Fusion Panda

Holy CRAP

grant.154@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:03:46 GMT

Some guy made a video from the top of the Burj Dubai, the world's new tallest building, set to open on January 4th:

People of Wal-Mart

grant.154@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:46:40 GMT

Going to Wal-Mart is always kind of a surreal experience for me, but after spending a good chunk of time this week at peopleofwalmart.com, I can see that my trips there have been relatively tame.

We live in a totally ridiculous world. And I love that. Most of the time.

Auto-Tune, Carl Sagan, and You, or: We All Have Cher to Blame/Thank For This

grant.154@gmail.com — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:22:18 GMT

I watched a great "Know Your Meme" video today, which helps explain Auto-Tune, the pitch-correcting software that Cher first used in the 1998 song "Believe," made most popular by the rapper/singer T-Pain, and which is now the source of lots of great internet videos. Weird Al even makes a guest appearance to explain how it works:

As they point out in the video, what makes Auto-Tune truly great though is when it's used to make music from non-musical sources. My personal favorite are these songs:

"A Glorious Dawn," by Carl Sagan and featuring Stephen Hawking:

and "We Are All Connected," with Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye:

And it's always worth watching I'm On A Boat, which will be literally true for me in about a month.

current weather: Clear, 49, Wind: calm

Something I did, at least (and hopefully not a repeat)

grant.154@gmail.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:22:49 GMT

Back on Sunday, October 18th, Ian and I took a little roadtrip, intending to take some photos of the falls colors in and around Ian's hometown of East Liverpool.

East Liverpool has a certain significance for me, at least as far as roadtrips go, because it was the destination of the first real "roadtrip" I ever attempted, in order to get some photographs for a school project. That was back before I even had a digital camera.

Ian and I set out, but unfortunately it was cloudier than forecast, and the leaves still seemed pretty green overall. I suggested a detour to Pittsburgh to give the clouds some time to clear. It also gave me a chance to check on something at IKEA I wanted to see, and I wanted to show Ian the view of downtown from Mt. Washington. Fortunately the clouds had started to clear by then, and getting in to downtown was particularly easy since the Steelers were playing the Browns at Heinz Field at the time:

I really love the view from Grandview Avenue, it's really unique to be standing on the ground, at a point higher than most of the buildings, but so close by:

After that we drove to East Liverpool, had chili dogs at the Hot Dog Shoppe, and then went looking around for things to photograph, but we kind of struck out. Ian didn't seem real satisfied with anything. For example, Ian wanted to visit a cemetery that sat up on a hill and had a good view of the valley below - only now there's a Wal-Mart in the valley.

I did get a cool picture of the sunset and the leaves in Beaver Creek State Park:

I thought it was a pretty cool trip, but truthfully I'm not sure Ian would agree, he seemed pretty disappointed. Still, it was good to spend time with him. I saw him once more a few days later but he's completely dropped off the radar again since then.

current weather: Clear, 37, Wind: NE 4

50 Years of Space Exploration Visualized

grant.154@gmail.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:01:11 GMT

I've taken a ton of photographs over the last week, but it's taking me forever to go through them, make HDRs, upload them and tag them. I had hoped to start writing about them tonight but I'm still working on it.

So I have to fall back on some links again.

In this case, something that combines space exploration and maps, a chart made by National Geographic that give a visual representation of 50 years of missions to explore our solar system and space beyond.

The original National Geographic page is here, which has a special viewer, or you can view the whole thing in one big image here.

****

Oops. Gregg's right, I already wrote about this two weeks ago.

current weather: Partly Cloudy/Haze, 37, Wind: calm; Man it was cold today

A rich and ancient culture!

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:49:55 GMT

I have some follow-up on that Klingon propaganda video I posted a few days ago, from Trekmovie.com.

As it turns out the video was produced by a fan named Mark Farinas, who also happens to make viral videos for advertisers as a living. The article has some interesting details about some of the inspiration, the translation, and how it was made.

