The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
I don’t know when this game will be available, but I want it when it comes out.
No information available yet beyond the trailer, but watch the Raptor Safari web site for updates.
[tags]Gaming, Raptor Safari, Games, Physics, Dinosaurs, Jeep based raptor hunting[/tags]
Here’s a picture of my two sons taken late this past summer.
I realize recently I have very few pictures of my older son. I’ll be working on rectifying that soon, and will probably share some of the pictures here when I do that.
Looking back through the Blahg, I noticed that I haven’t heard anything about the Nao robot since I first mentioned it in 2006. I tried to find out more, but there’s still no word on availability of this robot which was planned for a 2007 release. Now I’m not criticizing the company for failing to deliver in the expected time frame – I’m a techie and a gamer, and accustomed to promised tech coming in late. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided the reason for the delay was probably so they could upgrade the visual system to include a killer-death-ray laser option, or maybe a frikkin’ sharks with frikkin’ laser beams on their frikkin’ heads shooting from a frikkin’ shoulder-mount cannon add-on.
Sadly, the robot is originally specced for only 22 inches in height, so adding the cannon would almost certainly require a form-factor upgrade.
[tags]Frikkin’ Sharks, Frikkin’ Laser Beams, Killer-death-ray, Aldebaran Robotics, Nao[/tags]
Like many others on t3h intarp!pes, I’ve been caught by an interest in this new band/album meme that’s hitting the bit-ways. Looks like I got lucky with my hits, as I’m apparently forming a New Age band paying tribute to a favored actor with a relaxation and self-realization album/CD.
- The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
- The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
- The third picture in Flickr’s Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days is your album cover.
Some quick page hits and 10 minutes in GIMP finding the fonts that catch my fancy and I present for you:
Shelley recently posted this snip about the removal of a parasitic cyst from a young girl’s brain. She even included a video (which I’m not embedding due to my recent climax-like explosion of video posts) plus a bit of information on the nature of the cyst, the danger of removing, and just what happens to the brain around the cyst after it is removed.
The cyst is a hydatid cyst, which is the result of a parasitic infection by tapeworm larvae(Echinococcus). Generally speaking, it does not occur in the USA, but rather occurs in Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, the southern part of South America, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and southern parts of Africa. The cysts, which are initiated by one larvae, eventually come to house thousands of tapeworm larvae. So it is very important not to rupture the cyst during its removal, else the host could easily die.
I’m normally squeemish in regards to video of medical procedures, but this is just such an interesting procedure. ScienceBlogs rock.
Now I’m hungry. Be back after I fix a bite of early lunch.
[tags]Cyst, Parasite, Brain surgery, Hydatid cyst, Shelley, Retrospectacle, ScienceBlogs[/tags]
In a past career, I was big in to computer security, and got paid well for doing the work. Since I’m now elsewhere professionally, I’m less in touch with the security industry than I used to be. However, I still keep up with a few important resources, and like to pass along really useful tips when I find them. Today in reading some security news and trying to catch up, I caught word of the F-Secure HealthCheck application patches scanning system. While this is unfortunately an Internet Explorer only tool currently, the site indicates work is in process for supporting other (and better, in my opinion, BTW) browsers. Hopefully that will happen soon.
Run HealthCheck to get a scan of applications on your system along with checks for patches and updates to those applications. This should help you track down security problems that have fixes available. If you keep up to date on these patches, it should help significantly with avoiding your machines getting taken over by a ‘bot-network. The tool appears to have been developed or at least re-announced (I’m not familiar enough with HealthCheck and it’s history nor age to know which is the correct term) as a result of an F-Secure poll regarding application patching.
It appears that many people are uncertain if their computers are fully patched when there are third party updates involved.
Q  What can you do about it?
A  F-Secure Health Check.Health Check is a free online tool designed to help consumers identify security updates needed on their computers.
I will point out that HealthCheck requires installation of an ActiveX control in your Internet Explorer window. I personally trust the eggheads at F-Secure to not do malice as a result of this, but you need to understand that installing an ActiveX control is a security risk which gives the control vendor pretty much full access to your operating system. While *I* personally trust the F-Secure worker-bees to not corrupt, control, nor destroy my system, you’ll have to make that decision for yourself.
After running the test, here’s a snip of what I got as a result:
In my case, I’m on a work computer without anti-virus and anti-spyware protection. Sadly, I am not allowed to correct this flaw. I make up for it by using the PortableApps version of ClamWin, and regularly scan my system. I also run Firefox for my browser (actually, I use the PortableApps version of this application, too) and stick mostly to web sites I know and trust. I save my home computer for more risky online activity.
If you are unsatisfied with your HealthCheck scan results and the problem turns out to be a browser security issue, can I suggest you update to FireFox?
[tags]security, healthcheck, scanning, vulnerability, patch, Windows, Internet Explorer, FireFox[/tags]
One of the absolutely greatest sites on the great wide intarw3b is Neatorama. I like it almost as much as I like boingboing (which gets bonus points because of Cory Doctorow – one of my favorite online peoply-persons – and Xeni Jardin – one of the sexiest online weblishly-folks), particularly because the frequent oddities that get posted like this Ultimate Geeks compilation.
Tracking down and posting all this greatness is inspiring, and I wish I had the time, tenacity, and skill to find and put together all the cool stuff that they give us over at Neatorama.
[tags]Neatorama, Ultimate geeks, YouTube, boingboing[/tags]
This is a beautiful combination of singing and acting, built up to make a video that runs forward and then in again fully in reverse – yes, a palindromic video I suppose. I figured out the song about 50-55 seconds in, but needed to wait another 30 seconds to get verification, as I wasn’t quite as certain as I wanted to be.
Kudos to this fellow for taking the time to learn that song backwards and putting all the action together with it to make it come out like that.
The finest YouTube video I can recall seeing.
Thanks, George (via boingboing)
If you were here last week, you might have seen my mention of the impending auction of one of the 17 known copies of the Magna Carta. Well, it looks like the auction is over, and my estimate was clearly far above the final bid.
A 710-year-old copy of the declaration of human rights known as the Magna Carta — the version that became part of English law — was auctioned Tuesday for $21.3 million, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman said.
Had I realized it would go for such a bargain-basement price, I probably would have flown to New York and put in a bid for it. You might not be able to put a price on freedom, but you can certainly put a price on the documentation which helped set up the modern understanding of freedom.
Who knew Hugh Laurie was so versatile? While catching up on reading James Randi’s web site, I learned that Hugh Laurie used to perform psychic spoon bending way back in the day.
I believe that’s fairly conclusive proof that Hugh Laurie is not only one of the finest actors ever, but an amazingly skilled psychic. 🙂
When your sister is attacked by a moose, what do you do hotshot? Well, if you are a well-trained World of Warcraft player, you know to distract the moose with your actions, lead it away from your sister, then feign death until it goes away.
