SPOILER WARNING!

Fight it!

So, another quick little post.  This is one of my favorite sites – I go to it for all my super robot wars news.  And its as simple as that!  Hey, they’re a wordpress blog, too!  How inspiring!  MY BLOG NEEDS A PURPOSE.  Hit the link below, or just click on the SD Gurren Lagann.

http://superrobotwar.wordpress.com/

AKA: When you see it, you'll--

Just more quick neato stuff.  These are Lenticular Clouds.  I didn’t look up how they are made – but I’ve previously read that pilots can glide on these things for thousands of miles, without ever kicking in the engines!  Don’t ask for a source – just shut up and look at the cool picture, dammit~

Source:  http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0901/lenticular_picking_big.jpg

Where's the trigger on this thing...

So, just a quick link.  Wired, who has been featured too much on the blog already, brought my attention to this amazing work of art.  Apparently some genius inventor and clock-collector decided to leave his college with a little piece of creative work.  This thing is five feet across, for chrissakes!

http://www.wired.com/culture/design/magazine/17-02/st_chronophage

What really goes on in your kid's mind...

So, I had one of those moments today where someone reminded me of an amazing dream I had. Last night. That I promised myself I wouldn’t forget. Fortunately, I still remember the important details.

I was in a strange home that was supposed to be my mother’s place and they had me cleaning up the wrap-around porch. However, in the process of taking out some cobwebs, I caused a large, dead bug to topple from its prison and hit my shoulder. Rapidly, I hauled ass inside and tried to settle down – only to notice that there were several large spiderwebs inside the house with similar large bugs. They were like scarab beetles and cicadas combined, in the sense that they were empty shells.

That’s when I turned around and noticed a huge black and red one crawling down the wall towards the floor. Upon reaching the floor, it began to grow into a sort of armored caterpillar. Naturally, I decided to appeal to its low-level brain and shock it by screaming savagely at the bug. It responded with a growl and some playful, puppy-like barks. I then watched as this armored caterpillar took on slight dog-like features.

The rest is a blur – but from this point on, I learned my new dogapillar companion could speak to me through text messages. And we wandered around town.

And that’s all!

(P.S. – Check out the pic!)

Pew pew!

Cortex Command is a lovely down-loadable Java game I’ve discovered through my rummaging on the internet.  Indeed, you have to download and install it old-school style.  Why is this worth your time?

1. It smells like an old-school videogame.
2. You command an army through Hive-Mind (not really, but…)
3. The introduction music is immensely epic!

So I highly reccomend it.  While some people would say its buggy, I prefer the term ‘finicky’.  There’s some collision and velocity issues that may frustrate you if you take the demo too seriously – but if you love beta testing things, or finding innate quirks in games just to exploit them and go nuts, then you’ll enjoy it!

I’m definitely giving them my green stuff the second my funds come in.  Oh, and I’ve included a link to the band responsible for the intro music.  Because you -will- be back to ask who they are:

Cortext Command:  http://www.datarealms.com/

Machinae Supremacy:  http://www.machinaesupremacy.com/

Row Row!

Wired has an interesting article contemplating whether or not machines deserve human rights.  While some of the examples are a bit silly and childish in nature, its good to see a current article on the topic.  Being a bit of a bumbling Animist in practice, I’d rather not conflict the discussion by using anthropomorphic examples of machines; however, the emotional response from the Elmo incident could very well be effective in getting the message across.  Of course, we won’t begin debating things like effectiveness and moral obligation…

Thanks to a tremendous number of popular scholars, I am very interested in seeing how this evolves with the improvement of AI.

Source:  http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-02/st_essay