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How have I gotten this far in life without knowing these things?

by Aaron Williams on September 15, 2017 at 7:06 PM
Posted In: Science ahoy!, The Basement Storage Bin

Tape measures. We’ve all used them. Some of us want Olympic Sports based on their alternate uses. They can be turned into slap-bracelets (mind those metal edges, kids!). However, they have some features I was completely in the dark about that are so simple I’m kind of ashamed I never noticed them:

I’m especially upset I never noticed the number on the bottom of the tape measure and its use. So many window sills would’ve been a breeze to record had I but known…

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The “I am full of head cold medication” linkdump.

by Aaron Williams on September 13, 2017 at 6:03 PM
Posted In: Articus Pharticus, It Came from the Internet, Om Nom Nom!, Science ahoy!, Video Gaming

I am currently suffering from a personal biological assault and have turned much of my blood to cough drop essence, so I cannot take responsibility for the following being posted here by my out-of-sorts self. It doesn’t help that nobody in this household purchases caffeinated tea, dash it all.

• The Eclipse of 2017 seems such a far-off memory, but those who wrecked rental cameras trying to take photos of it will live on in some people’s memory for quite a while. I mean, your eyes are one thing, but frying a great camera…

• The BBC has found a use for those Amazon talking hockey pucks and Pringles cans they sell: Choose-your-own-adventures!

• Apparently, it’s been 80 years since the last natural color of chocolate was discovered. Now, we have “ruby” chocolate. S’mores just got more upscale, without needing to waste any gold leaf.

• This is kind of a nifty idea. An artist put ink on decorative manhole covers and other metallic items in cities, using the patterns to put prints on t-shirts and bags. I’m wondering if anyone tried this in cemeteries, and how upset that made the caretakers and families of those interred there?

• Sticking with art, how about a series of intentionally inconvenient items called “The Uncomfortable?”

• Archaeologists have found a trove of relics at a Roman barracks from before Hadrian’s Wall was built. Imagine how upset your D&D players would be if they found ancient weapons the way most of them are found today. That may have been a +2 Sword of Bisecting once, but if you don’t take proper care of your things, see what happens?

• While we’re in the UK, there’s news that a “Fatberg” bigger than 10 double-decker buses has been found in an East London sewer. They’re the result of oil and grease being dumped down the drains along with people flushing wipes. I eagerly await whatever movie Guillermo Del Toro makes out of this concept.

• And why don’t we finish up with some golf? This is a little different, as it’s Manygolf! You load it up and play against whoever else is online, firing your ball simultaneously with theirs, trying to beat the clock as well as the number of strokes. Left and right arrow keys change your aim, and holding the space bar increases how hard you hit the ball when you release.

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Right Hand of Doom DIY

by Aaron Williams on September 2, 2017 at 5:02 PM
Posted In: Cineplexia, It Came from the Internet

I find costuming fascinating when it comes to things resembling animatronics. Here, a YouTuber named Odin creates the glove-like prop from Hellboy, complete with moving fingers:

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There is a talking hockey puck in my house now.

by Aaron Williams on August 30, 2017 at 8:59 AM
Posted In: It Came from the Internet, It's got Robots and Lasers

The future is here, and it comes in the form of a disc-like object that my wife purchased: an Echo Dot.

Immediately, my inner alarm-bells sounded, referencing 1984 by George Orwell by way of a used car salesman; Big Brother would be listening, but instead of locking you up, he wants to sell you crap.

I will say on the plus side, the Dot has one feature that’s easy to use: It can be unplugged. I don’t like things that likely try to figure out what I’m likely to click on by eavesdropping, yet I probably tolerate this more often than not. I’m half convinced that my phone occasionally sends data to someone, as I’ll see products advertised to me that I’m pretty sure I only talked about once or twice and never did an online search for.

That said, the Dot is a clever device. Mostly, it’s useful as an alarm clock, search engine for simple information (“How do you spell antidisestablishmentarianism?”) and playing music. I’m also told it can be made to do pretty amazing things using a phone app called If This Then That, which is can be used to automatically do things when your phone encounters certain triggers via its various inputs and sensors. My son is already using the thing to play (on repeat) songs he’s currently enamored with.

