch. It's a timex ironman, like I said, but one of the features I liked about it has changed on all the new models, the old ones had start/stop lap/reset side by side on the front. Now they have start/lap on the front and 4 buttons around the sides. Must've decided it was cheaper and/or more likeable. I looked through 50 versions, even the "traditional" version has a single button on the front. I wonder why they didn't call me before making the decision. I really feel old now. =) As they say, "times (timex) change".

Old isn't in the years since you've been born, a lot of people age really slowly, and some people (especially meth/heroin addicts) age really quickly. I still don't consider myself old. I'm wiser than I was when I was 16 and my problems, responsibilities and possibilities are totally different, but even my situation doesn't declare me old. If I keep clinging to my youth and the youth of people I know, I'm certain to be a 35-year-old kid some day (actually that's not too far away). I think the real definition of age is how many things you've yet to do. It's a rather backwards way of looking at it and rather morbid at that, but if you consider the years ahead rather than the years behind, you can plan for what you'll be doing "then", where "then" is any time you wish to consider. If a person plans to live for 10,000 years, they will have thousands of years ahead of them, making them eternally young in comparison to how old they are bound to be. A lot closer to the present, this year I'm headed for a major breakthrough. At midnight after my birthday, I made a lot of progress. I don't know when my breakthrough is going to occur, but I sure know what I'm going to be doing until then.

Once in a while a person finds an author who writes enough for a person to really like that author. The ideas that come across are coherent, consistent, and moving. Cory Doctorow is such an author for me. He understands technology, he is brilliant at coming up with plausible futuristic scenarios and he conveys ideas that are as important as anything we will face today. I've met him twice, once at Toorcon San Diego 2006 and once yesterday at a reading. He answered my question quite well. His new book "Little Brother" focuses on a revolution of ideas and values in present day America. He pits students against a tyrannical DHS frighteningly similar to the DHS we know today. He explains with incredible clarity why a war against an abstract noun is invalid and a system designed to protect people from rare events at the cost of their freedom is no more than common tyranny.

My question was: "What brought you to the idea of the probability of rare events and the detectors being useless?" He explained that the problem is that lurid rare events are much less of a threat than common events that harm a person. In his book he explains that trying to find a needle in a haystack is incredibly difficult when the margin of error of detection is so high. Any system designed to trade freedom for really poor results should be rejected.

We live in a country where basic freedoms are being trashed, we are at war with a country who has not attacked us, and the general populous will never revolt against it. We're basically in a downward spiral. With a new president and a possible solution to the war and removal of nationwide wiretaps and institutional torture, we can have hope for a new tomorrow. But persevering and incredible diligence is required still. We cannot afford to allow any screwups to send us back to our downward spiral if we get a chance to fix it. Tell the next president, Mr. Obama that we we're expecting nothing less than a complete change in the way our government is running.