Some (Turkish) Star Trek fans already had identified the children's choir background music as actually being a Turkish children's song.

He's put out a new version with subtitles and credits, if you want to know what they're actually saying. I have to say, I like the video a lot more with subtitles:

And just because I can, this seems like an appropriate time to point out that the United Federation of Planets actually got an official national anthem in the 7th season of Deep Space Nine:

(that's not the video from the episode, so it's spoiler-free)

I need to try this out

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:18:51 GMT

First off, I'm feeling a lot better today. I'm not really sure what was wrong with me, maybe a low level virus or something. I had a really bad headache last night, and really felt the need to go to bed. I slept ok, although I was cold and sweaty through most of the night. Today I've been gradually feeling better all day.

The next thing in my massive backlog of things to write about is this video, in which a guy demonstrates a method to consistently de-bone flat (the two-bone variety) chicken wings:

I don't really like eating chicken wings, for much the same reason that I don't like eating ribs - sure, they taste good, but they're a huge mess and it seems like it takes a whole lot of effort and mess for very little meat.

But this looks like it could really help out with that - I'd like to try it out sometime soon.

current weather: Mostly Cloudy, 45, Wind: NW 12; Mostly cloudy, but the sun is breaking through

Time Lapse of the Entire 2008 Hurricane Season

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:26:26 GMT

I've done a particularly poor job of writing lately. Today I had hoped to change that, but I don't feel good at all this evening. I had a bad (traditional) headache in the late afternoon, continuing now, and I'm feeling really tired and kind of nauseous.

In the meantime though, I have a huge backlog of links to share, so I might as well get that started.

The video that this link takes you to is was produced by NOAA, and represents the water vapor satellite imagery for the entire 2008 hurricane season. Individual hurricanes are labeled. I think it's a particularly cool video, as it is essentially an uninterrupted satellite loop covering half of an entire year. Besides the hurricanes, you can see things like the daily cycle of thunderstorms popping up, which starts to recede into the tropics during September.

http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/MediaDetail.php?MediaID=75&MediaTypeID=2

As for me, I think it might be bedtime.

current weather: Mostly Cloudy, 48, Wind: SW 4

Qo'noS Calling

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:05:42 GMT

Among the (particularly nerdy) websites I frequent, this video has been all over the place today.

It's a Klingon Empire propaganda video, in the style of Communist Chinese or Russian propaganda:

It's sort of a mystery who made it, and why, but there's no denying that the quality is really very good and the detail is just insane. That's a targ in the test screen at the beginning, the Klingons are actually speaking and singing in Klingon, there are mek'leths and bat'leths, there's even a Pakled, and the Klingon towards the end looks just like Kor!

Some people have thought it was a viral ad for either the next Star Trek movie or the Star Trek Online game, but both seem unlikely. Most evidence points to it just being a pet project of some guy that makes videos for PETA and Greenpeace - and it's possible still that it's somehow supposed to lead to those (based on what I've read of the translation), but whatever the case, it's a damn cool video.

I mean, I don't even like Klingons; Cardassians, Romulans, the Federation AND the Dominion are way cooler. But this almost changes my mind!

***

Update: according to those who actually can read/understand Klingon, apparently the pronunciation and grammar are particularly bad, to the point of making most of it gibberish. Hell if I can tell though :).

Dallas + Star Trek + Battlestar Galactica = Awesome

grant.154@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:55:38 GMT

I stumbled across some cool videos on YouTube this evening that I wanted to share.

I guess people have been making new intros for TV shows, using the famous intro to Dallas as a template.

You can see the Dallas intro here:

And here's a totally awesome version of the Dallas intro, for Star Trek: The Next Generation:

One for Star Trek: Voyager:

**** Spoiler Warning (only watch this one if you've seen all of BSG!)
And finally one for Battlestar Galactica:

I was really hoping to find one for Deep Space Nine but it doesn't look like anyone has made one.

