The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I'm actually cleaning up my computer. So a lot of these are old posts I'm copying and pasting. At the moment I'm sort of out of touch mentally, I can tell I'm not functioning at full capacity, but I think it's because I stayed up until 5 last night and I don't think I slept very well, even though I don't remember dreaming or much. I don't feel particularly traumatized or anything though, I think at this point everyone is sad but relieved, because Gramps had been going downhill for so long and it was really putting a lot of stress on Grandma as well. Anyway. Old posts:



This video is totally unreal.




And in case anyone was doubting the awesomeness of the new My Little Ponies (although I can't say I like the music):




Do you know one thing I have wanted all my life? A way to record dreams. And we are on our way, OMG. SCIENCE. IT'S SO COOL.

A new development in solar power, which hopefully will lead to cheaper and stronger solar panels. (And maybe even clear glass solar panels?! That would be wicked.) Also, I didn't know ceramics could be transparent. Science is crazy! I love it so. <3

Essentially
my reaction to a few seasons of Doctor Who.

DeLorean is building electric cars, I hope they are building new bodies and not just retrofitting old DeLoreans? It seems like the guy reopened the company in 1995 and is custom building a few a year? So there are newer DeLoreans and they're going to keep building them? How awesome would it be if they sliiiiiightly updated the design? Okay, too many question marks in this paragraph. AND YET.

Interesting historical trivia, "who was the historical model for human evil before Hitler?" For anyone out there writing historical fiction/nonfiction.

A Portuguese article about Indiana Jones, I like this part:

"I think Harrison Ford Indiana Jones can live up to 90 years, although for this can only eat pureed." "Take the example of Clint Eastwood. Is 81 and makes fascinating films, "praised Spielberg, who believes that the success formula of Indiana Jones, created by him and George Lucas, is their affinity with the public. "People like this kind of fantasy that takes places and scenarios ever seen. It's a bit crabber a hero, a survivor who is hurt and suffering ... It looks more like a real person than a superhero, "said the filmmaker said to justify the public's identification with the archaeologist.

I actually read something somewhere that Indiana Jones isn't supposed to be just a guy out adventuring, Spielberg and Lucas and Ford tried to make it about taking the character somewhere new as well. I.E. developed the character more. Which I think is why I don't like the books or anything... they're, strangely, this sort of James Bond thing where it's sex-girls-get-treasure-fight-badguys. Not that I dislike James Bond, it's just... its own thing.

Also, I think sort of knowing this subconsciously (it's so nice when someone else articulates what I am thinking/feeling) is the reason I was able to accurately guess that Indy and Marion would get married in IV. Also, Marion is the best anyway.

Actual evidence that Indy 5 is hopefully in the works! Hurrahhhh <3

Again I say: Hawaii. Australia. More Polynesia/Micronesia/Melanesia (Pacifica!). Northern Europe. Spain. Southern Africa? LET'S GET SOME VARIETY UP IN THIS BITCH. And more travel, PREFERRABLY.

Heeeeyyyy, more comments from Spielberg on Indy IV and V. I have to say, as someone who's always playing Devil's Advocate even though I dislike (but have come to terms with) certain aspects of Crystal Skull, I kinda feel bad for Lucas here. Pretty much everyone has hung him out to dry, and now, Spielberg included. Although, I guess he is owning up to the gopher and the fridge, WHICH, I can't say I thought the gopher was great but it wasn't awful. The fridge? I loved. And, sorry Spielberg, I don't think anyone actually says "nuke the fridge". One would sound like a tool if they did. It wasn't quite so over the top as... jumping the shark. As for five, I'll say what I said when I collected my thoughts after first seeing Crystal Skull... at least they can't do that again.

That being said, FUCKING HIRE ME TO DO SET DESIGN PLEASE? <3

Sort of... there are a lot.

I love this Portal shirt but the fact that momentum is retained through portals means that the slinky would not work on those stairs. It's falling farther.

Space Core is Nyan Cat.

I like that this personification of GlaDOS reminds me of Spalko. It's appropriate, in a cold, calculating way.

A pink kitten! Poor little kitten. :C SO ADORABLE THOUGH, SO TINY.

Ohmygod, this is a photograph.

