Month: November 2014

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

Hello, fellow citizens of The Future! I am writing this from my smartphone, because I can. I just bought it this afternoon.

I’ve never owned a smartphone before. I have a lot of waste-not-want-not issues about technology, and I was never quite able to justify a smartphone to my satisfaction. Even after my then-7.5-year-old MP3 player’s clickwheel began to fail four months ago, taking two clicks forward and one click back (or, worse, the other way around), I still tried to keep using it.

A few days ago, though, after a talk with my parents, I came to terms with the fact that it was time to move on. (Besides, I can give my old Sansa to my brother anyway, and he might be able to get a bit more use out of it. It’s still a step up from his current utter lack of handheld non-GBA computer.)

At that point, the question wasn’t so much *why* to get a smartphone as why *not*. I could get an MP3 player *without* Wi-Fi and camera and variety of other goodies, or I could get one *with*, in either case for less than I paid for the Sansa.

So, I bought an Alcatel Idol Mini. I haven’t set up the phone plan yet, but there’s a lot it can do without the SIM card. Almost everything I want it to do, really.

Of course, I can’t play around with it much yet, because of the whole school thing. Soon, phone. Soon, once all this pesky schoolwork is out of the way, you and I will spend some quality time getting to know each other.

(After all these years of gazing longingly from afar, I’ve finally got a smartphone. It’s beautiful and wonderful and *mine*, *finally* mine.)

P.S. (from laptop): Today is my Hebrew-calendar birthday. I didn’t intend for the phone to be a birthday present from myself, but it’s nice how that worked out.

Tags:

#Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(November has ended up being a very technological month) #proud citizen of The Future #oh look an original post

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

astronomy-to-zoology:

Violet Turaco (Musophaga violacea)

Sometimes known as the “violaceous plantain eater” the violet turaco is a species of turaco (Musophagidae), that occurs in west Africa, ranging from Senegal through Nigeria, with an isolated population in Chad and the Central African Republic. Violet turacos are social birds, travelling in large flocks in tropical savannas, wetlands, woodlands and forests. Like other turacos, violet turacos feed mainly on fruits, with an affinity for figs, they will also feed on invertebrates, leaves, buds, and flowers.

Classification

Animalia-Chordata-Aves-Cuculiformes-Musphagidae-Musophaga-M. violacea

Images: Doug Janson and DickDaniels

Tags:

#bird #adorable #the more you know

Watch This Scientist Climb a Wall in Gecko-Inspired Spider-Man Gloves

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/a13221/scientists-have-created-gecko-inspired-spider-man-gloves-17448448/ }}

camwyn:

Gecko tech finally comes up to size.

Gloves that let a person crawl up flat, sheer surfaces like Spider-Man does now exist. Skeptical? Watch Elliot Hawkes, a mechanical engineer at Stanford who led the team that pioneered this breakthrough, test them out.

“To work, the surface you’re climbing needs to be relatively smooth; like glass, varnished wood, polished stone, or metal,” Hawkes says, “but you can attach and detach with very little effort, and to make [the gloves] stick all you have to do is hang your weight.”

Over the past decade, scientists around the world have been trying to mimic the incredible stickiness of the gecko foot. But until now, engineering these materials to work at a human scale was a seemingly insurmountable challenge. It’s not that the materials weren’t sticky enough—it’s that no one was able to figure out how to delicately balance the strain of a climbing human hand across a big patch of adhesive. In a study published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, however, Hawkes and his colleagues describe how they engineered a solution.

Says Kellar Autumn, a biomechanical engineer at Lewis & Clark College who studies gecko adhesion was not involved in this project: “This is a really big deal. I’ve been dreaming about this for about 15 years, since we first discovered the mechanism that makes geckos stick to walls. And this is proof that we finally understood it well enough to make a person climb a building.”

Tags:

#the power of science

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

truestoriesaboutme:

Spin-offs always do an episode that’s about differentiating themselves from the original show. I vote we call those episodes “Punching Q in the Face episodes”.

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #you make a good point #Punching Q in the Face episodes

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canadian-space-agency:

Happy Sweet 16, ISS!

November 20th marked the launch anniversary of the first module of the International Space Station (ISS), Zarya. On that day in 1998 began the construction in space of this unique scientific and exploration outpost that enables researchers from all over the world to put their talents to work with innovative experiments that could not be done anywhere else.

We thank our partners from the United States, Russia, Europe and Japan for 16 years of outstanding collaboration. Here’s to many more!

http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/iss/

Tags:

#space #the brightest star in our sky #the power of science #proud citizen of The Future #anniversaries

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fencer-x:

zetsubonna:

jessamygriffin:

websandwhiskers:

THIS HAD BEEN DRIVING ME NUTS FOR FOREVER. 

So there.  Now I have figured it out. 

People who I suspect have thought about this less than me:

  • Tolkien
  • Peter Jackson
  • real geneticists
  • God
  • anyone

Good lord.

And this is how a fanfic writer works.

See this kind of shit is a lot of fun to do but most people look at it and go “wow you have thought about this way too much”

Like dude, screw you. I’m not even in this fandom and I think this is awesome.

Tags:

#Lord of the Rings #genetics #awesome #I agree with fencer-x

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

bobbycaputo:

Aerial Photographs Capture the Aftermath of This Week’s Brutal Snow Storm in Buffalo, NY Photographed by Buffalo News’ Chief Photographer Derek Gee

Tags:

#home of the brave #snow #sweet gods #(to those of you who remember I live not *all* that far from here: don’t worry about me) #(we’ve got…maybe eight inches?) #(our storms *looked* pretty impressive (and by November standards they were) but it’s *nothing* like this)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

audible-smiles:

I love that Sisko is the lone human on DS9 who doesn’t get nostalgic for 20th/21st century Earth*, not out of some vague sense of moral standards but because he’s been there and cops beat the shit out of him.

*with the exception of baseball, of course

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #pretty much #Sisko’s reaction to Vic made *so* much more sense once I factored in ‘Far Beyond the Stars’