Today is the last day of 2009, and the end of the first decade of the century. Time to look back, I suppose, and consider where we’ve been.
The New Year cometh…
Yearly Archives: 2009
Newsflash: people who don’t like computers prefer non-geeky workspaces
According to a recent study at the University of Washington, people who aren’t really interested in computing science are even less interested if asked about it in a room with science fiction paraphernalia, games, and soft drink cans. Apparently some of these non-technically-inclined people are women. Glory be, we have a great discovery!
Actually, not really, at least not in my uneducated opinion, with which you are free to disagree…
Continue reading Newsflash: people who don’t like computers prefer non-geeky workspaces
The internet is… a man… with strange thumbs
After years of thinking the Internet was a collection of tubes, we now have a more definitive explanation, in video form…
This video is created, as it says, based on snippets extracted out of context from a BBC program…amazing how something so basically childish can be so darn funny!
Solid state drives: “next year’s” big thing yet again…
Solid state drives (SSDs) have been “next year’s great technology” for about six years now. Each year it seems that all it would take would be some economies of scale, and we could cast off the shackles of mechanical “spinning disk” technology for good. Unfortunately, another year has come and gone, and still SSDs are too little for too much…
Continue reading Solid state drives: “next year’s” big thing yet again…
Time to eat the neighbour
I have been hearing about this book “Time to Eat the Dog?” that, as I understand it, goes into the carbon footprint of the pets we share our lives with. According to this book, a medium size dog has a greater carbon footprint than an average SUV. The conclusion, presumably selected for its shock value, is that we should only keep animals if we plan on eating them. I’ve found a fair number of articles on line, including this one on the BBC site, that take this proposal at least somewhat seriously.
I personally think that my cats and, when I had them, dogs were pretty darned important parts of my life. So my “shock value” proposal is a bit different: I suggest we start eating our neighbours…
Remember our Veterans
It is November 11th, and time to remember all of those who stood in the way of danger for our future. And since the Canadian government seems to have removed the Pittance of Time video from their website, I’m putting the Youtube version of it here this year… I suggest taking a few minutes during your day, at 11:00 am if possible but any time if not, to remember.
Ewoks gone mad
The folks on the Today Show have discovered a little known fact about the Ewoks from Star Wars. They really can’t handle their booze very well…
Apparently the folks inside the Ewok costumes really were drunk and, as it was a live TV program, the producers decided to just go with it. Credit where credit is due, I came across this on Engadget,
Clock repair activities stalled
I’ve put my clock repair self-education “on hold” the last month or so. A few things led to this:
- need for parts and tools: my first and second clock both need bushings installed, so I had to order those- now I’ve decided I need a bushing tool rather than trying to hand-bush perfectly perpendicular 0.1 to 0.3 mm holes in 2-3 mm brass. My second clock is also filthy (as are clocks 3/4/5… much dirtier than clock #1), and I bought an ultrasonic cleaner to help with that. As it turns out, I can’t get cleaning solutions shipped from the U.S., so I’ve had to find a Canadian supplier
- vacation: I couldn’t order parts and tools by mail for the three or four weeks leading up to our vacation for fear that they would arrive while we were away. Some carriers have five or seven day “return to sender” policies and, given that 30% of the cost (or more) for parts is shipping, I didn’t want to risk that
- failure of collectable clock: my Napoleon III era French clock stopped running a couple of weeks before we left on vacation. This is a clock I had no intention of servicing until I had completed all of my “learning” rebuilds as it is a more expensive and “special” mechanism. I spent a week getting advice and examining the movement, got it running without disassembly, then decided to stop it and “preserve” it until I could do a proper cleaning/repair of it later
I’m starting to get parts and tools in order now that my vacation is finished. I’ve found what I hope to be a Canadian supplier of the “correct” cleaning solutions I want, and will hopefully have that in hand in three or four weeks. I’ll probably order my bushing machine in the next week, and the bushings themselves arrived via mail while we were away. Putting this all together means I’ll probably not have much progress on fixer clock #2 until the beginning of November.
I could get all excited and start stripping down more clocks in the mean time, but I’ve decided to try something new: patience. I might take a look at the cases of a couple of my clocks (ignoring the mechanisms) while I wait, but my plan of the moment is to keep reading the clock repair and collector’s forums and practice calm breathing…
Wet: definition of a wasted opportunity
| Title | Wet |
| Developer | Artificial Mind and Movement (published by Bethesda) |
| Type | Action / Shooter |
| Platform(s) | XBox 360, Playstation 3 |
| Kelly Score ™ | 55 / 100 |
The title “Wet” supposedly refers to the term “wetwork”, a word commonly attributed to cold-war era secret agencies and referring to assignments involving killing so intense that the workers hands become literally wet with blood. The game definitely has death and blood galore, with kill counts in the hundreds per chapter as the game’s female protagonist, Rubi Malone, slices, jumps, and shoots her way through room after room of “bad people”.
I’m all for a bit of mindless violence in my games, particularly when the main character is a sexy but psychopathic woman, but somewhere along the line Wet becomes… boring, and worse: irritating. It is telling that I had to force myself to finish the game- I wanted to call it quits several times after the midway point of the twelve to fourteen hours of playtime I got for my money. This is unfortunate, as there are a number of good ideas in Wet- sadly, it feels a bit like there were one or two hours of good ideas cut and pasted a dozen times to fill out the game.