Well, Spore is just loads of fun. It came in the mail yesterday and I managed to get to space colonization level by the time I went to bed at four in the morning. I'm happy to report that my race of "Bumbles" is doing very well, though they had a little trouble in the civilization stage. (I had to bribe a couple of nations heavily before conquering them in order to recover from early mistakes.)

I'll publish my Bumble creature to the Spore community as soon as I get around to firing up the game again. (I need to finish making choices for my logo.) My EA handle is, surprisingly, "Icaruspassion."

By the way, the game is impossibly cute. It's really cute. I'd read before getting it, that the game play is pretty simple. And that's true. More than anything, Spore is for people that want to spend hours customizing not only their creatures, but their entire civilization. In the civilization stage, imagine a Real Time Strategy game where you've custom designed all your buildings. Of course, you can chose pre-made buildings and vehicles from Maxis, or from other player creations that have been published, but the real fun is designing your own.

You can even design your own national anthem.

And the tools you use for design are very, very easy to use. More than anything, that is the real power of the game. The only thing I would have liked to see are some better textures for buildings.

It's perhaps a little sad that a game that took over five years to create can be beaten in a full day. However, the game isn't about winning, it's about creating a community. And I suspect we'll see some really neat things come out of the Spore community.

--Still sitting here pondering away on colors and the meaning of life. I have iTunes' new visualizer going on my other monitor. Up until this very moment I've been lukewarm about it. The effects are good, but the "AI" remains a little dim witted sometimes. And for some songs it just doesn't jive at all.

Well, I stumbled (virtually speaking) across "Arjuna: into the another world" in my library and gave that a turn. Wow. This album is making the new visualizer do things I haven't seen it do yet. Very, very nice. The algorithms seems to work very well with this music -- nice transitions and such.

Doesn't look like you can buy it anymore, so I have a copy if anyone wants it. Dawn calls is "space alien whale music," but it's actually pretty good. This YouTube clip has a couple of the main themes; I especially like the one toward the end of the clip. The whole album is different though from song to song. Very diverse, fantastic album. The amine itself, well it's no Haibane-Renmei, but I'm game for anything that doesn't have shooting mech robots.

(Check out the "part two" clip for the type of music Dawn is talking about.)

Well, I went browsing around the Internet as I do when I need a break from whatever it is I do -- in this case trying to decide what colors I might like for the logo. And I found this video which includes a perfect rendition of Pumpkin.

Here's a shot of her in front of my old monitor for comparison...


I love you Pumpkin. :p

Tom, I just learned that we actually did build the collider in Texas. However, it destroyed 99.9999 percent of the planet... and human race. We used all of our remaining resources to research, and then build, a time travel device that would send a single traveler back in time.

That mission was successful, and the LHC is now in Geneva, and smaller. However, not having the collider in Texas deprived us of vital information and another traveling is coming back from a different future to teach us how to use the collider in Texas properly.

So before you know, the LHC will be ours, and America will be one again top-dog in the world of physics.

By the way, if the time travel has you confused, check out this old Steven Colbert, Tek Jensen
video.

If you remember the movie Goonies (link: worst trailer ever), maybe you remember Data's invention: "Bully Blinders." Secretly, I've always thought it was the coolest invention.

Well, there is a flashlight on the market called "The Torch," and supposedly is the world's most powerful flashlight. How powerful you ask? Powerful enough to set paper on fire and scramble eggs. And... powerful enough to blind bullies!

The future. It's a beautiful thing. Maybe I should order one and start carrying it around instead of my pepper spray!

Michelle has a little baby bun baking in her oven! Congratulations!!!

MSNBC reports that the 2003 safety report that was updated in June has been published.

That's all well and good. I was most interested though in a comment a reader made on the site after the article:

Honestly, i don't think it matters.
If it works out and we discover the mother of all particles, yay for us.

If it doesn't and destroys the world, then we'll be dead and it wouldn't really matter, would it?

What a weary society we are sometimes. I think it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. That is, I don't want to die from nuclear war, or global warming, etc. But if we die while trying to probe the mysteries of the universe, well, maybe I feel the same way.

