Destroying the World

So here’s a couple of cool things, especially if you think the human race will be eliminated sometime this year…

First up is a simulation of what would happen if a rogue star happened to fly through the solar system: http://janus.astro.umd.edu/orbits/nbdy/rstar.html

You can change around the various numbers to see how close the star will come to the sun and Earth – just keep in mind the blue dot is the Earth! That we’re on. Just think of that when you see it whizzing off to destinations unknown…without a sun, without any daylight and with mass chaos everywhere.

For more fun and a bit more graphics bang, check out Universe Sandbox (http://universesandbox.com/), which lets you toss in asteroids, planets and more. You can even play around with scenarios like seeing how close that asteroid in 2010 came…which is very scary to watch!

So have a go at destroying humanity

So I’m getting a convertible

Since my first ride in a convertible (in high school, in a ’67 Mustang), I’ve always wanted one, but never really had the urge to really look for one or price one up. Now an opportunity has come up to get a FREE CAR, which happens to be a first-generation Mazda MX-5 (the one with the pop-up headlights), which is one car I’ve always thought would be really fun to own and drive.

It’s small, rear-wheel drive, perfectly balanced, convertible (for those few weeks every year that the British weather lets you enjoy top-down weather) and apart from some common but well-documented rust areas apparently it’s a solid car to drive.

With cheap storage costs it’ll be a decent deal, although insurance will be a bugger. Even though it’s free the end cost after it’s fixed up will probably be close to what I could get a good running car for: there’s no interior except for the dash and steering wheel, it hasn’t run in 2 years so it’ll need a new cambelt and maybe tires straight off, it needs an exhaust and the rust I mentioned will have to be cut away and replaced with new steel, then rustproofed and painted.

Luckily a workmate knows how to fix up cars and knows a few people locally who can deal with the welding and electronic stuff (to bypass/remove the faulty alarm), plus his son can do things like take the brakes off and clean them up to see if they’re OK, etc. So in effect I’m getting a new car and spreading the ‘payments’ over a month or two, then I pay the Vehicle Excise Duty (mistakenly called the ‘road tax’ by many British), get it on my insurance and take it to the MOT centre where it gets inspected to make sure it’s legally road-worthy. Once that’s done it’s top-down time, no matter what the weather is like

The first comment I got on Facebook after I said I’d be getting an MX-5 is that it’s a “hairdresser’s car”, which is what Brits call a “girl car”. Fair enough, it’s a small convertible but to be honest I don’t see many women driving an MX-5 around. It’s usually men, and men who know what a decently performing car is like. (Maybe it doesn’t help that the first person I knew who had one of these cars is a gay guy named Bart.) But then, most British folk call the Jeep Wranger a “hairdresser’s car” too…not something I would call off-roaders, hunters and rock crawlers, really, who are the only people I’ve seen drive Wranglers.

So the list of stuff to get for this car seems long, but I’m finding really cheap stuff (like a complete exhaust system for £30) because there’s a big market of MX-5 “breakers”, or people who buy old MX-5′s and take them apart to sell the parts. I can get whole doors, body panels, sets of wheels with tires, etc., it’s all about looking as much as possible and comparing prices.

Could I get a whole, running car cheaper? Maybe. But putting together (or, to be fair, helping to put together) a car that I can turn into a daily driver will be part of the joy of driving it.

And I fully intend to keep the White Lightning (the Saab 900S) – I’ll need it to carry all the parts I have to get!

As for a name for the MX-5? Not sure yet, but maybe “Marty” or “Max”, to keep with the M-theme.

How to watch the Star Wars movies: IV, V, II, III, VI

Great blog post from a full-on Star Wars geek about the best way to watch the Star Wars movies. Notice Episode I is ‘missing’. Here’s why: Red Letter Media’s 70-minute review of Episode I

Anyway, check out this blog post to see why this is the best and most entertaining way to watch the Star Wars saga, and read all the way to the end to read about a real test with someone who’d never watched the Star Wars movies before.

Yeah, been a while

I’ve been thinking about starting up another blog, based on geekdom, consisting of basically reposting and commenting on other articles online, which would cover these sorts of things: radio-control stuff (the industry I work in, basically) video/computer games computer stuff techie things political things like SOPA/PIPA, etc. that sort of thing I like reading and talking about this sort of thing, so that’s why I was thinking about doing another blog. Call it something like ‘geekgasm’ or ‘geektastic’ (the URLs of which are taken in nearly every form).

