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Other's thoughts
Nov. 7th, 2009
05:48 pm - rendering problem
My Firefox updated to version 3.5.5 and now the LJ entry view looks strange, missing pictures plus the horrible Times New Roman font.
On my portal page everything looks fine [www.livejournal.com/portal/], but to have the usual style by the entries I must switch to IE view:
page rendered by ff engine
page rendered by ie engine
On my old PC I have a previous version of Firefox and everything is ok there.
What can I do to solve it without switching to ie view? Is it possible they will fix it in the next firefox update?
Thanks!
01:15 am - "I Love You, Mr. Star Wars" And Other Famous Movie Quotes
Nov. 6th, 2009
07:46 pm - There is no mention of otakukin, however.
Bay Area Vampirism, Energy-work, and Otherkin Society (San Francisco, CA)
The Vampirism, Energy-work and Otherkin Society (VEOS) is a loosely-organized San Francisco based group. This group is open those identifying as vampire (sang or psy), donor, otherkin, and to those who wish to learn more about such topics. Other energy-workers are also welcome, so long as you have no problem with the vampiric side of energy work.This group is NOT open to role-players, recruiters of any type, or those seeking to promote any form of religion (discussion about religion is OK, preaching is not).
05:35 pm - The McNuggetini
11:49 am - iGEM results
Two gold medalists, one best software tool for the comp team, hours of lost sleep -> ∞.
Nov. 5th, 2009
09:56 pm
Comments for Thursday, November 5, 2009
Guest: Susan Rice
Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations
11:37 am - Browser based game development...
Hey... first time posting to this community, but I'm hoping this type of post is okay.
For the better part of a year I've been working on developing a browser based game, and we finally made it into a closed beta :P The problem is I really have no idea on how to get members and people interested in "yet another browser game." I'm also having a hard time finding testers who are willing to critique and critique well.
I was hoping a few people here might want to drop their hat into the ring and try testing the game out. We (it's a team of about five people) could REALLY use some analyzing and tearing up of our game -- or endless praise, if you're in the mood.
The game is Iron Grip: Lords of Atelia and it's a steam punk browser game, focusing on building armies and destroying the opponent. To sign-up, just hit register! We approve accounts on Fridays and Mondays, and you should get an activation email once we do. Anyone with any questions is welcome to talk to me here or on our forums. I'd really appreciate any beta testers I could get, especially considering ones from this community should have some extra background experience making critique really valid :)
Thanks.
12:13 pm - Epic Games releases FREE version of Unreal Engine
November 5, 2009 - Epic Games releases the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for free to everyone. Unreal Engine 3 powers many blockbuster games, simulations and animated content, and with UDK, the only limit is your imagination.
01:56 am - ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
dnalounge update
DNA Lounge update, wherein it's spoooooky.
Nov. 4th, 2009
09:57 pm
Comments for Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Guest: Al Gore*
Former Vice President of the United States
*for real this time...
02:15 pm - Club Med, Dune Sea.
01:03 am
Ah, Comcast, the ability of your representatives to contradict each other never ceases to amaze me.
Nov. 3rd, 2009
07:49 pm - Paging Dr. Mbogo...
Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments
Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments -- which substitute for or supplement medical treatments -- on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against "religious and spiritual healthcare." [...]
About 90 years ago, private insurance companies began paying for Christian Science prayer treatments, but more recently, managed-care insurers declined reimbursements, insisting on paying for care that produced proven medical results.
The Internal Revenue Service allows the cost of the prayer sessions to be counted among itemized medical expenses for income tax purposes -- one of the only religious treatments explicitly identified as deductible by the IRS. Some federal medical insurance programs, including those for military families, also reimburse for prayer treatment. [...]
Dr. Norman Fost, a pediatrician and medical ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said the measure went against the goal of reducing healthcare costs by improving evidence-based medical practices. "They want a special exception for people who use unproved treatments, and they also want to get paid for it," he said. "They want people who use prayer to have it just automatically accepted as a legitimate therapy."
06:47 pm - Stupid plumbing.
06:45 pm - *foosh*
Nov. 2nd, 2009
02:51 pm - any suggestions, besides roll over and take it?
First--still free (for a limited time, before I get my ass kicked?) "Falling Up" on the iPhone ~ http://is.gd/4LskJ
Falling up is a twist on the standard "falling tetronimo" game, so you can probably see where this is going...
This is my last letter back to Their Laywer:
Ms. XXXXXXX,
Thank you for that documentation. I am reviewing it.
I do, at a naive level, think my game goes well beyond the standard Tetris (and very carefully does not make any hints or claims as to relation; nor use any graphics, sounds, etc., from any original). If you've played it for more than a minute or two, you'll know that the blocks do not just "fall down", with respect to the person playing. That is the core art of Falling Up.
Aso--if I may--how do you rebut the copyright office's own claims that copyright does not protect the "method or methods for playing [a game]"? And more specifically, "Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar
principles."
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.pdf
I really do appreciate your time. :) And as above, I'm reviewing the document you sent.
Any advice much appreciated, even if it is just a group consensus that I deserve this (I don't think I do, but I've got other games that are not at all related that I can focus on).
05:23 pm - Jon has the cutest family
...EVER. Here they are in their Halloween get-ups this year.
