ThinkingSkull.com

As the midnight hour draws near on the East Coast, I am reminded by the visible clock at LHCountdown that on 12am Tuesday the Eighth of July, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider will be activated.

Now, for all you non-comic book reading, unintellectual sheep who have no idea what’s going on in your world (in which case it’s bloody unlikely you’re reading this anyway), start-up sequences are nearly complete on an underground ring about 17 miles in circumference at a location where France borders Switzerland. Using super-cooled electromagnetic rings, the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator will race subatomic particles, protons in this case, and smash them into one another (hence the term “atom smasher”) in the hopes of releasing energy and discovering new or previously undiscovered theoretical particles (that all sound just like those big words they use on “Star Trek”). Detection of such things could provide insight into the origins of the universe… or rip a hole in the space-time continuum that may swallow the known universe right after letting in a bunch of extra-dimensional critters to knock humans down one step on the food chain (have you rented Stephen King’s The Mist yet?)

So, while my own clock on the right is counting down the days to the end of the Mayan calendar, remember this: if you suddenly find yourself living next Monday over and over again or realize that your spirit is no longer contained by a body of flesh, at least now you’ll have some idea what happened.

I own two iPods, neither of which I paid for. I won an iPod Touch last Christmas that I have hooked up to my home network and pretty much use as a portable Internet device since it runs Safari to test my websites with (and I don’t own any Apple computers). My first iPod, however, was a 1st-generation 1GB iPod Shuffle, which was a gift, a so-called “geek whistle” with an all-white casing and lanyard that plugs directly into a powered USB 2.0 port.

Apple recently dropped prices for their 2nd-gen Shuffles to $49, so I had the opportunity to actually buy a Product “Red” iPod (to which I’ll confess they don’t make a cool shiny black one, so this red one is my second favorite color rather then those other “ugly” color metallic ones). Ordering the iPod online also got me a free engraving for the device, to which I cheerfully added, “Death’s Bloody Little GrimPod.” Is that personalized enough for ya?

Now, I confess to tracking online purchases religiously. I think that the infrastructure required to build and ship products like these is amazing, so I patiently waited for the first email telling me that my iPod was on a plane heading to my city of residence. And then, something funny happened. The name of the city of origin was called Suzhou… a city in China. Really?

Usually when I order through the Internet, shipping is fulfilled in the continental US, so normally I see stuff coming from Chicago or California or wherever. “China” never entered into my mind, but the free engraving had to be done on-site, so no regular-stock New York iPod for me. This one was hot off the line, laser-inscribed with my silliness, then personally bicycled (because my iPod is obviously too cool to just ride in a truck with a bunch of other strange devices) to Shanghai before hopping a plane to Anchorage, Alaska.

Now that I know what a world traveler my iPod is, I’m a bit jealous.

I love soda, particularly Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Pepsi. Diet? Yep, cause I drink too much of it. I’m getting better, drinking mostly tea at home sweetened with Splenda… more on that in a second.

Also, I’ve joined a health club (with fees deferred by my day job) and have been busting my arse to get into better shape. Having shared this with my co-workers, now I’m getting grief because “drinking diet sodas is undoing any good” that I may have been doing because they are “full of fat and calories.” My question is, do skinny people really believe this? Here’s a little something from WebMD:

Artificial sweeteners, also called sugar substitutes, are compounds that offer the sweetness of sugar without the same calories. They are anywhere from 30 to 8,000 times sweeter than sugar and as a result, they have much fewer calories than foods made with table sugar (sucrose). Each gram of refined table sugar contains 4 calories. Many sugar substitutes have zero calories per gram.

Now I really got on board with Nutrasweet (aka Aspartame) but I soon found out that expiration dates on diet soda are very important; time, heat, and cold all kill the flavor of Aspartame and make it taste like Formaldehyde smells. Splenda, which is derived from sugar and the key ingredient in the not-Diet-Coke tasting soda called Coke Zero, is even tastier and is heat/cold/time resistant. I also like Propel fitness water (32 oz. for $1.00 at Walmart) with a tiny 10 calories per bottle.

Seriously, am I really doing that badly with no-calorie diet drinks, or are skinny folk afraid of large people like myself muscling in on their popularity?

That’s about the best way I can put it. You see, I’ve owned Epson computers and equipment in the past and generally have had better luck (I’m told) than many other Epson owners I know.