**** Spoiler Warning (don't watch this one if you are currently or ever plan to watch DS9 in the future)
However, someone has made a Deep Space Nine intro based on the Battlestar Galactica intro, which is pretty awesome:

Ian on Flickr

grant.154@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:14:39 GMT

Bridge at Night
Originally uploaded by Ian Malcolm Smith.

I wanted to mention that Ian has started uploading photos to Flickr, and they're pretty awesome, like this one. I'm hoping to see a lot more in the future!

More epic than I expected

grant.154@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:11:59 GMT

I was watching Seven Samurai for the first time this evening, with Ryan. I was starting to wonder how the movie was going to resolve itself, when two Kanji representing "Intermission" came on the screen.

It was then that I realized that at 1 hour and 40 minutes in, we had just hit the halfway point. Wow.

So we'll have to finish it later. And I need to go to bed because I need to get into work at a reasonable time tomorrow instead of what I tend to call "contractor's hours."

I wanted to say thank you to everyone for your responses and suggestions to my post yesterday. I really appreciate it!

current weather: Partly Cloudy, 42, Wind: calm; Chance of snow Friday and Saturday. Ugh.

I humbly request some input

grant.154@gmail.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:59:19 GMT

I have a friends-only post coming up immediately after this one. It's important, well, to me anyway, and I would really like some input but I can't just put it here. So please log in and check it out if you get a chance.

Mom and Dad: you're not out of the loop on this, it's something we've already discussed.

Always time for a map

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:31:19 GMT

It's late, I should be in bed, but I couldn't let this wait longer to post.

The National Geographic put together a spectacular thematic map of space exploration to date.

You can see a small flash-based map that you can zoom into here, or you can see a huge .jpg of the image here.

The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World

grant.154@gmail.com — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:32:45 GMT

I've been watching The Ascent of Money documentary the last few days.

It's based on the book of the same name by Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, who is also the host of the series. The documentary was first produced for Channel 4 in the UK as a 6-hour series, and then it was shown on PBS first as a shortened 2-hour version and then later as a 4-hour version.

I've been watching the UK version.

Mom and Dad had recommended it to me, and I caught a little bit of a PBS airing back in July.

I'm only halfway through, but I really like it so far. I find myself wondering why I didn't learn more of this sort of thing in school.

If you're interested, you can watch the 2-hour and 4-hour versions that aired on PBS online, available here:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/

current weather: Light Rain, 63, Wind: SW 7, Rain today: 0.03"

Me Am Play Gods!

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:34:05 GMT

I really enjoyed this comic entitled "Caveman Science Fiction."

Sometimes I take a photograph, and I'm satisfied with the results, but what I saw in person was a lot more interesting. This photo that I took on Friday evening in the Giant Eagle parking lot is one of those photos:

The sun was just setting, and the (not quite) full moon had risen not long before in the east. At the moment I walked out of the grocery store, the moon was visible right between these two banks of clouds - which were moving, from the photo's perspective, to the left.

I hoofed it to my car and grabbed my camera. But I don't have a very good zoom, and even if I did, there was no way to get the detail of both the clouds *and* the moon in one photo. I tried to take an HDR but the clouds were moving very fast, and I couldn't hold the camera very steady. But it was really beautiful in person. And fleeting - about 1 minute after I took this the moon was fully behind clouds.

As I was taking the photo, a guy was walking past me, looked at me weird because he had no idea what I was taking a photo of, and then turned and saw the moon, stopped, just said "wow" and took in the view for a moment. That happens to me sometimes when I'm taking photos, and I love it. It's kind of neat to think that someone noticed something they wouldn't have otherwise, just because they saw me with my camera out.

I didn't realize it at the time, but what I was seeing was actually the Harvest Moon, or maybe a day or so before the Harvest Moon. I'd heard the name before, but until I read the Wikipedia article on the subject, I didn't really realize why the Harvest Moon is so unique.

