Dairy

I'm irritated by the so-called dairy "food group", or whatever they call it since the latest food pyramid. The idea that humans need the highly processed food generated by only a few domesticated animals is absurd.

The domestication of animals is a relatively recent phenomena. Did humans somehow evolve a dependence on a substance they only recently gained access too?

Halloween

Happy Halloween, everyone. I couldn't think of a costume this year, despite thinking about it for over a month. Nothing felt 'right' to me. Also, I don't have anywhere to wear it, but that's a different issue entirely.

PS. I know some people spell it "Hallowe'en", but that's just ridiculous. it's like someone writing "ne'er" instead of never.

Cat Hunter

Driving home, I see an animal on the side of the road. Turns out, it's our cat Houdini. He was about a mile from home, or 3,000 feet as the crow flies (Thanks, Google Maps!). He must have an enourmous territory; He's been spotted about a mile in another direction, too. It's really no wonder that he's the one that has been hit by a car. (He's OK now, by the way.)

Firefox 2.0

It's here! Firefox two. I didn't realize it was available for a while, as Firefox usually pins you down and forces you to accept the update. The idea of voluntarily pursuing an update was very strange.

So far, I don't see a lot of changes. Individual tabs have kill keys, and it has a little different look.

Great Firefox Tool

I just recently found a great tool for firefox. Do you use a search engine often? If so, try right-clicking in the area that you type into. One of the options should say, "add a keyword to this search". Click that. Give it a simple, easy to type keyword, and any random name.

Next time you want to do a search, just type in the keyword into the regular browser bar, press space, then type whatever it is you're searching for.

Ex. I do a lot of Wikipedia searches. I set the Wikipedia search function to "wp". If I want to read about The Green Lantern, I just type "wp Green lantern", and it takes me there instantly.

This works for anything with a search bar. I use it for Wikipedia and Mininova, but I bet there are other things I'll use it for soon, since search bars are so commonly used on the Internet.

Sieges != good

I've been reading The Story Of Civilization for some time now. It's pretty good. There are two recurring themes:

1) If you really want to see a piece of exquisite art, then it was blown up in WWII.

2) Sieges are really bad. Even though you probably think they're really bad, they're probably much worse than you think. In various sieges people have eaten dogs, horses, glue, books, the recently dead, and corpses long buried. In other words, don't get into a siege. You'll just end up dead or eating something that you shouldn't be eating.

PS3 additional shortage

The PS3 might not be able to live up to its own unimpressive standards. At least when it comes to producing enough copies of the system. We have seen this before! This is either a cynical ploy, or Sony is a completely non-functional company. I can understand it happening once, but this happens every time.

Pick a Word, any Word

Quick, think of a word. Completely at random. Put that word in the comments section now. I'll explain later.

Note-Taking Is An Important Skill

I thought I would share the notes I took during a class I attended today. (These are the entirety of my notes.)

The Contents Of My Notes:

A picture of a robot.
Another picture of the same robot, with a smaller version of that robot inside it.
A drawing of a cat.
A few attempts at trying to draw a mole's claws.
A large "W?"

-Next Page-

Headline: "The Beat is Technotronic"
Seven dancing stick figures.
A drawing of a guy being stuck by lightning.
A guy with a sword and shield
A bunch of lines that sort of form a maze.
A stick figure sitting at a desk saying, "hur hur hur."
"The Big O!!! notation"
"Big-ooooooooh!"
"student discount at iPod store?"
"Dralnu combos"

So, you can tell that I learned a lot in that class.

The DotAssy

I have played Defense of the Ancients, (DotA), on three seperate occasions. Although it is moderately enjoyable, I can no longer play it. Here's why.

(Warning: If you do not want to be confronted with just about the worst thing ever, do not click that link!)

I really can't imagine something sadder. Not only is the song poor in musical quality, it also has terrible and idiotic lyrics. I want to rag on it some more, but it actually hurts me just to think about it.

Terraforming Mars

As you may know, Mars, despite being the best candidate for colonization in our solar system, is pretty inhospitable. In comparison to Earth, it has very little mass, (only about 11%) which means very little gravity.