I’ve been on the lookout for how whatever data it may be collecting might be used, but thus far I haven’t noticed any changes to whatever profile is consulted for advertising to me. My son shares a lot of my accounts, and he’s in a Spanish language program, so I’m amused when ad servers think I know more than one language. In fact, the only real alteration to the products I see on offer came when I ran across a link to an interesting page that looked at real-world things used as props in Star Trek. Apparently, seeing those meant I was dying to buy a composting vessel (or EPS Regulator) of some kind.

I figure this is the voice-activated future. If it gets to be too onerous, I can always play audio files of random words to throw off the A.I., or at least make it think I’m too mentally imbalanced to respond to any ads based on the household’s audio preferences. Now if they’d only have made it using the voice of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (which has been recorded as a phonetic library), I would put one in every room of my house.

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Friday Night Links!

by Aaron Williams on August 25, 2017 at 9:01 PM
Posted In: Articus Pharticus, It Came from the Internet, Science ahoy!, The Basement Storage Bin, Video Gaming

Lots of little bits o’ internet weirdness for your weekend consumption. Let’s start with:

• It turns out that rudimentary neural network can learn how to create names for its own My Little Pony characters. The machines are coming, and they’re going to replace human-generated fanfic.

• This might or might not be true, but it would appear that the plot for Half Life 2 Episode 3 may have been leaked online by Half Life writer and ex-Valve employee, Mark Laidlaw. He says this was just a gender-swapped dream he had, which sounds like good legal cover for revealing state secrets, but it might be the best gamers are gonna get for how the franchise would’ve ended.

• A man in Portsmouth (UK) has lived the Scooby-Doo dream of being arrested for pretending to be a ghost in a cemetery. Professor Hyde-White is still wanted for questioning. Local law enforcement has thanked the local meddling kids for their assistance in the case.

• Artist (depending on taste) Damien Hurst has put out a new show that (warning: some artful unclothed figures) isn’t exactly thrilling the art world. I can honestly say nothing there would go with my decor, with the possible exception of the Optimus Prime statue.

• On the more affordable side of collecting cool stuff, a lucky visitor to a thrift store scored several real-life NASA space suits. They found five of them and bought them for twenty cents apiece. I’d call that the bargain of the century.

• Merriam-Webster has a neat thingie on their website that lets you look up the first year a word was used in print. I am proud to represent the year that “labradoodle” finally made it to the page.

• And now a Unity game for the dual use of wasting time and wasting zombies: Armored Kitten! You’re a kitten in space marine armor, using your upgradable arsenal to defeat an incoming army of undead and monstrosities.

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Mother Nature has a cruel sense of humor…

by Aaron Williams on August 22, 2017 at 3:19 AM
Posted In: Science ahoy!

We experienced the total eclipse of the sun today, my son and I, traveling about an hour north of our home to Plattsburg. It’s a lovely little town that had a public park with food vendors, two playgrounds, ample free parking, and even a collection of six Corvette cars to admire. It was the perfect spot for eclipse-viewing.

Except for the clouds. And then the rain.

Josh got to see the partial eclipse through his glasses when the clouds briefly gave a glimpse of the celestial goings-on. Even with the clouds, we still got to experience near-darkness coming and going as if a giant storm made out of steel plates was passing overhead. I mean, an eclipse is the Moon passing between the Earth and the Sun, so adding clouds just means we got even more eclipse, right?

Then an actual thunderstorm showed up and it’s pretty much been raining ever since, as Missouri undergoes its eventual change into a tropical zone, complete with monsoons. I’m hoping our eventual dragon fruit and mango crops are among the most sought-after, to make up for all the flooding.

Leaving the area also reminded me how it’s very easy to get into small towns, but very hard to get out of them en masse, and not just in a metaphorical sense. There are a lot of highways that go into T-junctions where those exiting want to turn right (which is easier) or left (which is cruel to everyone behind you), but you can’t make your turn until there’s no cross-traffic, which could theoretically never happen. To add insult to injury, I was in a bit of a dead zone, such that Google Maps couldn’t tell me it had located a faster escape route home.

I’m still glad I went. I have a grainy video of a baseball field getting dark and then getting light, with Josh going from sitting beside me to climbing the backstop fence. I think he was just as excited to discover his Pokemon backpack glowed in the dark as he was about the astronomical events above us. He also was able to wade through some truly epic mud puddles and eat pizza for lunch, so I’m sure for him it was a day well spent.

