For the past 16 years, I've had servers in my home office running zvan.net, among other domains. After thousands of Watt-hours of power and multiple upgrades of hardware, it's finally time to shut them off and move everything to the cloud. Eventually, I'll have my one or two servers managed by Chef, but for the moment, I'm doing it the old fashioned way with Git and ssh.

Perhaps there will be a blog post in there somewhere, or perhaps there will only be this one that tests the functionality of my new AWS server.

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On June 7th and 8th 2014, I rode my bicycle 150 miles and raised $1035 of the $3,000,000 raised by the event for the National MS Society, Upper Midwest Chapter. Here are two videos, one for each day.

Day 1

Day 2

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I took some pictures of Thomas Dolby at The Cedar last night. Steph wrote a review.

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An excellent ad campaign. Check it out.

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While getting ready for work this morning, I read this on twitter:

Searching for an article with "atheists need to" Google responds with "shut up", "die", and "chill". The hate still catches me off guard.

Brianne Bilyeu (@abiodork) August 9, 2012

So I thought I'd try some autocompletes. The results were interesting.

atheists need to
atheists need to shut up
atheists need to shut
atheists need to die
atheists need to chill

christians need to
christians need to wake up
christians need to die
christians need to stand up
christians need to grow up

muslims need to die
muslims need to be exterminated
muslims need to chill
muslims need to grow up

jews need to
jews need to die
jews need to get over the holocaust
jews need to be perfected
jews need to be exterminated

Nobody seems to know anything about mormons:
mormons need to
mormons need to work to increase favor
things you need to know about mormons
everything you need to know about mormons
what you need to know about mormons

I guess buddhists and agnostics don't need anything:
buddhists need to
agnostics need to

And taoists might as well be atheists:
taoists need to
atheists need to shut up
atheists need to shut
atheists need to die
atheists need to chill

So what about "atheists are?"

atheists are
atheists are
atheists are retarded
atheists are smarter
atheists are so stupid

christians are
christians are crazy
christians are ignorant
christians are hypocrites
christians are delusional

muslims are
muslims are exempt from obamacare (wait...what?)
muslims are animals
muslims are coming
muslims are crazy

jews are
jews are a race
jews are not white
jews are not a race
jews are white

mormons are
mormons are crazy
mormons are not christians
mormons are christians
mormons are a cult

buddhists are
buddhists are atheists
buddhists are killing muslims
buddhists are vegetarians
buddhists are hypocrites

taoists are
taoists think caves are
are taoists atheists
what are taoists beliefs
are taoists vegetarians

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So we made it to Mars again and geeks like me everywhere stayed up extra late to watch the live event. We were not dissappointed. To see the first photos come back seconds after langing, even though the dust cap was still on the camera was an amazing thing.

I stayed up. I was excited. I wasn't quite as excited as the people in the video, but I was excited.

Here's what really gets me though. When Curiosity touched down after the sky-crane manouver, I was struck by just how excited the people at JPL were about this. My first thought: "Holy crap! It's like the opening of a Microsoft store ... except they're all wearing the same color shirt."

It's been 50 years since we first put humans on the moon. In 50 years, airplanes went from a tentative unpowered glider in North Carolina to the supersonic Bell X-1; why haven't we done the same for space flight? I mean...should we be this excited by going to Mars? Shouldn't it be old hat by now?

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited. The science that's going to come out of this mission will enrich our lives for years to come and the new technology that went into creating the mission is probably just hitting our cellphones and clothing stores. I just think we're missing out on a lot of opportunty. Heck, we spent the entire budget of this mission in less than a month in Iraq...Just think what we could be doing with more balanced priorities.

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I just wanted a place to keep handy links to debunk common misconceptions.

Global Warming

Volcanoes produce more CO₂ than humans

Turns out the USGS has an artice on that one here.

Gas studies at volcanoes worldwide have helped volcanologists tally up a global volcanic CO₂ budget in the same way that nations around the globe have cooperated to determine how much CO₂ is released by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels. Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO₂ annually.

This seems like a huge amount of CO₂, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO₂ tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO₂ is large, the global fossil fuel CO₂ emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO₂ not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.

 

--

Human Embrionic Stem Cells

Adult stem cell therapy exists, embrionic stem cell therapy does not

Turns out there's some promise in human embrionic stem cells. You can even start new lines without destroying the fetus (which was probably going to be destroyed anyway.) RPE therapy.

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So...I finally finished Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception last night. Overall, I'd have to say it's a worthwhile game, but it has some severe issues.