It's Pushing Daisies in real life! Science is cool. Related! Fungus packaging.

I MISSED THIS BY A DAY (a month ago, but still). Would have been awesome. So many things I love involved!

Some really beautiful math and science behind Tron: Legacy.

More later as I keep cleaning...

I'm alive! I'm posting! I know!

My lappy's hard drive took a dive the day before the semester started and I just got it back a few days ago. I have a lot of stuff to catch up on, but in the meantime enjoy this paper I wrote the other night about the book Cradle to Cradle (and the Biomimicry Institute) for my LEED class while I nearly pulled an all-nighter. It got a little bit ridiculous.

( In Which I Did Not Write a Technical Paper )



I can't even believe I wrote that. Apparently when I stay up late (and then only get 1.5 hours of sleep) my brain transfers function from "ability to form coherent sentences and thought patterns" to "creative but wildly ridiculous thought patterns".

IDEK

Idk why but I've been tab-hoarding for weeks. As a result, running roughly 220 tabs was causing firefox to crash constantly. So, here is several days worth of tab writeups, which might mean whatever I wrote sounds a few days old. That would be because it is, but it's probably not too important.

( LOTS of articles )

( a second set, many more articles )

...I read a lot.

I've been messing around looking for a new layout because the lack of width on the last one was killing me, and I also have such a headache right now that trying to read white text on a black background is killer.

I'm not totally satisfied with this layout (I will probably switch out the "shark week" header for my own header) but it works until I find something better.


Also, I need some help. I would like to start a separate blog that I'm planning to be a design-based blog, basically, redesigning life. Breaking stupid habits, making things simpler, younameit. However, I can't figure out which would be the best platform. I love Livejournal, but it's not taken very seriously, and I think "outsiders" tend not to comment on it partly because of that. Plus, I don't know how well lj posts show up in RSS readers and such? Anyway, Blogger is too simplistic for my tastes, and stuff like TypePad is not free. Wordpress gives 3GB of space for you to use and is probably the best platform if I weren't so loyal to livejournal.

Anyway, I just have been accumulating a lot of links and I'd like to have a place to put them that I guess is more tradtional and less personal, set up like "here's the interest photo, here's some text from the website, here's my discussion". And in terms of that, Livejournal tends to be more personal blogs and comms, I think... But if I choose Wordpress, I don't really have any idea of how to get readers. Not that I am trying to be a professional blogger or anything, I just don't really know how to go about this. D:


Also, so much for Earth Day. With all my depression about that article I read I have now deemed it Dystopia Day, especially in light of the fact that I have a new listen-to-it-nonstop Billy Joel song that is awesome, and (in particular) dystopian. (Which reminds me of We Will Rock You, and listening to that all the way to and from Spain, incidentally.)

Here, have some dystopia for your day:



Back with more later, I am sure.

Also, hey "little Hawaiiana Jones icon that matches perfectly"!

But as for April 22, Happy Earth Day!



I'll just be over here, depressed that in my lifetime we will probably run the earth out of resources. Awesome.

Okay, I have a discussion question for you guys, so I'd really like your input.

I'm not sure exactly when it started, but somewhere along the line I became really concerned about ethical spending. I didn't think of this as too obscure, because, I mean, who allows themselves to be subjected to scams and stuff? And shouldn't you be monetarily supporting that which you only actually support? But it seems like recently I've come to realize most people just aren't aware. And I realize part of awareness is stumbling onto topics, and I spend a lot of time online stumbling onto things, so it would make sense that I know a bit more than your average person on the street; but these sort of things are things we talk about in Environmental Ethics, too, and I'm finding it hard to believe people make it through school without philosophy or some sort of ethics thing.

What reminded me of this was a madTV (ugh) skit about those "name a star" gifts. Those are a total scam, you're basically paying for a random star and name printed on a piece of paper that gets stored in a database that has nothing to do with actual technologies involved in studying stars, and I'm guessing they will sell repeats. I'd find it hard to believe they haven't run out of stars by now--I know there are a lot of them, but people are going to want to buy stars they can see with the naked eye or a cheap telescope.

