HCI - An industrial view on life

Protip: If you read the words "quantum tunneling" in a sentence explaining how someone broke the speed of light, someone's trying to hoodwink you.

Quantum tunneling does not imply that space was traversed.  In fact, everything quanta starts from the principles from discontinuity.  That object did NOT travel through space faster than the speed of light, because it did not travel through space.  That's quantum tunneling, got it memorized?

I came home, and then fell asleep in front of my computer.  Normal sleep pattern it ain't, and I'm not sure how to fix it.  I feel locked in the rhythm from last week, which means I'm tired all day and up all night.  But now, I'm out at 6pm and up by midnight.  Worse yet, I may not want to fix it, as I'm not really sure when I'll have to do something wacky like that again.

And the dreams.  I can always tell when I'm undergoing a shift when I remember fragments of dreams and have to sort out the memories.  Otherwise, I may actually forget that I never needed to worry about the report I failed to do.  Blasted subconscious almost never gives me happy dreams flying in the clouds.  It's all work, troubleshooting, and physically accurate aerodynamics.  Never any magic.

Oh, and acid reflux.  I have to clear my throat a lot, and the coughing hurts.  Sadly, I only left the antacids in my desk.  Whoops.

I am sincerely saddened to note I am a part of the problem.  I am an intellectual, and I have forgotten the macroeconomics I had once known.  Dr. Krugman brought this painfully to my attention.  Were the graphs really that simple?  Was the reasoning really so straightforward?  Surely this can't help explain the quagmire that we're beset to decode every time we listen to the news...

But yep, that's it.  In fact, I think someone in my high school AP Macroeconomics class even asked the stupid question about what happens when the interest rate goes negative.  Ahh, youthful naivete, I miss you.

I own a DVD player.  I have purchased software capable of playing DVDs, including the DVD codec package.  I have legally rented a DVD.

So why the crap is it's stupid encoding causing the blasted thing to crash?  I *could* just skip over the frames that appear to be randomly encrypted, but then I'd have to be psychic instead of relaxing.  It's stupid crap like this that drive people to hacking...

Watching Doctor Who season 4, the best line so far - as side from the classic "Sometimes everyone lives" is "... and this is to combat dehydration."

The line, and the glass of water offered, is so ordinary as to make the entire event even more surreal.  THAT is the kind of writing I watch this show for.

Braid is available for not-a-console!  The Last Guardian!  Ninokuni!

*Flails arms and start gibbering*

I can't figure out how I'm so far out of touch with these things (though I did know about the Ghibli game).  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to work on my Blender script for exporting to OpenFOAM.

Star Trek: The Reboot is really good. As in I am hard-pressed to find anything I disliked about it (Above Iron Man, comparable to Serenity). I'll have to see it again this weekend. As usual, it's the details that make it more than a mere blockbuster sell-out. Look closely at the phasers. Read the warning labels. Note that the nuclear reactor onboard actually has radiation labels. The main screen is a window with a HUD. Spot the plumbing (seriously, the Enterprise doesn't just materialize water at the destination!). Watch the keyboards on the wall consoles fold up. Some of the levels are (far) bigger than 2 stories. There are work crews everywhere - real laborers in uniform. It's upkept, but not pristine. The ship has guns - plenty of them. And they all go "pew-pew". In fact, the sound effects were one of my favorite parts.

Simply glorious.

If we're really good and behave ourselves, we may even get a TV show out of it. Even at a lower production value, it would still be fantastic.

When you hear people throwing out the term 'reboot', keep in mind that what the word actually means is 're-boot-strapping'. Or, in other terms, 'lifting yourself up by the shoelaces again'. Keep in mind that most people don't know how impossible that really is (or even what it means), and please keep in mind that we've already done it a few times. There are some who use the word properly; watch them - they've got some serious !@#% to show us.

We'll no doubt reboot the internet. We will undoubtedly reboot the economy. The powergrid. The transportation system. What it means to be human... eventually, perhaps.