For one thing, a full moon always rises right at about sunset. That seems obvious now that I think about it but I didn't know that before. That's true of all full moons, but in the case of full moons near the equinox at mid-latitudes, the moon rises with a shallower angle to the horizon, meaning it seems to hang around low to the horizon for a longer period of time than usual. When the moon is low, it looks larger, because of the "moon illusion," and it's more likely to look more colorful because you're viewing it through more atmosphere than usual.

By the way, if I'm mangling the astronomy here, feel free to correct me if you know more about this than I do. It's possible I'm not interpreting these articles correctly.

Finally, I wanted to share this ESPN commercial, which I saw for the first time today, although I think it might actually be 3 or more years old. If you're an OSU fan I think you'll particularly like it. Mark, you specifically should NOT watch it because I know you won't find it funny:

current weather: Clear, 45, Wind: calm; Moon's pretty prominent tonight

The Same Color Optical Illusion

grant.154@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:56:47 GMT

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Optical illusions are really cool, but at the same time incredibly frustrating because it makes me feel like my brain and eyes have let me down.

current weather: Cloudy, 56, Wind: SW 13; My new apartment has storm windows, which I put into place today. I haven't decided if I'm going to use plastic on any (or all) of the windows this winter.

Cool, and also Scary

grant.154@gmail.com — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:30:06 GMT

My GPSmap 60CSx came with a 64 MB MicroSD card when I bought it.

That means that whenever I travel somewhere with it, if I want to load a full map with roads and points of interest, I need to do it manually before I leave. 64 MB is enough to hold about half of Ohio.

But I realized two things recently: first, that 2 GB MicroSD cards only cost $10 (or less), and that the entire North America map set is only about 1.5 GB.

So I'm installing the new card today. It'll be cool to have the whole North America detailed map on there all the time.

But that's not why I'm writing this. The GPS unit saves tracks - basically a log of position, speed, etc. anytime I'm using it. It runs out of room fast, though, especially when I fill the MicroSD card with maps, so I (sometimes) backup the tracks to my computer, but rarely do I do all that much with them, even though I can glean a lot of information from them, should I wish.

Well, it turns out that much like how my camera was taking RAW images without my realizing it, and filling up my SD card there, I've had an option selected at least since July of 2007 that backs up ALL tracks to the MicroSD card.

I discovered this when I went to backup the old card. It has a full and complete record of every place my GPS has been active for over the last 2 years and 3 months.

On one hand, this is really exciting, because I thought I had lost a lot of those tracks at various times, because I hadn't had a chance to back them up.

On the other hand, it's sort of weird to realize that this thing I've been carrying around with me could tell anyone who got it exactly where I was at, say, 11:52 am on May 2, 2009.

I think I'll keep it turned on though. Two years of use only made up 23 MB of data, so it should never be able to fill the new card. I haven't been anywhere I wouldn't want anyone to know about anyway :). And if I were, I would just turn off the GPS.

Of course now I've advertised this fact on the internet.

current weather: Mostly Cloudy, 61, Wind: SW 11

Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock

grant.154@gmail.com — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:00:22 GMT

I don't have any real interest in seeing the movie Zombieland, although I have to admit it's getting pretty good reviews.

I just think it's interesting that apparently the four main characters in the movie decide not to use their real names, and instead refer to themselves as the name of the cities they were trying to get to, Columbus (Ohio), Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock.

That's all, just thought that was cool :).

For some reason I'm a fan of place-names as people names (Indiana Jones, etc.)

current weather: Mostly Cloudy, 49, Wind: S 9

Just being honest

grant.154@gmail.com — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:43:14 GMT

As part of trying to get myself back to writing consistently, in the absence of anything better to write about I think I'll just try to come up with an honest account of how I spent my day.

I worked at Employer B until around lunch today. They're moving to a new office tomorrow, which could be cool for me, since it will be much closer. But I almost never actually work there anyway, so maybe not. I had a possible new job opportunity pop up two weeks ago, I'll call them Employer E, but it looks now like that's a bust. It got overly complicated, too, since Employer B also does work for Employer E, and had hoped to have me work for E through B. B had a meeting with E yesterday, and apparently E would actually like me to come work for them exclusively, only it would be in downtown Cleveland, and I would be paid significantly less.