SO ANYWAY. The other reason this came up is that Laura came up to me the other day and said that through boredom she and Savannah had found the wedding rings they wanted some day, and I went off on my whole diamond/wedding-ring spiel. To me, there are so many things wrong with that market that I just can't support it. Human rights violations, monopolization of a market (leading to prices tens or hundreds of times the actual value), and all the anti-feminist angles including "it's what women should want", it being a status symbol, men should spend twice their monthly salary on it, "it means true love", the fact that the market was MADE UP in the 1930's, all that jazz. How about diamonds don't actually last forever? They're not even the hardest material on earth known to man anymore, sorry2say. And you may say, oh, well, there are still cruelty-free diamonds (usually from Canada, for some reason? or are there actual mines there?), and lab-created diamonds, but how about the monopolizing "natural" diamond market sending mobsters to kill lab technicians and send threatening letters? Or the fact that recently they've started marking what used to be "imperfect" diamonds as colored and "chocolate" diamonds and stuff? (By that I mean the "colored" ones that aren't supposedly "rare".) I mean, good on them for choosing to have less "waste", but then marking up the price and everything... It seems like a huge farce, to me. Even if you're buying an "ethical" diamond, I don't understand why people choose to ignore the other issues at hand.

Anyway, this just continues onto my ethics class--why don't people recycle? It's so easy--throw your paper and plastic and glass in a different wastebin than your food and unrecyclable material. And why do people waste so much? I try to buy stuff with less packaging, or use fewer utensils, or that sort of thing.

And as for packaging, why isn't more packaging efficient? Or made of recycled material?

I dunno, I could go on and on, but I'm not really feeling "ranty" right now, I'm more curious as to other people's spending habits.

For example, one of my favorite blogs is youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com, and through it I've learned that places like Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters, and if I'm remembering it right, Anthropologie as well? I'm only about 25% sure on that one though-- steal designs willy-nilly from independent artists, and because of that, I choose not to shop at their stores. But, for example, if I point that out to Laura, she just says "meh". What does it take for people to realize they are just supporting a destructive sort of business model?

Is it just that I think too much, I read too much, I'm too aware?

I've started trying to buy safe organic stuff, if I can, because 1) it removes a lot of toxins from the entire business cycle, and works just as well if not better, 2) the business are more likely not to have extreme animal testing/abuse or pollution issues and tend to use recyled/recyclable materials (amognst other things--basically, better business ethical practices), and 3) it may be more expensive but I feel like that is not a sacrifice to make for ethics AND, to me, it demonstrates what capitalism is all about. Plus I've started preferring business based on their practices in general; I've read some skeevy things about Coke, for example, so I'm glad I'm a Mountain Dew (a Pepsi product) person, and I was even more happy to find out Pepsi or one of the top guys there had donated a lot to the gay marriage initiative in California. I realize I'm not 100% of everything that goes on, and I'm just starting down the rabbit hole, as it were, but it seems like such small choices per capita can have such a hgue impact, that people's decisions to ignore/remain ignorant of them truly make me curious. The world can clearly not go on with so much human chauvinism.




Basically, I'm curious-- to what extent do your ethics/awareness play into your shopping?

This is me still catching up on shit. And needing to clean out my tabs like serious

I did get my taxes done, though. (Woo!) And my dad and I took apart a lawnmower engine today, that was awesome. I learned that the engine bodies are just aluminum and there is quite enough force on broken parts to shoot them through the sides. (Hot damn) That's what my sister did to her car engine back when she killed it (not when she wrecked it, but when she blew the engine quite dramatically). Goddamnit, I keep forgetting the term and calling it the crank shaft. But it was some arm in this engine that snapped, flipped around and locked the engine and flywheel and sent pieces shooting into the wall (and into the wall of the piston area, jamming that too).

Was George Lucas wrong? Unfortunately, this is not about Star Wars or Indiana Jones. But anything where we're taking credibility away from him is a-okay with me. Kind of like ALW. They both had their times but they need to take a step back from their involvement now. (Wicked and Phantom are coming to the Schuster next year and my mom thought I meant "Phantom 2" because I kept saying "Phantom too". I have absolutely zero faith in his sequel, letmetellyou.)

They're making a 10 Things I Hate About You tv show? I... uh... I dunno. I don't have much faith in that, tbh, because I don't have much faith in general television. Especially decade-old not-quite-remakes.