Phasers to full power Mr. Sulu!

So here I am, up way too late, trying to dig up some political truth.

Politics is tough. I know it was a fiction show, but I have a lot more respect for the process after watching the entire run of West Wing. (Fantastic show, but you have to watch from the very beginning.) There is a lot more to politics than the generalization spewed by pundits, or people who get all their information solely from said pundits. When people add 300 page amendments to 700 page bills, there is no black and white truth when someone votes for or against a bill.

Here's an example of the mess: Jumpstart our Business Strength (JOBS) Act, 05/11/2004. Tons of energy tax breaks that McCain argues against. That's bad right? Read that whole speach.

I hear tons about how McCain votes against renewable energy. But he and Lieberman actually introduced The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2005. Republicans weren't for it; but he introduced and fought for it. Obama co-sponsored. McCain was a little more verbose and detailed in his introduction.

So whose the climate bad-guy and whose the good-guy? Neither.

These are just a couple examples, of course. But I'm coming to the idea that Dawn may be right (as she often is) that no matter who wins this year, things will be fine, albeit in their own way.

I'm not quite that optimistic; I think there are chances for massive failure on both sides.

Giuliani said, "Change is not a destination, and hope is not a strategy." But both candidates seem to want to change. And probably there is a little hope for each.

I might rename the blog, "OMG we're going to die." Or I might just stop reading articles titled "Another Ice Shelf Collapses."

"The most important thing to note about it in the big picture, these patches of unusual shelf ice have been there for 4,500 years, and they are choosing this year to break up and drift away," said Ted Scambos, an ice shelf scientist with the National Snow and Data Center who was not directly involved with Mueller's research. "That tells us that the events going on in the arctic are very unusual, at least in the space of the last few thousand years."

Seriously though, I told myself I was going to stop reading articles like this when I found an page on Wikipedia titled "Holocene extinction event" some years ago. --Basically it suggests that we're in the midst of the largest mass extinction event to date. Hooray.

A more credible article states, "As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. (See "The Sixth Extinction", Niles Eldredge> and "How Will the Sixth Extinction Affect Evolution of Species," Norman Myers and Andrew Knoll.)

This seems to have been a topic several years ago. I haven't read much more on it recently. But really, you shouldn't measure extinction in species-per-hour. Of course, maybe they just have no idea what they're talking about. But here are the credentials of one scientist:

"Norman Myers is a Fellow at Green College, Oxford University, and has acted as scientific consultant and policy adviser to the White House, U.S. Departments of State and Defense, NASA, the World Bank, seven United Nations agencies, and the European Commission. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the World Academy of Art and Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Society of Arts. Dr. Myers is the originator of the biodiversity “hotspots” strategy, which has generated over $300 million for conservation activities."

Anyway, I told myself I wasn't going to read any more -- and that includes the wave of articles that comes out from the BBC about global warming. Every day it's something new. Ah heck. Let's journey over to the "Science" section and take a look tonight...

Not too bad tonight:

The Good
Sea level rise by 2100 'below 2m'
Germany leads 'clean coal' pilot

The Bad
Warming boosts strongest storms [[I think we knew this one.]]
More fish off the 'green' menu
Major ice-shelf loss for Canada

But anyway, you get the picture. I wasn't going to read any more, but I did. It's just hard to tune out some of those catchier headlines.

You know, I really don't like Palin. I know why McCain brought her on, but she's kind of a poop, and it is making it much hard for me to vote for him. That being said, she had some good things say about Alaska's place in an national energy policy:

"Alaska should be a leader in this plan because we have the conventional, the non-renewable supplies, the petroleum. We have them up here. Again, the hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean natural gas, the buildings of barrels of oil. We have the renewables also. We have the largest tides on the continent, we have the geothermal, we have the winds. We have all these alternative renewable source that all can be tapped into as we work collectively and comprehensively on an energy pan. We need to be doing everything, and people need to be realistic also."