Rebooting is just that razor's edge on the transition from one phase to another. You can't be ready for it, but watch for when it hits. If we're lucky, we'll live through it and see something interesting. Maybe even impossible.

I just realized it was Friday... I was off by one day almost all week.

That's what Spicy Hot V8 is like. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not... But it is tasty.

The only thing more boring than playing Eve is using the internet at the same time waiting for a video to buffer. It sounds like it nets a reduction in boredom, but that's like saying progress bars are improved if you're given more to wait for. And one of the progress bars is chewing up the bandwidth that the other progress bar needs in order to be entertaining.

Sure, there's more of nothing to do, but it's still not much.

My computer has a new and interesting ... quirk. Black text carries an alpha value of 0. I've seen it happen in two completely unrelated applications that do not support this sort of feature - at least as far as I know. It's like the text has been hole punched out, and instead it shows whatever is directly behind the window. Including other windows.

I'm not sure what to make of it, or if I should even try to fix it. It's kinda neat, if not occasionally unreadable.

Good News: My car is has standard transmission.
Bad News: I need to push it to 8.8 mph before the flux capacitor kicks in.
Good News: I have a spare key, so I can lock it while it is running.
Bad News: I need to leave it running, or I need to push-start it again.
Good News: I have a little money for the repairs.
Bad News: Corsicana does not seem to have any Honda repair shops.

So I'm hoping I can continue this list at least one spot more.

I now have a place to live. I was chatting with one of the workers inspecting as glass went by, who told me they had a room I could rent, and I said I would stop by and see it (the apartment I wanted wasn't too great, really). She's like a grandmother, and the 'room' was more like a wing of her home. There are two rather fun dogs, it's waterfront, fire pit in the back, kayak on the dock, a spacious garage, only 15min out of town, and the stars. Oh the stars. I could cry for the view from the nearby bridge.

With full utilities, it was still less than the special offer lease I was going to get. And it's a beautiful home. Like a real home, which I may need to buy if/when she goes back to CA.

Did I mention it's just outside Eureka? How perfect is that?

In case you've been deprived, here's a link to A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Still one of my favorite skits, ever.

Speed Racer was everything I had hoped it would be. It's a fantastic, fun movie. The movie would have been ideal if it weren't for that annoying kid.

Sooooo shiney though. So so so shiney all the time.

Portal Prelude is an impressive mod. The rooms are great, and have just the right amount of swearing and creative puzzle thinking that I enjoyed from the original Portal. The very end of the game is somewhat unfulfilling, and the voice actors sound like they were forced out of a text-to-speech synthesizer on the fly (which is to say, of course, that they were). On the other hand, the design of chambers 18 and 19 are superb, and I hope that rooms of that complexity show up in the official Portal 2. They are a challenge, but as the authors stated, there are not wonky tricks - just straight up portalin'.

If you have beaten Portal, I strongly recommend this mod. The voice actors are distracting and somewhat lame, but the puzzles are to die for.

...

And yes, you will die. By the end, I was afraid to open doors, for fear an iTurret would try to be my friend.

Prince of Persia could have been a great game, but the battle system subtracts two points from whatever optimal score it could have had. It's a constant struggle with the controls, every time.

Yesterday I hung out with a bunch of people, as well as today (Jon, Mike, Evan, Sarah, Phil, etc.) I also had a late lunch with Sarah and Evan, wherein I sorta failed to make good coffee - I think I need to really scrub out the reservoir on the thing. According to an unclear plan, I'll be meeting a friend for a beer or two, and that will no doubt be a highlight (I'm gonna try a black and blue).

Hopefully, my offer letter will arrive tomorrow, and I'll be able to start planning the next month in clear detail. On the upside, fuel is very cheap right now, and for 20 bucks I can nearly fill my tank; a lot of stress was wrapped up in getting to TX.

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