Skeet shooting… with cars?
I came across this video on Gizmodo today and… well, there is something about automatic weapons, rockets, and cars instead of clay pigeons that just tickles my funny bone.
Black holes, LHC, Star Wars, quantum uncertainty… if it is of general geek interest, but doesn’t fit into one of the other categories, it lands here.
The Sword and the Sorcerer… a tale of my aging memory
I spent a couple of hours this weekend trying to remember the name of a movie I vaguely recall watching many years ago. It was back in the ’80s, during the era of Conan and its imitators: the era of Sword and Sorcery movies. I recall the film being kind of fun: a first rate B movie, if that makes sense. Yet I couldn’t recall a title or, with any certainty, the details of the plot.
I remembered two scenes from the movie, and possibly a third one. I wasn’t sure if perhaps I was misremembering, and combining these scenes from several different movies together into some sort of frankenmemory. I recounted my vague recollections to my nephew Shane when we were talking about other movies, and to my friend Chris, who I recall was there when I saw this particular flick all those years ago.
Co-creator of D&D, Gary Gygax, dies at 69 years
I clearly remember how I first got into Dungeons and Dragons. I was 15 years old at the time. My friend Tim was a member of Mensa, and told me that they had this thing called Dungeons and Dragons that they played. Since I was a big fan of Tolkein’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Tim’s description of D&D sounded perfect. I wrote an IQ test and discovered I missed the grade by a couple of points: the fact that I wrote the test on the day I found out my Dad had died might have had an impact, but I also never really claimed to be a genius. But the desire to play D&D remained.
Must. See. Iron Man
I vaguely recall hearing that an Iron Man movie was in the works, but more or less ignored it. I like superhero movies when they are done well: Batman Begins was done well, the first Spiderman was done well, but many (most?) such movies end up being more or less… bad. And I didn’t have a lot of hope for Iron Man.
Wired’s Lore Sjöberg on the Brain…
I am not really the "typical" Wired reader. For one thing, I'm far from "cool" or "hip". I've got the "geek" thing down, though. Despite being outside the correct Wired…
I’m not fat, I’m just economical…
I came across an interesting post on Wired today, referring to a Dutch study that just made me shake my head. The study found that obese people actually save society money versus healthy, thin people. While they are alive the fat people cost more, but since they die younger they end up being cheaper overall versus the healthy people who live longer and require care as they age.
Broken Website…
I broke the website earlier today. I think I’ve established the Computing Law of Quantum Superposition. Specifically: a computing system is in all possible states until it is observed, at which point it collapses into a single state. Unfortunately, the single state is always “non-functional”.
Bill Gates last CES Keynote address
I first encountered Microsoft in terms of buying their products in about 1981. I bought a game for my Apple II- Adventure (aka “Colossal Cave”, the original Crowther and Woods text based adventure) from them. I followed Bill Gates’ career from about that time, and always felt like, in a weird way, he and I were twins separated at birth… even though he’s older than me and I’m far, far sexier.
In about 1990, I had a beer (several, actually- I think it was a post-training course social thing) with a fellow in Seattle who told me I looked just like Bill. He then proceeded to tell me how his family used to have a summer cottage near the Gates’ clan when Bill was a kid. He described summers sharing BBQs and swimming with the Gates’ family, and turning down a job offer from Bill in the early 1980’s. My momentary pride at being described as “like Bill Gates” was quashed when the guy described the young Bill Gates as a pain in the neck smartass geek, and how he once nearly drowned Bill while swimming because he was so irritating.
In later life, I realized that the “pain in the neck smartass” was a lot more like me than I was probably willing to admit.
Lolcat I had to share before going to sleep…
more funny pictures Good night :)