Early Visual Media

Here's a site dedicated to such things as 18th century stabs at 'Virtual Reality' and such curiosities as anamorphic images. Check it out:

Early Visual Media

Hyperspacial Power Room

I once came up with a science fiction roleplaying scenario that involved a bunch of characters being around when the first hyperspacial drive was invented, only to discover that hyperspace was already full. Someone or something had created a structure larger than our galaxy, and had built it in hyperspace. It was possible to travel from planet to planet by travelling through its huge corridors, but most races ended up deciding to explore this amazing bit of technology instead, and to try and gleam its secrets.

Unfortunately the game ended before the hyperstructure was ever discovered, so no one learned of its many intriguing properties. One of them was the power room that generated the energy that ran the thing. In an enormous chamber, tiny bits of matter were tortured just right to cause them to try to explode into entire new universes. These universes never got far, because they were created in some sort of high-tech version of a magnetic bottle, and drained of their incipent energy until they collapsed. This was all done on an assembly line, and billions of universes were being created and sucked dry every second.

I hadn't quite worked out what the builders were doing with all that power, but I had already figured that they thought BIG. One idea I had was that they were trying to move the universe to a better location in brane-space, but as I say, the game never lasted long enough to explore the idea.

Anyway, I was reminded about all this when I came across this article that mentions the possibility of an advanced civilization deliberately causing a big bang to start a new universe.

Longevity through Chocolate.

Researches have found that Chocolate can help you live longer by working to prevent hardening of the arteries. Your duty is clear!

Making India Shine.

This was first published in the New York Times, but is now only available if you want to pay for an archived article, so I'm reproducing it here. It shows some of the good that leveraging technology can bring:

( Clicky Clicky )

All Geeked Out.

Hmm. I seem to have gone on a bit of a posting spree here, but there were lots of interesting tidbits as I worked my way deeper into my technology mail backlog.

Now though, I'm all geeked out and I think its time I went to bed. Busy day tomorrow, including a movie with friends. Yay!

Coffee Elves?

I awoke before taxlady this morning, as has been the rule for the last week or so, so I knew I would have to hit the button on the coffee maker and wait impatiently for the coffee to drip. What's worse, we have an el-cheapo machine that doesn't let you take coffee half-way through dripping. (Well, you can but if you're not well coordinated you make a big mess. Not something to do before you've had coffee...)

But, when I got to the kitchen, the coffee was freshly made and waiting there for me. So I wonder, are there coffee elves? If so, where have the lazy bastards been until now????

Today was a Blur.

Dragged myself out of bed at 11:00 o'clock. And that's AM even! Had only a few hours to wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and head out to pick up azrhey for movie going. The loverly nancyrihakova was unfortuneately unable to attend as she had many errands to run and a true_nexus to corral. This may have been all for the best as my directions to where the cinema were turned out to be somewhat -- less than completely accurate, let us say.  Luckily for taxlady and I, among azrhey's many talents is the fact that she is extraordinarily well equipped and quite capable of googling in the back seat of a moving vehicle.

Discovering that we were only one mall north of where we were supposed to be, we quickly managed to find the actual cinema and headed in. DollarCinema lived up to its name in that everything was a buck, including the movie. There were no tickets. The entry line runs right by the food area, and you pay for your snacks and admission at the same time. The cinema is a little run down and they have the crappy theatre seats that I remember from when I went to the movies in the 80's. On the other hand, it only cost a buck, there was plenty of seating and they didn't blast the volume on the sound system like many modern theatres do. Plus, I noticed that they had real butter on the popcorn! (Not that I had any. At 30 carbs per bag, I would have blown most of my current 50-carb allowance before the movie had even really begun.)

The movie itself was "The Chronicles of Riddick" and it was well worth a dollar to go see. Decent special effects, lots of action, and I have a soft spot in my heart for characters who are really competent at what they do. I want to go see "The Bourne Supremacy" for the same reason, but first I'll have to manage to see the "The Bourne Identity" first, as I never managed that when it came out.

After the movie there was a short shopping excursion to pick up some food supplies and some junk foods for azrhey (the house currently being in somewhat short supply of such stuffs), and we were home. We had a quick meal and then azrhey demonstrated that another of her talents is pulling things through holes.

After that things quickly wound down with azrhey on the couch and taxlady on the big chair watching some TV until azrhey drifted off to sleep. And now, I'm just catching up on email and stuff before I too head off to slumberland.