I don't know how far you can send electricity without losing it all to attenuation, but Alaksa could be a powerhouse for alternative energy production.

But never mind all that, I need to read more Gizmodo and less, er, science news. Gizmodo makes me happy.

So this is what 300 million dollars gets you. What are they trying to convey? Spend more and get less?

Thanks to Nik for this link and clip. The Daily Show has been a little hit or miss lately, but this is brilliant. It's nice to see someone compile the hypocrisy of the conservative propaganda machine.



I love it when Nancy Pfotenhauer almost says "from a feminist perspective." Funny line they have to toe now.

Anyway, I miss Hillary.

Man, I'm watching streaming video of Palin at the RNC. She has every bit of Obama's charisma. And she's going to whip the conservative American's into a churning frizzy. Every moderate vote that McCain is going to lose, or may lose by putting her on the ticket will be made up two fold with ultra-conservatives.

I hate this election. We had two candidates who spent their life working for the country: Hillary and McCain. Now the election is going to be about two candidates with little experience and tons of charisma.

I don't like Palin. The more I learn about her, the worse it gets. I want to like her, but I don't.

I don't trust Obama. He's like an excited puppy telling everyone want they want to hear. And people love him for it. But there is almost nothing before his run for president to judge him by, and on some instinctual level I just don't trust him. I want like him, but I don't.

I'm not the only with Obama issues. Dawn and I had dinner with one of her friends this weekend. She's just like us: young, gay, professional. And when the talk turned to politics and Obama she said, "You know I just don't trust him." None of us can really put our finger on it, but there it is.

The notorious story of the him not putting his hand over his heart during the national anthem came up as well. I'm not the type to support flag burning amendments or anything. But not putting your hand on your heart during the anthem? Seriously?



And Michelle Obama's gaffe, "I'm proud of my country for the first time," doesn't help either. She's not running for office, but it just pisses me off.

Of course, Mom and Tom are already voting one way, minds made up a long time ago. Most of my friends are voting the other way, minds made up a long time ago. But the folks I know locally are actually talking quite a bit about who will best lead.

Dawn and I came up with a triad to judge candidates by:

1) What they themselves really want to do.
2) What they're actually willing to do.
3) What they might be able to accomplish.

I have no idea what Obama really wants to do, is willing to fight for, or what he could accomplish. For example, he says he's for same-sex rights, but does he really care about the issue? More importantly, is he willing to fight for the issue? And last, can he actually make anything happen, get someone in Congress to sponsor a bill, rally folks around it, etcetera?

On the same topic, McCain voted "no" against the ridiculous protection of marriage amendment (as did Obama to be fair), he did it against his own party because he thought it was right, and he whenever someone tries to bring it up, he waives the idea of an amendment saying "it's a states issue." Going back to our triangle, I feel McCain cares, and I think he's willing to fight for it.

We don't have tough test like that to measure Obama with. I'd like to see him stand up for nuclear power -- something that would be unpopular, but I think in the national and global best interest. I'm really pro nuclear. I'm, like, crazy-girl pro nuclear. It's what we have available to us right now.

I like that nuclear is a central part of McCain's plan. (Though it's certainly not Palin's preference. --Did I mentioned I really don't like her on the issues?)

And what about Obama on health care? Hell, even http://www.alternet.org has an article criticizing Obama's plan.

So anyway, I didn't mean to write another political entry, but the Palin speech got me chatty. I hate this election. If McCain dies in office and Palin becomes president, it would be bad for the country and the world. If Obama gets elected, we might get our bag full of promised candy, but we might just end up with a bad tummy ache and tooth decay too.

I have a lot more work to do on my issues spreadsheet. And as far as voting record in this congress, it's hard to tell McCain and Obama apart unless it's about Iraq.

We really need a three party system, with a run-off election. The far-right can have a candidate, the far-left can have a candidate, and we can have a moderate like McCain without him having to suck up to the devil.

If you live and die by the Delicious bookmark manager like I do, you'll be happy to know there is a beta update for the Firefox 3 plugin at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/delicious-firefox-extension/ It's under the "files" section. You have to log into Yahoo and join the group to get the beta, which is a pain, but worth it.