Story: B+
The storyline of Uncharted 3 follows a wandering path across the globe to discover secrets of imense wealth and power hidden a long, long time ago. This is a familiar story for anyone who has played Tomb Raider or the other Uncharted games. It works, it's fun, and it doesn't have to be too closely interwoven with the gameplay, so it's easy to implement. In this case, it tied in well enough with the puzzles that you could almost believe the storyline and gameplay were developed with some collaboration.

Nearly every chapter had me wondering what crazy plot point would come out next and I mostly cared about the characters and what happened to them. Unfortunately, the plot is often driven by stupidity. It's not as bad as Tomb Raider's Angel of Darkness episode which could have been entirely avoided in the first minutes of the game, but I couldn't help thinking a few times during the game that 'that was a dumb thing to do.'

Art: A+
Creatively, this is a beautiful game. The color palates are well-conceived and appropriate, often bold. The environments are immersive and give a real sense of being there. The architecture is as detailed as any I've seen in a game this year, interrupted only by bright yellow 'hang or climb on this' objects. The character modeling is impeccable and just in the right spot to avoid too much of the Uncanny Valley.

There's one environment (you'll know it when you see it...lots of water) that just blew me away when it was revealed. I've seen other game levels with similar concepts, but this one was just amazing. I felt like I should be able to find it on Google Earth.

Gameplay: C-
The actual game is where this title falls on it's face. The climbing puzzles are great. The environmental puzzles are great. The ability to shoot a gun while hanging from the side of a building is quite handy. The fight animations are nearly on par with Batman: Arkham City in their creativity and satisfying takedowns. The problem comes with the controls.

Drake has a clumsy walk, as he pretty much always has, which surprises me for a motion-captured animation. Was their actor hit by a truck before they did that one? His tendency to touch walls and pillars as he passes them is endearing at first but then made me think he was drunk, and by the end of the game I thought he was Adrian Monk's long lost twin. I can't count the number of times I died because I dive-rolled off a ledge instead of hanging from it (same button). Or dive-rolled past a wall instead of taking cover behind it (same button). Or hung off a ledge instead of taking cover behind a wall (get the picture yet?)

You like those fight animations? Like smashing your opponent into a wall and taking his gun? Get ready for timed button mashing with little blinking triangle, circle, and square icons on the screen. I hated this mechanism when it was introduced and I hate it still today. Sometimes it's done well, but it's still annoying no matter how well it's done.

And on top of all that, there was the overarching problem that once I broke my cover, I was stuck in an epic gunfight with no way to go back and try being stealthy again. The stealth kills were great, but I almost never got to use them because I'd slip up at some point and hundreds of gun-wielding thugs would run into the room. Not to mention that for a thief and explorer, Nathan Drake has an epic body count.

Verdict: Buy it, but don't rush. Used is soon enough.

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I don't gamble, but I do play poker. In fact, it turns out I'm pretty good at poker despite still having to sit and calculate the odds sometimes. One thing that playing poker has helped me learn is that people do stupid things to get ahead. Consequently, there are stupid rules to keep them from doing it.

For example, if a player puts in only one chip and that chip is worth more than the current bet, unless they announce that they are raising that chip is considered a call and they are owed change from the pot. This keeps the player from getting information from other players' reactions prior to deciding if they will call or raise.

Lewis Black has a similar rant on the topic:

They needed to do this because as the Jews were wandering around willy-nilly in the desert, one of them no doubt led a camel up to a rabbi and said, "I met her at an oasis and it's been wonderful. She looked at me in a way that I've always wanted to be looked at. We're in love and, well, Rabbi, we want to be married."

And the rabbi said, "Perhaps you didn't notice, but she's a fucking camel." Then he went back to the other rabbis and informed them, "Son of a bitch, we have to come up with another rule! Today a guy came back with a camel and yesterday one of them showed up with a snapping turtle. God knows what's going to happen tomorrow. We've got to get these people on track." Hence, the man-woman marriage rule in the Bible.

So when you complain that a law is stupid, realize that it's because someone did something stupid to cause it to become a law. When McDonalds started labeling their coffee as 'hot' because of a 'frivolous lawsuit,' realize that the person who brought that lawsuit suffered 3rd degree burns from 'hot' coffee. When you think that helmet laws infringe on your right to let your hair blow in the wind on your motorcycle, realize that it frees others from the trauma of killing you in the event of an accident.

Not that there isn't such a thing as a truly stupid law.

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