Category: general

I was watching Kyou Kara Maou episode 45 the other day with Sean, and at the end I pointed at Conrad and said, “See, he knew! There he is right there! He knew the whole time and didn’t say anything!”

Sean responded cheerfully, “That’s because he’s a dick.”

“But…he’s so hot,” I protested.

“Oh, so that’s it,” Sean mused. “‘Sean’s a dick…but he’s so hot.'”

You know, there may be truth to that…

;>

It’s like this simmering nausea. I felt it last night, too, and last night I was also dizzy and lightheaded.

I wonder if this is due to the new blood pressure medicine I just started taking, or if this is related to my previous lightheadedness, or if this is just because I have a slight cold/allergies…

Tamim Ansary has a great article on MSN Encarta today about the possible future of energy. The last page of the four part piece details a very interesting idea called “distributed generation”:

Let’s say you have a solar generator on your roof and a hydrogen-making mini-plant in your basement. Anytime your solar generator makes more energy than you’re using, the excess flows to your basement and makes hydrogen.

Later, when the sun isn’t shining, your fuel cells kick in and you draw down on your hydrogen supply.

If your hydrogen tanks fill up, the excess energy flows into the grid. When the grid has more power than it can sell, the excess goes to big electrolyzers that store energy as hydrogen on a commercial scale. The massive fuel cells then emit energy as needed to keep the overall supply constant.

In this system, more or less everybody produces energy. They sell to the grid when they have more than enough. They buy back when they’re running a deficit.

In such a world, there is no point in anyone conquering Saudi Arabia, toppling Washington, D.C., or invading the Indonesian Archipelago. No conquest would give any conqueror control over a protoplasmic energy web fed by the entire human race.

This idea must borrow heavily from distributed computing–it even uses a similar name. What a great adaptation! With this model, everyone would be encouraged to have their own power-generating equipment, to save on energy costs in the long run. This would then feed the system for everyone, balancing out over the whole world.

I like it!

I hope that solar power can become more efficient and also come down in price. (I’m not too sure about wind power, because it affects birds and who knows what all else that travels through the air.)

I had a really good time (you thought I was going to say I had a blast, didn’t you?) at RiverBlast.

The main reason I was there, of course, was to see the bellydancing:

I also walked around and looked at the booths and attractions a little. My evening ended with a bang (there you go, there’s a pun) with the fireworks set off over the Savannah River from the train bridge.

After having dinner with Mari and Kelly at Wendy’s, Chris and I headed out to see the fireworks from the North Augusta side of the river. We parked along the street near The River Golf Club, then walked down through the riverfront mansions until we found what seemed to be a public boat dock. Heading down the ramp, we settled ourselves towards the bottom–there was a medium-sized group on the dock itself, so we didn’t intrude. From that angle we had a pretty good view of the fireworks.

While most of my pictures of the fireworks are blurry, a few of them turned out all right, so I uploaded them. I’ve also uploaded pictures of the bellydancing and of the vendor booths. All the RiverBlast pictures can be found here.

Dude.

An eco-car that can travel the world using a fraction of the electricity it takes to power a light bulb, has been unveiled by its British creators.

According to the British gas firm BOC, its hydrogen-powered BOC Ech2o needs just 25 Watts — the equivalent of less than two gallons of petrol — to complete the 25,000-mile global trip, while emitting nothing more hazardous than water.

But with a top speed of 30mph, the journey would take more than a month to complete, even if the car was driven flat out with no pit-stops.

Just get it up to about 50 or 60 mph. That’s really all I need–my current car tops out at 80, and while that would be nice, ultimately the majority of my driving takes place in a more reasonable range. So 50, 60 mph is fine. I would totally buy one.

I’m going downtown in a couple hours to see Brooke and Mari bellydance. It’ll be Brooke’s first public performance, and, for the first time, the beginning class is not doing the Waady choreography. This should be good!

After that, I plan to thoroughly enjoy RiverBlast.

Louisville has something like it for the Derby, but I’ve never seen it. I’m really excited about RiverBlast.

Butler says Monday night’s show is the biggest he’s ever put on in 17 years of running Augusta’s July 4th fireworks.

“It’s the biggest and the best,” he said. “I can assure you of that.”

You know, it occurs to me that the best angle for fireworks pictures might be across the river in North Augusta. That way, maybe the downtown buildings could be a backdrop.

Too bad I don’t own a tripod…

I was reading this article, thinking I’d see something cool straight out of an action movie, when I was floored by the following:

A helicopter crashed Tuesday while bringing reinforcements to the team, killing all 16 service members aboard.

The Pentagon, which believes the helicopter was downed by a rocket-propelled grenade, released the names of the eight soldiers and eight sailors Saturday.

It was the worst single-day death toll for U.S. forces since the Afghan war began nearly four years ago.

(Emphasis mine.)

I think it says a lot about the wealth and power of our country that we can be at war for four years and not have it significantly affect daily life–to the point that we can even forget about it.

I mean, wow. Four years. And we’ve been in Iraq for awhile, too.