Well, the luck ran out when my (expensive) inkjet printer died about a two years ago. For full disclosure, I use my printer about once a day or at least three times a week. That printer came with the larger size printer cartridge that was supposed to last longer, and I used it until every drop was practically spent. When the indicator said there was 1% remaining, I changed the black cartridge…

And the printer never printed black again. Ever.

I did all the troubleshooting to no avail. I called the manufacturer who initially gave me some song and dance about warranty until I told them that most devices with a replaceable consumable like ink usually work the FIRST time so I can buy more later (seriously, like we don’t know that’s where the money is made). In fact, they offered to either send me a coupon for a discount on a new Epson device, or replace it outright with the same model. I didn’t care if it was the newest, happiest printer on earth or not, as long as it worked!

So I sent mine to them and they sent me their newest model… invalidating all the open cartridges that wouldn’t fix the old printer. And for another year, the new print worked. Right up until it was time to change the black cartridge again.

And again, the black failed.

Last time I checked, were you supposed to bury it in a landfill when the ink ran dry?

I have an HP printer now and paid less than half of what the first “top of the line” Epson printer cost me. Never again, guys.

AOL, previously America Online, was once THE original place for freaks and geeks to meet. Ravenous teen and young adults quickly became addicted to AOL’s mass-marketting of hundreds of thousands of free-trial disks, many of which became the target of jokes once the rush was over. But for all the newness of a gigantic interactive online community, self-imposed restrictions slowly chased away the audience as AOL was pressured to police itself.

Free-form upstarts such as Friendster networked buddies to buddies and provided revenue from advertising, but it wasn’t until the explosive growth of MySpace.com (and very public sale) that anyone really took notice. For the first time since AOL opened its doors, there was another “free” place that people could join, express themselves, then link up with friends and buddies all over the ‘net. And now, just like AOL before it, it has become so popular that self-policing has been called into question, as has pornography and other not-so-friendly content (and in some cases, users themselves).

For the last year or so, AOL has positioned itself onto the web no longer as a “gated community” with exclusive content, but open access inclusing free email and other features (with premium features for paying customers). But now rumors are surfacing of a so-called “MySpace Killer” that might combine AOL’s ability to serve tens of millions of customers with the free-form expression MySpace users crave, and it’s said to be coming soon. More interesting are the slowdowns and outages reported from MySpace users as well, including the moan that if there was anything better, they’d jump to it in an instant.

Will AOL again become the cool/hip/chic place to be, or is it all a bunch of hooey?

In an article on USAToday.com, researchers are trying to use NASA research to develop video games to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by neuro-feedback, which, “teaches patients to self-regulate brain-wave patterns to improve learning.”

Okay, MY solution is to switch projects when one becomes boring, or double up on something interesting when another task requires more time (carry on a conversation, look soemthing up, feel out a bit of research). I have no idea HOW COOL this video game must be, but if it quits responding when I quit responding, you can bet that disk would be out and the next cartridge would be loaded up. This is like teaching parents to ignore a child that isn’t responding; the child is taught, “They’re ignoring me AND letting me do what I want.”

You wanna keep our attention? Keep giving us new challenges from time to time, then bring back some old ones! Some of the more recent 007 games switch between first person shooters and driving simulators seem to do a good job. But if the game is just plain interesting to begin with, “hyperfocus” will set in (and Heaven forbid you try to pull us away then!)

Shouldn’t these researchers be looking for a way to train ADHD afflicted individuals a way to apply their concentration where needed for as long as needed and then tear it away as required? Anything else is a waste of time… ours, to be specific.

To quote an interview on Live Science:

I think science has always been under assault to some extent. I think there are fashions in cycles in which science is attacked for a period of time and is embraced for a period of time and it’s attacked again. Generally attack against science is part of a greater attack against intellectualism in general. I think right now we’re in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again. I agree with you that we’re not seeing anything now that hasn’t happened in earlier centuries.

That sounds about right. I myself recall being a “rebel” in church for questioning scripture with something so evil as “logic,” but there are plenty of researchers out there staring into microscopes and telescopes hoping to see the eye of the Supreme Being looking back.

And the swing is already coming like an axe blade as the younger generation not only uses new technology but has a greater understanding of it over their elders. Can you imagine an Arthurian Knight in a Connecticut Yankee’s court? “The magic that makes our cellphones work is called a ‘Network,’ but we have to shut them off in here because the Judge said so.”