And the sun came back, I think. I’ll have to wait for the rain to stop before I can tell for sure. 🙂

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We’re off to see the eclipse! How about an FFN strip to commemorate it?

by Aaron Williams on August 21, 2017 at 9:53 AM
Posted In: Science ahoy!

I’m taking the boy to (hopefully) see the eclipse today. My plan is to drive an hour north of Kansas City (traffic allowing) and get a decent amount of time in totality.

With that in mind, I kind of added the event to Full Frontal Nerdity’s current Cthulhu-based campaign.

If all goes well, and the clouds part enough, I’ll have some photos to share. If they don’t, as may be the case since I’m hearing thunder outside right now, I may have reports of a gloomy day becoming slightly gloomier while I sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic. If I somehow get superpowers, I’m hoping I get a better storyline than the ones NBC gave us. 🙂

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Because Batman, that’s why.

by Aaron Williams on August 19, 2017 at 4:36 AM
Posted In: Mystery Clip Theater, Sequential Artistry

There’s a scene from a 3-part Justice League animated series story entitled “Starcrossed.” Our heroes are on the run from the hawk people, who have invaded Earth. They have a plan to move about in their civilian identities, which they haven’t revealed to each other yet. Here’s how it originally aired.

This version more accurately reflects the internet’s view of what should have happened:

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My kid is back at school and my back hurts…

by Aaron Williams on August 15, 2017 at 10:12 PM
Posted In: From the Mouth of Madness, Paper with words on, The Basement Storage Bin

This was another jam-packed week and weekend, as Josh headed off to second grade and Cristi had to get a new classroom put together (with my help). Having helped my wife to move things relevant to her Early Childhood teaching duties before, as well as being called upon to repair some of those items after too many moves or too much love, I have to say two things:

1. Every grade-school classroom in the nation should probably have at least two wood clamps and some heavy-duty wood glue on hand. All that blonde wood stuff will eventually crack or be damaged, but it’s sturdy enough to take some repair work and still be almost as good as new.

2. Anyone who uses something like “Gorilla Glue” on wood should be shunned by society at large for their sins. I don’t care what it says it can hold together, it doesn’t do well with wood, and when it fails, it leaves a non-porous mess that has to be picked or sanded off so some real wood glue can soak in and hold the pieces together.

And, naturally, somewhere along the way I pinched a nerve in my back hard enough that I feel like I should be bleeding internally. I’ve had this happen before, and the worst part is not wanting to go to bed, since lying down for over an hour just lets the nerve endings regroup and attack when you least expect it. I probably helped bring this on myself due to sitting at a keyboard most of the day and not getting enough potassium in my diet, so walking Josh to and from the bus stop every day and snacking on bananas should help.

On the up side, I’ve managed to get a lot of writing done, and I’m about ready to inflict some on the world at large. I’ve got one idea that would kind of be a text-based webcomic, featuring a few pages of development a week. Of course, I’m trying to flesh it out and make sure it’s got legs before doing so, but I think it’ll work. Look for that (and a new blog category) soon.

Now to draw some more without leaning forward or moving my hips, because if I do, the demons will make my vision go red and I may wind up on the floor again. 🙂

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Monday morning distractions.

by Aaron Williams on August 7, 2017 at 5:49 AM
Posted In: It's got Robots and Lasers, Nostalgia!, Science ahoy!, Tabletop Gaming, Video Gaming

• This is kind of interesting from a math vs. art perspective: The Hidden Complexity of Slot Machines.

• I have a bunch of old HO-scale train stuff I wish I had the time and space to put up, but one guy has managed to put a train setup valued at $3 million in his basement, and he’s still adding on to it.

• Atari is coming out with its own retro console, but the hardware specs hint that it does a lot more than play old 8-bit games.

• A bit of a language warning on this next one, but the minds behind the Warhammer40K send-up, “If the Emperor Had a Text-To-Speech Device” have put out a pilot episode of “If The Emperor Had a Podcast.” While there is heretical language not fit for the ears of younglings, some steps are taken in the podcast to limit such utterances… but still…

• All of Galaxy Magazine’s 30-year run is now available online. Get’cher classic sci-fi using a method the writers of the era could only dream about!

• A bit of strategy for your time-waster of the moment: Castle Woodwarf. Hire dwarves, upgrade your environment and equipment, and try to make sure your dragon stays fed.

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