It should be worth noting that I only earn 80% as much as I used to with Employer M when I worked there full-time, and that's pre-tax, with no health insurance, vacation time or overtime. Or job security. On the plus side though I work whenever I feel like it, even from home if I want, and I don't need to be treated like a subhuman employee because I'm *not* really an employee. I make $2 less an hour than that at Employer B, so even less money would be a waste of my time, even if it didn't involve an hour commute into a major city. So I may hear more on the subject, but that's probably not happening.

Anyway, I ran an errand at lunch (mailing a check to rollover my 401k from Employer M to an investment firm for my own IRA - mailing a check that large makes me really nervous), and then worked at Employer M.

As for this evening, I got groceries on the way home, and then watched an episode of the remastered Star Trek and this week's episode of The Soup, which I never realized could be found online, which is great.

I really like the remastered Star Trek - in some ways, with the remastering and the new effects, it makes TOS almost look better than early seasons of TNG. I would love to see effects redone for TNG or even DS9, although for the most part they hold up ok. I don't know how much they can improve the video quality of Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager though, because I think they were all shot on videotape, not film. Enterprise was shot in HD, but I don't think it aired in HD at first.

As much of a Star Trek nerd as I am, I've seen very little of the Original Series, at least full episodes, anyway. Up to this point, I've only seen "The Cage," "Doomsday Machine," and "The Trouble with Tribbles." And that's it. I've seen bits of many more, and know the general story of almost all of them, but have never actually watched them.

I'm not watching them all, I've handpicked a little less than half of them, out of fan favorite lists. Tonight I watched "The Naked Time."

I don't think I've mentioned this here before, partly for privacy for other people involved, but I've actually been exercising pretty consistently for the last three weeks, a nightly 3-mile walk. I'm really liking it so far. But it's raining and cold tonight so no walking today.

I fired up the furnace for a bit this evening for the first time this fall.

current weather: Cloudy/Drizzle, 52, Wind: W 6, Rain today: 0.14"; I kind of like this weather but everyone around me seems to hate it

It's hard to sing with all these marbles in my mouth

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:23:25 GMT

I started looking into the Vitamin String Quartet CDs that article mentioned. They are prolific to say the least. They seem kind of hard to find on... certain corners of the internet, but it would appear that most or maybe all of their songs are available on iTunes or Amazon's mp3 download.

I even like their versions of songs I normally can't stand:

Holy crap, they've even done Duran Duran

And as for songs I already liked:

Some songs are just obvious:

White Noise

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:03:37 GMT

Lifehacker had a very interesting post the other day called The Best Sounds for Getting Work Done.

Among some of the suggestions was a website called SimplyNoise.com, which features a white noise generator.

It does exactly what it claims - generates white noise. You can adjust the volume level manually, or you can select the "oscillate volume" button for something like a wave-crashing effect.

Besides white noise, you can also choose from pink noise or Brownian noise. I would explain the difference, but after having read the Wikipedia entries on them I still have no idea what they are exactly. I do like the way they sound though, especially the Brownian noise.

I've actually used this at work some. It helps flood my cubicle with a soothing sound and forces out other sound, very useful when coworkers are playing music by Tool or Disturbed.

There's also some discussion of ambient music, and specifically Brian Eno's Music for Airports, which lots of people love to listen to while trying to think. I've been listening to it and I like it so far.

I started to realize sometime last year that when I listen to music, there are really 4 possible states I can be in, and that all of my music could be sorted into 4 (slightly overlapping) playlists to match those states:

Upbeat Vocal, Upbeat Instrumental, Ambient Vocal, and Ambient Instrumental.

Upbeat Vocal music is loud music with words. Songs falling into this category tend to get me pumped up and grab my attention - meaning they're best when I want to wake myself up or stay motivated, but can spare brainpower towards actually listening to this music. This kind of music is great for exercise or driving my car, but terrible for trying write a Livejournal entry, do calculations at work, or play a videogame that requires a lot of concentration.