It’s pretty sobering.

But it also makes me think that if we put our true potential to work–i.e., drafted everyone who can fight and sent them over there–that we’d be finished instantly.

There’s no way I want that to happen. I’m just saying that given our obvious power, it’s ludicrous that people are still fighting us. A war of attrition is certainly not desirable, but we would absolutely win one. Which is, of course, why terrorism arose–to give those with no chance of winning a regular war the ability to win through fear and coersion.

And so, as I’ve noted before, our victory hinges upon our society’s ability to stomach some losses and setbacks in the name of stamping out terror.

I feel like I blogged about this before, but I can’t find the post if I did. Bleh.

I was interested in this show. It seemed indulgent and exploitative, but at the same time, I felt that good discourse could come from it. The subject matter was edgy because it played on real societal problems, and that meant there was the potential that people could learn from it.

When I heard it wasn’t going to be aired, I was a little disappointed. I probably wouldn’t have watched it on TV anyway, since air doesn’t come in very well here, but I would have enjoyed reading gossip articles about what had happened in the show and seeing what I thought about it.

This article on CNN has made me want to see the show even more. Apparently the show ends on a positive note, which is amazing and uplifting, and I’d like to see how it happens.

I don’t know if ABC will ever air the show, but if they don’t, I hope somebody on the inside will steal copies and post them on the Internet ;>

I was wondering what the side effects of breaking open comet Tempel 1 would be–scientific, physical, political–but I somehow didn’t see this coming:

A Russian astrologist who says NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million, local media reported on Monday.

I’m not sure that it would take $300 million worth of work to redo all her calculations, though. Or is this money she would have received for her horoscopes but now will not because she has to take the time to redo them?

If so, maybe I should get into astrology…;P

Just watched the first Stoffel arc again. It’s so funny how he’s portrayed in the beginning as being so dangerous, when really he’s such a putz. (I love the part in episode 45 where he excuses himself from the table and he and Raven scuttle away a few feet so they can figure out what to do…so hilarious.)

CNN’s a little behind the times, but Japan Today has an update.

Steam plume in Pacific confirmed as undersea volcanic eruption

This part of the article amused me:

A Maritime Self-Defense Force member at the MSDF’s aviation base on Iwojima Island, north of Minami-Iwojima Island, spotted the column of water vapor about 1,000 meters high and 50-100 meters thick at 5:45 p.m. Saturday.

Note that they place “Iwojima Island” as “north of Minami-Iwojima Island”. There are two funny things about that.

1. “-jima” means island, so they are literally saying “Iwo Island Island”.
2. “Minami” means south, so their explanation is that Iwojima is “north of South Iwo Island Island”. That seems kind of logical, doesn’t it?

Ahhh…the connection of past and future, Yuuri in a dress, and, of course, Bob the Maou.

Kyou Kara Maou episode 42 goodness has saved my poor brains.

I am still pissed off over that summary I read of the fourth Touch movie.

I just can’t believe they would fuck over Tatsuya like that.

Retarded.

It’s like, “Oh, let’s knock him upside the head so that he devolves to where he was at the beginning of the TV series! Only now he’s in college, won’t that be a riot?” It’s the worst kind of sequel, where they pretty much do the exact same thing, five years later.

Look, people: after a character has evolved and grown and changed and matured, you cannot just erase that. It’s not fair to the character and it’s not fair to the audience and it’s plain bad storytelling so just don’t do it!

I wanted more Touch, yes. But not like that.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to scrub this debacle out of my brain. (Maybe with some Kyou Kara Maou.)

Why wasn’t I informed??????????

Official website, including 30 second trailer

And by the way, yes, I did just watch episode 101, the last one, and yes, I am wanting more more more…here’s hoping Central Anime will sub the movies/specials/whatevers…

Not that it wasn’t a good ending, it just left so many things unresolved. Except the most important thing. Which is good, I suppose.

But I want more!

I just read a plot synopsis of “Touch movie 4” which kind of pisses me off, but eh. I’ll still watch it! Edit 1:03am: No I won’t, ewwww. I just read Hitoshi Doi’s summary. What a worthless piece of crap. There was no point in making a movie like that at all. It’s bad, and it spoils the series anyway, so I’m not going to link to it :P

After a nice break from being obsessive compulsive about all the food I ate, all the exercise I got, and what my weight and blood pressure were every day, I am ready to get back into the groove. I checked my weight this morning, and it turns out that I didn’t gain anything during my hiatus.

I think this time I will be a little less anal, and only weigh myself once a week. I think that will allow me to chill out more.

As for blood pressure, instead of taking it twice a day and logging it in DietPower, I think I will take it once a week as well, and log it in an Excel spreadsheet. DietPower doesn’t have an export function, so I can’t get a list of my data or make my own graphs, and DietPower’s two-variable graphs, quite frankly, suck. (All they do is put two different Y-axes on the same graph. It’s horribly confusing to look at.)

I may start tracking other variables in the spreadsheet too, like measurements or something, again on a weekly basis.