If you don't use Delicious and you're drowning in bookmarks, I recommend it highly. Very highly. Tagging is awesome. Tagged clouds are awesome. Being able to sort by frequency is awesome. Having access to the same set of book marks on multiple computers is awesome. Instantly refined results from the search bar is awesome. And if you'd like to keep your 500 and still counting bookmarks private, you can click the little box that says "don't share" whenever you create a bookmark -- which is what I've done on all mine.

Right now I'm creating some links that are tagged with "news" so that I have a quick place to go to all my favorite news sources. I also have a tag called Election2008 for election research. I have another set tagged for work, which is amazing helpful. I even have a "toread" for things I want to go back to, but never will. And the great thing is, you really don't need to be conservative with your tags. Clouds keep the signal to noise ration pretty darn good.

I have 177 photography bookmarks, but if I want to just see the ones specific to "lighting" (let's see, I have 12) it's easy done! If I'm feeling froggy I can then sort those by, last added, site, last visited, most frequently visited. . .

Brilliant, brilliant product when used with the Firefox plug-in. (There is a plugin for IE too, if you're not a Firefox baby.)

The Large Hadron Collider!

Because I ended up in computers and did not become a scientist like I was supposed to be, I will be playing Spore when the LHC powers up this Sept. 10. But what a fun time to be alive!

There are conspiracist scientists though who believe the LHC will end the world. --Via the creation of micro black holes or strangelet particles. Maybe I should have had Spore overnighted instead of being sent via two-day shipping. That doesn't leave a lot of time to finish the game before the end!



And they've even sued to have the LHC shut down. Luckily, most scientists disagree. Michio Kaku talks about what they're hoping to find in this interview.



Time has an okay photo essay on the LHC, but The Boston Globe has the best shots I think. Neat stuff!

It's all good.

If you live in Florida, don't use Drain Doctors.

I used them a couple months ago for a backed up main, after having a good experience with them getting my water heater replaced. Unfortunately, they didn't do nearly as good with my clog.

I called at 3am in the morning, while pulling an all-nighter. The dispatcher asked me if it could wait until 8am, if he got someone out first thing. Reluctantly I agreed. But instead of getting someone out first thing in the morning, I got a phone call from the plumber asking if he could come out a couple hours later -- he had a job from the previous day to finish. I told him my problem, that I'd been waiting all night, that I needed to go to bed soon, and that it wasn't okay to delay. He did anyway.

When he finally came out, he cleared the line, but did not snake out my kitchen sink as I asked because "he was afraid my pipes would break" since they're quite old now. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I was prepared to replace them if so. But I was too tired to argue the point.

Today Dawn needed a plumber for her new renter. I recommended Drain Doctors, still thinking of my good experience with the water heater and because they have cameras on their snakes (not sure the exact term for this), which lets them see the quality of your pipes, breaks, etc. But like me, she had a bad experience. They charged her more than the going rate, more than Roto-Rooter has charged me. And they refused to give her a six month guarantee on the work.

Because of this, I determined to write a letter to their corporate office and give them a chance to respond. However, to my surprise, their website has NO general contact information. No address. No phone number for corporate offices. --Just a web form and dispatch number. I could research the address of their office well enough, but that's really the last straw. Instead, I'm writing this blog entry and advising anyone who asks not to use them.

Between Drain Doctors, Roto-Rooter, and a small local company, Roto-Rooter has been the best I've used so far. If I ever find someone better, I'll update the blog post.

*** Sorry Dawn! ***

Spore gets released this week. I've been waiting for this game since it was announced at E3 in 2005.

Since I quit WoW, I haven't found much time to play video games. That's a good thing, I suppose, but a bad thing too since I miss playing with Tom, Carl, and the gang. But I just might have to make time for Spore.