(direct from ontd) http://community.livejournal.com/ohnothe
His daughter is so super cute in that last pic! Also, just a hat? Lazy Jon, lazy.
*link fixed hopefully. Sorry guys :)
Nov. 1st, 2009
06:08 pm
My, time flies!
It's been roughly a year (a week short of it, actually) since I've made a public entry on LiveJournal. My wife has gone about the same length of time.
Both of us are on Facebook (rarely use MySpace since it's become the cyberghetto of the internets) and I know a number of you stay in touch with us over there.
I'm packing for an Ironman triathlon next Saturday, which explains why I haven't really made time to post over here. Between that and work, I find little in the way of spare time.
I'll try to post here more often.. if anyone is even reading this journal anymore.
Hope you are all doing well. I should try to catch up soon, though that's a hell of a lot of reading!
03:04 pm - Bleh
There are few things I hate more than being sick. Because it wastes so much time to no real effect.
I have a cold, I think. It's no swine flu - I have one stuffy nostril, some fatigue, and a funny feeling in my throat. Maybe it's a very mild flu? Eh. I'll live. I don't feel like doing anything, though. Which is what bothers me. I should be at least playing video games - if not cleaning up, getting ready for my trip to China (Which is Friday) driving to Chau's place, working out, being social, etc.
Last night was quite a lot of fun. My costume was a minor scandal. If public pictures show up somewhere - and I feel like they will, since I got my picture taken a lot - I might admit that they are of me.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif){kind=small}
amusedOct. 28th, 2009
Oct. 26th, 2009
Oct. 31st, 2009
12:03 am
Walking past Uptown Espresso reminds me of the one thing I miss about academia: Being able to take my work to a coffee shop whenever I want.
Oct. 30th, 2009
07:06 pm - I approve of this Gareth Pugh fellow.
 | I hereby decree that everyone wear gigantic winged headgear at all times. Get to it. |
 | Also I note that these boots and I will be very happy together, just as soon as someone tells me where I can buy them. Why is there not a "buy" link on this page? Commerce, people! Look it up! |
05:57 pm - plumbery
Dear Lazyweb, I am having an issue with a series of tubes.
I have crappy water pressure in my shower. However, the sinks in my bathroom and kitchen have no such problem. The sinks have the fury of a geyser, compared to the anemic mist the shower puts out. My high-tech measuring methodology is this: in any of my sinks, I can fill up a pint glass in about 1.7 seconds, with either hot or cold water. However, if I use either the bathtub faucet or the shower (with the shower head removed, so it's just a bare pipe) this takes about 8.2 seconds.
So the water is there, it just ain't making it to the shower. The sink looks like this, and the valve in the shower looks like this:
They appear to both be fed by the same 1/2" flex-tubing. The two screw-valves on either side of the shower valve assembly are turned all the way up.
I had a plumber come out and he said that he could replace the shower valve assembly (which would require turning off the water to the whole building, knocking out the wall, and re-tiling), but that it likely wouldn't make any difference, so I should just live with it. He seems to suspect that all such valves are standardized at a "crappy water pressure" setting, and replacing it would leave me exactly where I am now.
I can't see any markings on the thing in the wall that would let me research what its flow is actually rated to be, so that I could compare it with potential replacements.
Any thoughts?
Update: I took out the flow regulator that was hiding behind the big screw thingy that is 2nd from the right in the right picture above (it's the smaller part pictured to the right, here), and now I get 1.7 second flow from both the tub faucet and the showerhead pipe! Unfortunately my shower head still retards that down to around 4 seconds, so it's time to find a better one of those...
Update 2: I spoke too soon. It seems that taking out the flow regulator increased the flow of cold water but not of hot water, so after taking that out the shower was slightly-warm at best, never hot. So apparently I get to choose between good water pressure and hot water.
The hot water valve on the left doesn't open as far as the cold water valve on the right does (one turn versus two), so maybe that's the problem. But replacing that would definitely require opening up the wall and de-soldering the pipes.
12:53 pm - normalizing audio volume on movies
The last time I asked this I didn't get any practical answers, but that was a year ago, so I might as well ask again:
Dear Lazyweb,
How do I normalize the audio volume of a bunch of MOV and MP4 files?
The "Sound Check" option in iTunes works passably well for MP3 files, but doesn't do anything for videos. This makes it annoying to use a playlist full of music videos as a source of ambient entertainment, since the volume fluctuates wildly.
I think that a solution involving manually pulling the audio out of the movie files, normalizing it as a WAV, and re-inserting it into the movie is probably doomed to synchronization errors. So let's not.
I have tried using the "Get Info / Options / Volume Adjustment" slider manually on a few videos, but that is far too manual and annoying to do for all of them. Perhaps an approach would be to compute the volume boost desired of each movie, then set whatever ID3 tag corresponds to that slider? Or failing that, do it with Applescript?
Update: I kinda got something working with Applescript here. It fails if any video requires a volume increase of more than 100% (~6dB), but I only have a few videos of which that is true.
12:13 pm - Helmet Cam Avalanche Survival Video
This is one of the scariest things I've ever seen. Especially the weird choking noises that the audio turns in to just after burial. Apparently David Lynch does foley in hell.
11:54 am - Even though we've run out of Future, it's important that we continue to strive to make Gibson's visions come true...
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