Archive for August, 2005

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Tuesday, August 30th, 2005

Am I late to this? This is freaking awesome.

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

And I love Wikipedia: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

Do You Myspace?

Monday, August 29th, 2005

The New York Times put out an article about Myspace over the weekend:

Although many people over 30 have never heard of MySpace, it has about 27 million members, a nearly 400 percent growth since the start of the year. It passed Google in April in hits, the number of pages viewed monthly, according to comScore MediaMetrix, a company that tracks Web traffic. (MySpace members often cycle through dozens of pages each time they log on, checking up on friends’ pages.) According to Nielsen/NetRatings, users spend an average of an hour and 43 minutes on the site each month, compared with 34 minutes for facebook.com and 25 minutes for Friendster.

So I’m curious… how many of you have Myspace accounts? And are you over 30? Mine’s here: http://www.myspace.com/studioglyphic

Big Slick Killed Me

Saturday, August 27th, 2005

First I ran them into Geek’s aces, then this:

PokerStove results:

1,370,754 games 0.005 secs 274,150,800 games/sec

                  equity (%)      win (%)    tie (%)
Hand  1:    53.8505 %      53.46%     00.39%      { AhKh }
Hand  2:    14.2271 %      13.84%     00.39%      { Kc9d }
Hand  3:    31.9225 %      31.81%     00.11%      { QsJc }

I got knocked out when the short stack hit his queen on the flop and the bigger stack hit his nine on the river.

Hank calls me the master of great calls, but I’d like to be lucky once in a while.

Using Nazi technology…

Thursday, August 25th, 2005

…to turn coal into unleaded.

Yahoo! News / Reuters: Montana’s governor eyes coal to solve U.S. fuel costs

Montana’s governor wants to solve America’s rising energy costs using a technology discovered in Germany 80 years ago that converts coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

The Fischer-Tropsch technology, discovered by German researchers in 1923 and later used by the Nazis to convert coal into wartime fuels, was not economical as long as oil cost less than $30 a barrel.

But with U.S. crude oil now hitting more than double that price, Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s plan is getting more attention across the country and some analysts are taking him very seriously.

Montana is “sitting on more energy than they have in the Middle East,” Schweitzer told Reuters in an interview this week.

“I am leading this country in this desire and demand to convert coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. We can do it in Montana for $1 per gallon,” he said.

“We can do it cheaper than importing oil from the sheiks, dictators, rats and crooks that we’re bringing it from right now.”

The governor estimated the cost of producing a barrel of oil through the Fischer-Tropsch method at $32, and said that with its 120 billion tons of coal — a little less than a third of the U.S total — Montana could supply the entire United States with its aviation, gas and diesel fuel for 40 years without creating environmental damage.

Not sure that excavating the state of Montana to supply more fossil fuels is the long-term solution, but it’s worth looking into.

Blogging from Word

Monday, August 22nd, 2005

Those of you who use Blogger have probably already seen this, but if not…

About Blogger for Word

Blogger for Word is a free add-in for Microsoft Word that lets you save a Word document as a post to your Blogger blog with just a few clicks, and without even opening up a browser. Blogger for Word makes it even easier to express yourself online, save your documents to the web, and edit your work both online and off.

With Blogger for Word, publishing a Word document to your blog is just as seamless as saving it to your computer, and it’s easy to get started; all you need to do is download and install the Blogger for Word add-in, and three buttons appear in your Word toolbar:

* Publish creates and publishes a new post from the text in your document.
* Open Post enables you to edit your last 15 Blogger posts in Word.
* Save as Draft enables you to keep a post unpublished; it will appear in your Blogger account, but not publicly on your blog.

Seems like this might be a good way to avoid those “Blogger ate my post” situations that used to drive me crazy. Though I still think it’s better to fire up the lightweight Bloggar for all your blogging needs.

Little Joshy Grows Up

Thursday, August 18th, 2005

My friend Josh Dysart has been writing Swamp Thing for a little while now, and they’ve finally collected the first two story arcs in a book for all of us to buy.





Swamp Thing: Love in Vain

A word from Josh:

WARNING A) This book is not for kids. It’s heady and violent and has an experimental narrative structure that they probably won’t dig on anyway. B) This is a complicated character with a great deal of back story, so while it is a self contained read, it also does rely on past “occurrences” for much of it’s emotional resonance. It’s sort of like tuning into a soap opera mid-season… except that this soap opera has monsters fucking in it!! And remember, you don’t have to read it, you just have to buy it.

You can buy it at Amazon.com (or just look at the cover)… of course
comic book stores really do need you’re business more than some
massive corporate conglomerate.

I guess I got nothing better to spend my $15 on.

Death by Video Game Addiction

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

Sounds like some poker players I know.

Reuters: S. Korean man dies after 50 hours of computer games

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe, authorities said on Tuesday.

The 28-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, had been playing on-line battle simulation games at the cybercafe in the southeastern city of Taegu, police said.

Lee had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play on-line games on August 3. He only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed, they said.

Lee had recently quit his job to spend more time playing games, the daily JoongAng Ilbo reported after interviewing former work colleagues and staff at the Internet cafe.

After he failed to return home, Lee’s mother asked his former colleagues to find him. When they reached the cafe, Lee said he would finish the game and then go home, the paper reported.

He died a few minutes later, it said.

I wonder if we can find Mike partially liable for this?

“Your opponent cannot fold if you do not bet or raise.” –Abdul