And what will you spend an extra second doing? It’s called a “leap second,” and the clock keepers in Boulder, Colorado are going to be adding a whole second to the end of 2005 in order to ensure that the world-wide time keeping system remains constant. And due to a slowing of the Earth’s rotation, and extra second has been deemed necessary. Enjoy!

For every astronaut that’s ever squeezed a steak dinner with a side of mashed potatoes out of a toothpaste tube, the future is almost here. Tissue engineers have discovered ways to grow meat in a lab: chicken nuggets without the chicken, for example (won’t PETA be proud!) Additionally, “bad things” in meat can be replaced by better things are changed to taste like certain cuts of meat. The idea was originally being thought up for long space travel (one step closer to those Star Trek replicators) but could also be used on Earth to provide cheap, edible food sources. Looks like the “organically grown” lobbyists are close to losing another one.

And it doesn’t look much like a shuttle at all. In fact, some of the proposals fall back heavily on the Apollo program and the safety features of that era. A system of interchangable components that could be packed, racked, and stacked every way imaginable sure sounds nifty but looks like Americans just can’t come up with anything new. You’d think NASA would have finished reverse-engineering that UFO at Area 51 for its anti-gravity technology by now.

With five more years left before the current NASA space shuttles are grounded in 2010, it’s nice to see one launch once more. If you’ve ever been a fan of NASA or rockets or even just science fiction, the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex is a Florida theme park for grownups who remember the “space race” and kids just finding out it. Of particular interest is the Apollo/Saturn V mission control simulator; imagine being in mission control during the first moonshot and the most powerful launch vehicle ever built rattling the blast shutters as it roars off the pad!

According to an article posted on May 19th, 2005 on The Economist, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) claims their loss of $33 billion in 2004 “due to piracy” was achieved by guestimating all the PCs on Planet Earth (aka Sol 3, Third Rock from the Sun), averaging how many programs are running on each, deducting the number of known licenses issued worldwide, and multiplying that total with a general dollar figure. This throws up a flag, of course, because it is impossible to substantiate a true dollar figure like this, especially one that sounds impressive enough to spurn lawmakers into action.

Consider the following: a program you’ve never heard of and would never use or could never afford is being credited as “lost revenue” because you don’t own it. Nevermind those who actually stole it; if you’ve never bought a license to a program that isn’t even on your computer, you are just as guilty as those who DID steal it! And why stop there? How many Martians are intercepting signals or coping software from the Freedom and Independance rovers? How many untold zillions in MarsBucks are being lost right now by software companies?

Now consider this: is this the same method that the MPAA and the RIAA are using to determine that 10-year old little Suzie must be sued for that song she downloaded from her classmate? And remember, when people don’t go see uninteresting movies they didn’t want to watch in the first place, a set painter in California must file for unemployment; you do the math.

So while putting the finishing touches on the manuscript for the Preview Edition of Kindling Moon, I attempt to compile the final version into a *pdf only to discover… it won’t work. Half the pages came out blank, as if the compiler just decided not to use them. Oh well, the program was old, but it’s what I had, so on to Plan “B.” The text and pictures are still finished and intact, after all.

Plan “B” consisted of using Microsoft Word and using a distiller/compiler to turn the original text document into a publishable file. I found a recommended one by 8848Soft.com, loaded it, purchased the shareware key, pushed the button and… it still didn’t work! On to Plan “C”: load the software on a different computer and see if anything changes. It didn’t; apparently, it just doesn’t work.

Plan “D” consisted of a free Adobe.com feature that will let you compile documents, but after 5 of them the charge you (or hope you’ll buy their software). And it worked! Unfortunately, the last page’s graphic seemed to find its way into the second-to-last page text, so I adjusted and did it again. Same problem, but now I became suspicious. Could it be that the final page graphic somehow exceeded a preset limit, border, or something else? I reduce the graphic size again; it compiled perfectly.

Back to Plan “B.” It worked! 8848Soft’s MS Word compiler did the trick (after fixing the mystery margins). So for anyone needing to turn their *docs into *pdfs, here’s a low-cost solution as long as you accept the limitations. Kindling Moon’s Rulebook & Realmbook Preview Edition is finished and ready for inspection.