Goddamnit, this is the kind of shit I wanted to be doing in science fair. Instead I had rather shitty science teachers who never actually helped me accomplish anything with my projects, and thought my stuff was way too off-the-wall because I ACTUALLY ADDRESSED FUCKING QUESTIONS I HAD WITH SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND DIDN'T LIE ABOUT THE RESULTS, godfuckingdamnit. (No, I'm not bitter. Have I mentioned I'm really good at holding grudges?) Other than my eighth grade project which I can't remember, I did one testing people's ability to actually differ between Coke and Pepsi and knockoff colas, one testing backpack weights compared to body weight, one testing cat saliva killing bacteria, one testing wine cork tainting, and one testing the vitamin C content of edible flowers. Which I think are pretty damn legitimate questions, even though my procedures weren't anything great or advanced. WELL I'M SORRY YOU NEVER TAUGHT ME OTHER STANDARD PROCEDURES AND MACHINES. If I'd known what was out there for me to use, I could have come up with a test using them. I promise you. So yes, once again I'm blaming GOD DAMN FUCKING MS. WISE and ugh Mrs. Levy (she hated me) and rather clueless Ms. Keller. What is it about the science teachers I had that made them completely unhelpful (or just plain idiotic... Ms. Wise ohmygod, we actually made her cry once. I don't even remember why, but I remember she was an idiot)? And so many other people got away with completely unoriginal tests or just plain LYING about their data or having their parents come up with and design and basically build their project. God fucking damn, people have no respect for the scientific process.

Yeah, I know, I'm crazy.

Housing drunks and letting them drink saves millions, interesting. I always like when alternative solutions are actually able to get permission to test (somehow) and are able to show results. YAY PEOPLE ARE THINKING (unlike my science fair peers yes I'll be bitter about this for the rest of this post for the sake of hilarity)

This may just be one of the best articles I've ever read, "The different kinds of people that there are". ( the text in case it disappears )

OH GOD ROBOTIC OVERLORDS Well kinda. Not AI but critical thinking skills. Hot damn. We're a few steps away from the computer in Eagle Eye (did I ever get around to how ridiculous that film was?) which I think would have been a totally better film if it decided it needed to destroy itself again. OOPS I JUST SPOILED THAT MOVIE KINDA BUT OH WELL. It's not really worth your time unless you have nothing better to watch (it's not awful) and you are a trumpet player flying from Denver to Dayton who wants to be kind of surrealistically freaked out. Yeeeaaaaah.

Oh man, speaking of technology, they (I'm not exactly sure who) invented a table saw that's attached to a circuit and a brake drum and in ONE TEN-THOUSANDTH OF A SECOND if it senses a change in electrical resistance (aka wetness or in this specific case, flesh) it stops and retracts the blade. Of course doing this costs you a $200 brake drum each time but it's better than losing your fingers and paying $10,000 to maybe having them reconnected.

But I am just consistently amazed by the mechanical and electrical things people are able to design. I just... have no mind for mechanics. If you give me the pieces I can put them together, but I am a static person. At best I can give you a Rube Goldberg, but that's about it.

A really fun and simple word game.

Goddamnit I love RFID. This isn't even a particularly exciting application! It's just so awesome.

10 Amazing Living Walls. Just trying to pay more attention to sustainable stuff because I'm going to the Stander Symposium on what UD should do about energy stuff, and I want to be able to see us do something fucking awesome.

On that note, the 10 Worst Greenwashers. That'd be people who lie about having an earth-friendly business. FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.

Okay yay done links for now fuck I'm really tired and hungry goddamnitall

[EDIT] Oh, I almost forgot. Things I learned today: you know why older cars were designed with such long fronts? Not just style, but because the pistons were all in a line before they did the V-design. Cool beans. :D

Back to cleaning up links because I have way too many tabs open, and that doesn't even include all the interesting stuff I have sitting in my Google reader.

Fighting litter one kid at a time. Good idea, hopefully it actually teaches some good lessons. =)

Derringer Cycles; someone needs to buy me one of these. Or all of them.

New explosion creates new island in the Pacific, near Tonga. That is a sweetass picture.

So bandicoots are fucking adorable.