Then I thought about it some more and thought about what the end goal would be – monetizing? writing for another, bigger blog (like engadget, etc.)? what? Well monetizing is pointless for someone like me, because I don’t want to do the web SEO thing and try to write thought-provoking articles every day or two. And I already do enough writing in my day job and after hours that I don’t want to try to break into a whole new field, which will take loads of time and effort.

So I think I’ll just work on this blog here, get some writing done for my other blog http://frankthewriter.wordpress.com/ and work on expanding my thoughts that I put into Twitter messages into longer blog posts.

Sound alright?

Stephen King on Harry Potter vs Twilight

Reuters: ‘Online privacy leaks worsen; “Do not track” gains steam’

A new study from a Stanford University researcher has found that a lot of  the little bits and pieces of supposedly anonymous data being deposited by your web browser are actually being gathered and reassembled by dozens of companies and sold. And stopping that from happening takes more than a little bit of effort, helped by a growing movement for “do not track” legislation.

Link to the Reuters article

It saddens me (seriously) that many folks I know don’t know that they’re being tracked, and nearly all of them say they don’t care after being told. And most of the ones that DO care about being tracked online just can’t be bothered to take simple measures to stop the tracking from happening, even though it barely impacts their internet browsing.

So here’s what I do to limit the online tracking as much as possible:

I use the Firefox browser with certain key add-ons to guarantee privacy (as much as possible, anyway) and practically zero online tracking:

• Adblock
• Ghostery
• Noscript
• Beef Taco
• Disconnect

To stop Facebook from tracking my movements across the web, I use Facebook only with the Opera browser on all my computers, and I limit the links I click on within Facebook. If there’s a link I really want to check out, I’ll copy the link address (right-click and choose ‘copy link location’) and paste it into Firefox.

So why go through all this effort?

This comment from this Reddit thread explains:

As a small constrained example, if you cross reference your real name from Facebook with every Facebook Like button you get a list of web pages that the person has visited. That’s incredibly sensitive information and given the cross-borders aspect there are no laws whatsoever preventing this information being sold. It’s a highly valuable gold mine.

Google have even more personal data but rarely get flak like Facebook does. Through Google+, Gmail and the AdWords/DoubleClick trackers around the web they get to see almost everything you do online.

Now, forgive me for not being a good customer, but screw that. I don’t want my information (even anonymously) connected to other bits of information. I encrypt/block/hide what I can and screw the marketers who want to sell/use this information.

 

On a somewhat related note, the German government has been found to have spread spyware among its citizens so it could spy on them, something the FBI tried several years ago. So it’s always worth the effort to protect yourself online!

Ron Swanson Life Lesson

Film project under way!

So my podcasting partner and I are finally about to start actually FILMING instead of TALKING about filming. Various things like vacations, work/kid/family schedules, etc., have all conspired to make the filming not happen yet, and as it stands we’ll have one weekday night every two weeks to do some filming, then talk about the next bit that we want to do.

So…hopefully we’ll have some videos on YouTube in the next couple of weeks!

Brilliant (I think) Minecraft idea: Minecraft Wars!

I play only survival single player right now but this would definitely get me REALLY interested in SMP. I posted this on Reddit and Something Awful but it’s not getting much traction in either place, so I’ll waste some more space on the internets and post it here.

Here’s the idea:

Groups of people like to build stuff on shared servers

Most servers have a home web forum where members chat and discuss whatever

None of these server members have any way of crossing over and killing each other

So…make a central website called MinecraftWars.com or whatever so there is one site where members of various servers can call out groups on other servers and choose a date for a battle.

This combines several things: FPS combat; building defenses, traps & dungeons; the need for quick, targeted crafting by the attacking team & lots more!

