A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
Category Archives: Talk
Talk about politics, society, science, computers, internet, psychology, and philosophy.
Did mankind land on the moon?
Did mankind land on the moon? NVIDIA would say, “yes!”
You don’t need less configuration
Don’t complain about things (computers, Linux installations, Desktops and Window Managers) being too customizable!
Ask for either administrator locked customizations or customization themes.
If you have to administer a thousand workstations and the users can customize themselves to hell and back twice over, then I can understand you do not want too many customization options open to the user…
Lobby for administrator locked customizations (a customization setting in itself, of course!)
If you feel like starting your computer and trying to set it up is like entering the cockpit of a Boeing 777, then I can also understand that you would like less customization options you had to worry about…
Lobby for a function like a customization theme, where you can download a set of customization settings from the web or get them from a friend.
See, in both these scenarios you’re not really in the need of less configuration, you’re in the need of different configuration…
…if you disagree, buy a Mac! 😛
Patented language
Shut up, I’ve patented language!
Why do Vampires eat humans?
One thing about vampires that really confuses me is the fact that they like to suck the blood of humans, and they get depressed and pitiable if they have to feed on some animal.
I mean, have you ever met a person you would like to eat? Okay part from the fact that it’s cannibalistic and totally wrong… I’d say most people drink, smoke, or just plain eat wrong.
If I was a vampire, I’d go depressed if I only had people’s blood to suck.
But then again, I know a vampire is supposed to be all symbolic and not that pragmatic that they would only hunt on a health club…
Bear = Yeti? Bigfoot? Sasquatch?
Ever wondered where the theories of Yeti, Bigfoot and the likes are coming from? I think they might have been bear sightings (unless of course there was some odd – human – fellow living out there in the wilderness).
I mean, imagine this guy walking past you late one night… no wonder if you start spreading rumours of strange “creatures” in the wilderness…
Orphan Black, TV-tip
Orphan Black is a science fiction TV-show. It features Sarah Manning, a street-wise Orphan from England, who witnesses a woman looking exactly like her committing suicide by jumping in front of a train.
Being a survivor-type, and perhaps also driven by curiosity, Sarah picks up the dead woman’s bag, abandoned at the platform, and concoct a plan to take over her identity in order to steal money from her.
Sarah needs the money to get away with her daughter, Kira, whom she has not seen in almost a year, and her step-brother, Felix.
Taking over the dead woman’s life proves to present more problems than solutions and soon Sarah finds herself in the middle of a complex plot involving murderers, clones and dirty cops.
Tatiana Maslany plays Sarah, and Allison, and Cosima and…
It soon turns out that the woman Sarah witnessed committing suicide is far from the only one looking like her. In fact, the plot is full of Sarah-Manning-look-a-like clones, from the home making soccer mom Allison, to the smart scientist Cosima, to the outright crazy Helena.
All these characters are played by one actor, Tatiana Maslany. Since most every scene of the show features at least one clone, Maslany is pulling the show in the most literary sense!
From a technical point of view it gets extra interesting when there’s more than one clone in front of the camera, especially when they interact by touch.
If you check the above film you might pick up that there’s no green screen thing going on here. Instead the camera is programmed so that it will make the exact same moves repeatedly and Tatiana can play the scene as one clone, then the other, and finally the shots are merged digitally.
When clones are touching a recording of the scene with no actors is used to create a background that can be used to block out Tatianas double, Catherine. Then a scene where Tatiana plays the clone is superimposed on the blocked out area.
It’s pretty much subtraction and addition … but with moving pictures… 😀
When? Where? How?
Orphan Black has just finished season two and will, hopefully, be back for season three in 2015. So if you’re new to the show you have two nice seasons to catch up, and I really recommend you do!
Part from being a technical masterpiece and a proof that there are some really sharp actors out there, Orphan Black is also a mesmerizing story dipping into themes like identity and nature versus nurture.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you check out Orphan Black!
Puppet Configuration Management
Puppet is an open source configuration management utility that works on Linux and Windows and has its own declarative language to describe system configuration. (Sounds like just what Windows needs!)
Saturn’s hexagonal storm
Did you know there’s a storm on Saturn’s north pole that is shaped as a hexagon?
So, what is this? Alien tech? A gate to hell? Are we living in the matrix? Did the Illuminati do it?
Here’s an example of how this happens in a fluid:
And here’s how a wobbly drill bit can create a pentagonal hole in a piece of metal:
It’s still amazing although it’s most likely not alien, the matrix, nor the Illuminati!
It could, however, be a gate to hell…
If you ride a spaceship in there, and you’ve been a bad person in life… you may go to hell… 😛
Google glass – resistance is futile!
See the similarities? I think the BoRG collective has arrived and become board members of Google!
Talkwards 