Upbeat Instrumental is also loud and upbeat, but since there are no words, I can find it a little easier to focus on a task. A good example of an upbeat instrumental song would be upbeat videogame music, a symphonic version of a hard rock song, or a good chunk of the music from Battlestar Galactica. Doing something particularly mentally taxing can still be a little tough when listening to this sort of thing.

Ambient Vocal stuff that helps me relax, but still might be a little distracting. Relaxing, but if it has words I still have a tendency to get distracted.

And then finally Ambient Vocal is music that just kind of slides into the background, basically music that is good to work to, as above.

Some songs overlap into more than one category for me, and sometimes I may mix two of them together, but not often.

The big obstacle though, is that it takes forever to go through my music and decide which playlist I want it in, and then it becomes a real beast to maintain the list, or transfer it to my mp3 player. So although I started thinking about this last year, I've only really got it about half complete. Which kind of sucks because it's only really useful when the playlists are available wherever I access my music.

Anyway, if there's one thing I'm certain of it's that pretty much no one would want to read about my music tastes, so I'm sorry if you made it this far. Really the important things in this post were SimplyNoise and Music for Airports, so hopefully you just stopped there and didn't make it this far into my inane ramblings!

current weather: Mostly Cloudy/Breezy, 55, Wind: SW 14, Rain today: 0.49"; I woke up to a thunderstorm this morning, since then it's been chilly and very windy. The power went out at work for about half an hour today at lunch. Looks like lake effect showers up in Cleveland too... getting to be that time of year

Ok, I think this sort of thing has officially gone too far

grant.154@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:30:21 GMT

According to the Columbus Dispatch, there are over 100 sex offenders living in or working in...... Ohio's Nursing Homes!

What we've lost in fins we've gained in seat belts

grant.154@gmail.com — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:58:00 GMT

I have two unrelated videos I'd like to share.

The first is a really cool video put together by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS is a non-profit organization, funded by auto insurers, that does safety testing of vehicles, much like (but not to be confused with) the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which is a government organization.

Both groups do crash testing. The primary difference is that the IIHS does its frontal impact tests with a 40% offset, instead of the full frontal impact test that the NHTSA does.

The IIHS is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and to demonstrate how far car safety features have come in 50 years, and also probably just for fun, they wrecked a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu with a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. The results are pretty impressive:

Consumer Reports did a "director's cut" of the video which explains a little bit of what you see.

And now for something completely different. I was alerted to this video by Nicole on Facebook. It's from the 10 o'clock news on FOX 5 WNYW in New York. Supposedly the anchor was trying to say "keep plucking that chicken," although honestly that still doesn't make sense to me, and it's definitely not what came out of his mouth:

The best part of people dropping the f-bomb over the airwaves (intentional or not) is the reactions of the people around them.

current weather: Cloudy, 67, Wind: SW 3; I think it's supposed to dry out tomorrow

Titan and other moons

grant.154@gmail.com — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:23:17 GMT

One of my favorite parts of the new Star Trek movie was when the Enterprise dropped out of warp in the atmosphere of Titan, and then rose up out of the atmosphere with Saturn in the background.

Well, JJ Abrams, Paramount Pictures, and CBS Studios released high-resolution images of the shot today, and it looks fantastic.

In the real world, and only somewhat related, I saw today that the first rocky planet outside of the solar system has been found. Although it is not a gas giant, it's 5 times more massive than Earth. And way too close to its star. But it's still a breakthrough.

I read a couple of weeks ago that the new Kepler space telescope may actually be able to detect not only rocky planets within the habitable zone of a star, but even moons of gas giants, as small as 0.2 times as massive as Earth.

I know there are all sorts of exciting discoveries being made in all sorts of different fields, but for me personally, the search for planets outside of our solar system is by far the most interesting and exciting to me.

current weather: Clear, 56, Wind: N 1