The low gravity also means that little atmosphere clings to the planet, essentially none of which is oxygen. Also, there is essentially no water that we know of.

So what are we to do? Terraform! All we have to do is crash an almost endless procession of asteroids into the planet, adding mass and water. After doing that for a century, we could start atmosphere 'factories' designed to change the crappy atmosphere of Mars into a nice Oxygen/Nitrogen affair.

There are simpler ways to terraform a planet, and it would be possible to live there today if we were willing to live under domes. But why settle for less?

Comment Moderation

It turns out that bots have been putting comments in this blog in the hopes of increasing their hitcount indirectly. Due to this spamming, I have introduced 'comment moderation'. If you want to post something, the process is the same. The only difference is that I have to approve anything before it reaches the comments section.

There is another option, where the poster would have to identify some letters on a page, and I wouldn't need to confirm anything. If you prefer that version, I can change it easily.

VLC Media Player

If you view media, you should be using the VLC media player. A quick google search should turn it up. It's compatible with everything but Real Media player, but that stuff sucks hard anyway.

Edit:

Here's a link.

Lost, Season III

As Lost fans surely know, episode 1 of season III aired on Wednesday.

Apparently, we're supposed to believe that these people used to living in a modern city all have tracking at 25 or higher.

The fact that they had some degree of connection to the rest of the world was clear in season one, as they had a gas-powered boat. You just can't have gas like that without trade with the rest of the world.

Lamest Character

I think the lamest character I've seen for a long time would be General Greivous from Star Wars. What a terrible name. I mean, General Grievous? Also, four lightsabres?

David Morgan-Mar called that years ago.

It's too bad that Lucas doesn't have any plans to make more Star Wars movies. We could see the ultimate evolution of the lightsabre: a lightsabre with lightsabres instead of a blade. Those smaller lightsabres would, in turn, have more lightsabres instead of their blades, and so on.

That way we have infinite lightsabres in a finite amount of space.

Halfway thru this post, it became a thinly veiled excuse to write the word 'lightsabre' over and over again. Lightsabre.

A Defense Of iTunes

I am making this post to help out iTunes, whose stock has surely plummeted since my earlier critique of it. Since the patch, iTunes runs quite a bit faster, and has solved my big objections. In fact, you can solve several of the problems yourself with the preferences section. Hate the iTunes store? I know I do. It's possible to disable it.

Ultra Summary: Family Guy

In the spirit of the thing, I have decided to do an Ultra Summary of Family Guy in the style of the show.

Family Guy, the Ultra Summary

Interchangeable character: Do you remember that time someone was really, really drunk? And it was funny, THE FIRST TIME!?

Interchangeable character: Yeah, and do you remember the time that someone hurt someone else, realized what he'd done, then backed slowly out of the room? And it was funny, THE FIRST TIME!?

Interchangeable character: And do you remember the time someone fell down really fast, breaking something? And it was funny, THE FIRST TIME!?

Interchangeable character: Don't forget the time that someone had a bizarre relationship to a TV icon from the 70's or 80's! And it wasn't really that funny, even the first time.

Interchangeable character: And there was the time that the episode was too short, so a scene went on forever. It was kinda funny, because no one really wastes time like that in a show. The lack of jokes was a joke! And it was funny, THE FIRST TIME!

Seth Mcfarlane: I am a genius. OOH! I just got the best idea! A song from the 80's! I'll have a character sing it for no particular reason! Then, right when they're rolling in the aisles, someone will fall down! HAHAHAHAHA! This stuff never gets old!

~The End~

PS. I was somewhat reluctant to write a family guy joke, as South Park had reamed them so well. Then I did it anyway.

Screw you, Pistol Lovers

The pistol from the original Halo was bad. It is obviously too powerful for a starting weapon. It reduced Halo multiplayer to a four weapon contest: the sniper rifle for extreme distance, the shotgun and Rocket Launcher for very close fights, and the pistol for everything else.

They will never make another pistol, or anything of its power level. And that's a good thing.