Here’s how I see it working:

• The group leaders agree terms and a time (after lots of smack-talk of course)
• For example two back-to-back Capture the Flag battles take place, for a certain amount of time (say 1 or 2 hours max), one battle on each server, one right after the other.
• Another example couple be a single battle of attack & defense, such as a raid for a hidden block of wool or whatever, once this hidden block is destroyed the game is one, etc. – the possibilities are endless.
• The server admins are able to allow a certain number of members and a certain number of non-members (like 16 on a side) this is one part I’m not sure about, but there must be a mod that can do this
• The home group build up defenses, traps, dungeons, towns, whatever, and place a ‘flag’ block in the fortified area, or hide The Block That Must Be Destroyed somewhere
• The visiting group spawn in an area chosen by the home group, but they are not to be attacked for, say, 5-10 minutes to allow for scouting, crafting, etc. The visitor spawn must be in an unmodified, unbuilt-up area, etc., basically a safe zone. The spawn point must be a certain number of blocks away from the fortifications, for example the maximum draw distance at max resolution, but the attacking team must find the fortress.
• The terms of the battle could include details on arms & armor that must be supplied by the home group (see below), to speed things along. Once the supplies have been accounted for and the visiting team is ready, the visiting leader announces in chat that the battle is on.
• Negotiations could be made for respawns in the case of death, etc.: no respawns (hardcore!), 3 respawns, 5, unlimited, etc.
• The visitors must locate the home group’s fortifications, destroy the block that has to be destroyed or find the ‘flag’ block and get back to the spawn point as quickly as they can
• Lowest time wins in the case of CTF

Mods
There must be mods that can be written up for this, if they don’t exist already: new server world for each new game, turn off mobs (optional), visitor spawn area for users logging in using a certain ID/password, countdown timer to be shown on everyone’s screen for the safe time at the beginning of the game, the ‘flag’ block, the detection of the flag block in the area of the visitor spawn, etc.

Supply Chest
For the chest of supplies that the visiting group can negotiate for, I was thinking it would have a certain pre-agreed number of suits of armor, swords and basic tools to get started. For example, for a squad of 10 attackers the negotiation could be: 5 shovels, 5 picks, 10 swords, 5 suits of armor, 2 crafting tables – and that’s it.

I can imagine a well-disciplined group of attackers would have everyone with a pre-arranged role right from the start, so like in the first couple of minutes a couple of team members build basic fall-back shelter (a hole with a wooden door) while the others are scouting and the leader is taking in all the info and generating a map (not with a server mod, I mean ‘getting the lay of the land’), then deciding to send scouting parties out to find whatever, etc.

…so, what does anyone think?

9/11 thoughts

OK, a week late to the party, but here’s my 2p:

I happily skipped all the commemoration stuff on TV, but while I was in the airport last Sunday I couldn’t miss all the stuff on the airport TVs. (Flying on 9/11 didn’t bother me at all, the chances of anyone being killed in a terrorist attack are still like 1 in 25 million or so.) To me, the TV shows and commentary BS is like the 25th anniversary of the JFK assassination when I was a teenager – it’s just shown over and over and over again so it doesn’t seem real and you just end up numb (or I guess if you’re a Tea Party member you get all enraged, who knows, I still don’t get the Tea Party).

Maybe this will be controversial, but the US and other countries lost over 3,000 people in the attacks. That’s a lot of people, and the results could have been worse, but they weren’t – they didn’t need to be, the message got across. And in the 10 years since, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or displaced in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., and there’s no help getting to them from the US, no memorial services, no national mourning date, nothing. The TSA is a mockery (even the guy who wrote the original bill that started it wants the TSA shut down), the Patriot Act is misused and abused and there’s a whole string of worse stuff that’s happened (the banking crisis and recession brought on by normal human greed, etc.) that IMO outshines 9/11 but could be seen as stemming from 9/11.

And maybe this is even more controversial (although I’ve read it on some news websites and in newspapers, so maybe it’s not just me), but even with Bin Laden dead and sleeping with the fishes, his message is still out there and he ‘won’ in some (many?) respects. Westerners are/can be overly frightened by the media, countries still hate the US, there’s still 130+ countries in the world with US military presence (there’s only ~150 countries in the world), American soldiers (some of them my friends) are sent away for months on end to do pointless military actions, the masses are cowed into agreeing to go with the flow like these backscatter scans, security lines and other stuff, no one blinks an eye at the ‘we have to do this or the terrrorists win’ line, etc.

It seems that maybe some things are changing recently, and I accept things like the company line regarding ‘national security’ will never get back to pre-9/11 levels, but it’s been so ridiculous for many years it’s (been) at comical levels.

I know that living outside the US for going on 8 years has changed my views on being an American, and sorry if I’ve offended anyone, but I definitely think that things changed for the worse for America & Americans after 9/11. Sorry for the rant-ish post!