Poor hedgehog with no spines. :C

First Lady starts garden at the White House, can I just say I am extremely excited about this? I hope it helps support another branch of a sustainable living trend.

A really good video on the Ex-Gay movement. I think the best thing is that after 30 years of creating and participating in the Exodus ex-gay movement, the creators had no successes and APOLOGIZED PUBLICLY for it. GO THEM. True scientists who did not bend the facts to their will.

The most beautiful wave shots ever. Truly beautiful. I'm pretty sure #4 is Waimeia Bay on Oahu. (I remember that tower.)

A very fascinating photo-journal of North Korea. I may have already posted this, but no matter, it is really cool.

New rainbow jellyfish! Cool beans.

Mountain Dew and Pepsi will have a throwback (with omg sugar). Hooray! I am interested to try it.

WOAH HOLY SHIT HARRISON FORD JUST SHOWED UP MY TV IN A WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING AD. That was unexpected, lol. It was like "oh cool some random dude is talking about extinction, going back to blogging nowWAITAMINUTE I KNOW THAT VOICE"

I weird myself out sometimes.

Selling Girl Scout cookies online: I'm actually against it. The troops get money from each box sold and if you're taking over some other troop's market by making it available online, that is rather unfair. Especially if you're one of those obsessive sellers who sells hundreds (or thousands) of cookies. I could never understand those girls. Do they have issues or something? Anyway.

Whew, atheists make up roughly 15% of the US population. That's nothing to scoff at. I'm just compeltely surprised by how high that number is, and I'm sure reading the article gives you an idea as to why that is.

How to survive falling through ice. I probably love survival guides too much.

Rolcats! That is, Russian lolcats.

This guy wants to retool government media, and he seems to have his shit together. We need people who know what the fuck is going on in the world of technology.

Mac OS 7 on an iPhone! I miss MacPaint :C

Retooled youtube mashups: fucking amazing.

I love visual tricks; I'm still trying to figure out what optical illusion was used here.

Irrational Geographic, a photojourney through Mardis Gras.

I love this shirt more than I should. Threadless really does have so very clever tees every so often.

Zec Efron as Prince Philip: the fuck? Sorry but that shot is just... weird. And I really hate Vanessa Hudgens. The only reason I don't hate Zefron is because he actually showed some talent outside shitty Kenny Ortega HSM crap with Hairspray and stuff. Although apparently he's not doing Footloose because he doesn't want to get typecast? Which is too bad, I guess, but hopefully they find someone else that can make musicals popular to Hollywood again. (As for the audience, particularly if you look at Disney fans, I think you'll see musicals never went out of style.)

Nite Owl I saves the Waynes? Can I just say I fucking loved that movie? Mostly for little detail reasons like this.

Okay, that's like 40 tabs, I think that's enough for now. Even though I still have 79 open to clean up...

I have a good pile of links, I've been trying to clean up my googlereader. Blech. The bad thing is that when I sit down and read through Gizmodo and Make... I get all psyched up about electronics. Bleeeeh.

This is pretty cool, and be sure to look at the photos. This guy was able to urge bees to build in nonstandard patterns... It's pretty wicked art/architecture/sciene. I don't know what to call it. It's just fascinating.

Did you know there's a Mars simulation station in the desert? They have people live there as if they were on Mars and then study them. Pretty effin' cool.

They are planning to reboot the Tomb Raider series. I actually had no problems with Jolie, but then again, I have never even played a Toomb Raider game. I just enjoy them as the modernizing-Indiana-Jones-popularity thematic things that they are. So... anything with a good set and maybe some good artifacts, I'm in.

So I don't have a particular link for this, but apparently in the past few months passports have started to been distributed with RFID tags included, for easier data reading. However, it's been shown that someone driving by up to thirty feet away with an RFID reader can steal your data; so make sure if you get a new passport (and probably, some ID's already have RFID tags) that you get an RFID-blocking wallet/passport case for it. They usually just have a layer of aluminum foil added, as that's enough to block it. So yeah, it'd be relatively easy to make your own, too; there's some good how-tos on Instructables.

So this is only a design concept, but it actually looks like a very good design to me.

Finally, looking for a good insult? At your fingertips...