Of course, Warhammer comes out later this month too. And I suppose I'll have to at least dabble in that as I have in AoC. The Realm vs. Realm play should give it a little more staying power than AoC seems to have. And I know Carl shares my affinity for PvP. :-)

Still, the thing about MMOs is that they really aren't fun if you're not fully participating in a community. It's a horrible time sink; but it's the people that makes MMOs fun.

Sadly, nothing will ever compare to the two years that I ran the guild on WoW; maybe MMOs are dead to me forever.

So, Spore might be a nice single-player retreat when I need to get away from work. I just pre-ordered it on Amazon Prime, so we'll see!

This weekend has been pretty low key for us. Dawn had a lot of homework, and her renter's moved in this weekend -- so we haven't had much in the way of adventure. However, today we snuck out to Selby Garens.

Last October we bought an annual pass to Sunken Gardens that included free admission to a litney of other gardens as well. And sadly, we haven't been using it. But today we put that to rest and adventured out to a new place.

I have to say it's not as big as I thought it would be. But there were plenty of neat flowers and plants, and of course we brought a camera and some lenses.

I'm coming to the conclusion that natural light photography for plants isn't the way to go if you want commercial quality results. To get a good depth of field, you need a small aperture. But with the small aperture comes a longer shutter speed, and even if you use a tripod, you still content with wind moving the plants. Of course, you could try to clamp them down, but I think that would be a bridge too far for most places -- never mind that you could damage the plants, and I don't think it would be 100% effective.

So, that leaves us with bringing plants into a studio setting, or setting up several strobes outside. And both options are no-go's for touring various gardens, unless you've been hired or purchased a permit.

Still, I think there is value and aesthetic in "natural light" botanical photography. NLB Photography. I totally just made that up.

I've found that I've been desaturating my flower pictures. If you wait for nice light, or have a trusty photo-assistant block out as much ambient light as possible, you really get some crazy highly saturated pictures. I'd leave em as is but people are so keen nowadays on artificially adding saturation that I'm afraid they won't seem real or natural.








This guy was awesome. In the full-size picture, the details and moss are really neat. I wasn't sure I'd like the picture with the blown out background, but I think it works quite well.



I would like to have shot this next plant with some off-camera flash. This is the only one that I used flash on in this post. You can really tell with the hard shadows, but I think it actually gives it a little something too. Regardless, she was hanging out in the bright sunlight and needed the extra light. I took a 2nd shot with the background blown out, but it didn't look good at all.



I'm afraid something was wrong with this poor squirrel. I've never seen one lay down like this. He wasn't on his belly the whole time, in fact had hopped over the bridge and onto this rail, but he seemed to prefer being on his belly and sometimes crawling along. Dawn and I decided to head back the way we came after grabbing a shot.




Also in photography, my 17-55 lens is cracked. That would be the one I dropped on the cement and then briefly into a pool at my last wedding. --Just noticed it today. Admirably, it still takes pictures, and they seem to be fine. (I can't tell if may there is a bit more chromatic aberration than before.) Still, I'll have to send it in for repair this week.

And last but not least, in photos, things that trouble me: The weather.



Though, I do love the smell and feel of hurricane winds -- especially small, relatively harmless storms, class 1 or 2 hurricanes, or ones that just aren't going to hit me. Something about the temperature or humidity that reminds me of growing up, something that makes Florida home. (The big summer clouds and thunderstorms are like that for me too.)

Also troubling, from an article that I found while reading up on Gutav earlier: Blackwater. One part of me thinks this is just economics in action. And maybe my imagination is just running away from me, but the other part of me thinks that having a highly trained, well armed, private army for hire is a really bad idea -- and bad enough that it should be illegal.

I have a wicked bad headache from earlier today. I made the mistake of letting myself get a little dehydrated during the trip to the gardens, so it could be because of that. But man! It's 1am and it still hurts, though less so after some Advil and then aspirin. Hopefully it will be gone in the morning.

Brookings writes, based on information from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "The world may have only seven years to start reducing the annual buildup in greenhouse gas emissions that otherwise threatens global catastrophe within several decades."

Here's the watered down Washington Post article.

Too late to go back to school for engineering. Maybe I can become a lobbyist or something. :-/