So, today, I got one of our staff emails telling us about an exciting new technology that could eventually - possibly - lead to something called a cloaking device. You read that right: Cloaking Device.

Apparently, physicists have figured out a way to refract light in a way that makes light bend similarly to the way light bends in water or glass, except that the physicists control the direction in which the light bends, utilizing a special medium that messes with the properties of light. The concept has many uses, including microscopes that would allow you to see DNA without using complex technology.

The downfall of this cloaking device? People inside the object wouldn't be able to see out. Bummer, huh?

Still, not many people going to make fun of Star Trek now...

Posted by Michael at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, I had fully intended to write a blog entry today about something in particular. In fact, I remember I was even working on some of the wording in my head. Then I got distracted by a Linguistics Game, and now the blog entry has completely slipped my mind. I mean gone. Like it never existed. At this very moment I'm trying hard to remember what it was I was going to enlighten the world with, but... I got nothing.

Enjoy the game. Question #17 is the last one, in case you're wondering. Ask me for clues if you want them.

Posted by Michael at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thank you, Lord.

That could've been a doozy.

Posted by Michael at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So there's a new little dealio on the website. Nothing so incredibly special, you may think, but it's a bit more than the two images than it appears.

It started out with me having a bad day in which I was extremely irritable. I speak with someone who asks me why I'm irritated beyond reason about something and asks what else in my life is irritating me. I start to think about it, and realized that <overly dramatic>EVERYTHING</overly dramatic> was irritating me. Nothing was going right, and therefore my life was clearly over. Fast forward to the next day. I spent a good portion of my lunch time walking to Target, contemplating the end of my existence as I knew it. Then, when I'm back, I have a conversation with a coworker about how they had seen me walking on Lake Ave during lunch, and how I looked - not intense, or in deep thought - but homicidal.

I think to myself, "Hmmm.... You must die."

Actually, it was more along the lines of, "Ooooh, that angry smiley face on MSN Messenger would look really cool with the word 'Homicidal' next to it." And then, "I should make a program that keeps track of my moods so that people would know when not to irritate me.... Or if they did, that they might die."

Honestly, what a stupid little idea.

Which turned into a program that needs several acronyms to run properly. Web acronyms like PHP and AJAX, utilizing not XML or MySQL, but a simple data text file.

So, to avoid getting too technical, I couldn't do this with my normal programming language because my blog won't allow me to make the page anything other than HTML, which meant I needed to use JavaScript to speak to my server. Basically, JavaScript is a programming language that works on your browser on your computer. But I needed it to talk to my web server, which required making something like this very complicated, all just to put a stupid little smiley face on my blog site.

I almost got homicidal in the process.

In any case, my moods are now updateable (by me in a handy-dandy web interface), so you'll now be able to assess my mental state when you come to read my blog.

Posted by Michael at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I swear, my feet are continuing to grow. They just keep getting bigger and bigger. At least that's what it seems like. Today I put on a pair of shoes I've had for a while - made of leather no less, so they should stretch out - and when I put them on and started walking, my toes felt like they were curling up against the front of the shoes. This has never happened before, and I can only make the logical assumption that my are growing.

I've heard that your ears never stop growing (which is why several old men look like they've got satellite dishes strapped to their heads), so maybe it's not so unlikely that my feet would keep growing. If my feet only grow a little every decade, I think I should be alright before I die; I don't believe a Bozo look is in my future.

Posted by Michael at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I must apologize for my half-cheeked attempt at recreating René Magritte's famous Treachery of Images, except with an onion, and not a pipe. What can I say? I had thought I needed a blog charrenge to alleviate the boredom of the slow work day; alas, I was wrong. I was lazy, and discovered that instead, I wanted to do a quickie blog charrenge. Perhaps this particular entry will alleviate any misconceptions about the lack of onion-ness inherent in said imagery, and will meet my charrenger's approval.

Posted by Michael at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A great use of money.

Women on Walk Signs (Reuters Video)

I think I agree with Juan that it's kind of silly. Why not just go to red and green lights, instead of male and female walkers? Besides, at some point you'll hear an uproar about the little walker women wearing dresses and sporting pony tails....

Posted by Michael at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This most definitely is not an onion.

Posted by Michael at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, I spent a week in Seattle. I got a chance to run around in the cold, wet snowy weather, and see all the changes that have gone on in Seattle since the last time I was there.

One of the first things I realized I should do was go up in the Space Needle despite the skyrocketing price of that little venture ($14.00 "Airfare"). It was good, because being that high up, I was able to see the amazing differences in the downtown area. There's a been a ton of changes to the Belltown area, which was always a hip, with-it kind of place. What they've done here is similar to what has been happening to Pasadena: retail space covered over with condominiums. It's nice looking, but it's making everything more expensive, and moving out the old unique, one of a kind (how's that for redundancy?) quirky shops from the area.

I rode the bus almost everywhere, and decided that I needed to go to Alki Beach (1,2), which is the beach across the bay from downtown Seattle, and the place where almost every photographer gets a pretty picture of the downtown skyline complete with the Space Needle off to the North.

I didn't take a photo. In fact, I didn't even have a camera on me.

One of the other areas that every tourist needs to go to is the Pike Place Market, where you can watch fish fly, pigs on parade, and generally just find good food to eat. I found over-priced roasted almonds: $5 for half-a-pound. But they were delicious. And I didn't share with anyone.

The other place I made sure to frequent several times was Kerry Park, which is a park that overlooks downtown Seattle, and is another one of those views that shows up in almost every movie of Seattle, or in any poster of downtown. It's a beautiful park, and one that I spent lots and lots of time at when I was going to college, since it's just up the hill from my alma mater. There was no need to take photos here, as I have several from this exact location.

And other than that, I pretty much just had to go to all the good coffee shops in Seattle, including, my favorite, Tully's, and one of the best, Cafe Ladro (don't let the hoo-ey website fool you. The coffee is great. Read their Mission Statement).

Hmmm.... good to be home, though.

Posted by Michael at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...so it's easier to see the large quantities of crazy people.

L.A., where we also have lots of crazy people, hides them better because we've got five times as many people running the streets. Not to mention, half of everyone in L.A. is on a cellphone with one of those ear-buds or boom-mics talking to some agent or movie executive, so it looks like all of L.A. is talking to itself.

Yesterday, I took the bus to downtown, and on the way there, had one of those interactions where one person one the bus was talking while looking (kind-of) at people, so it was hard to discern if she was talking to any one of us, to all of us, or to the people in her head. Shortly thereafter, three of her friends got on the bus, and thus began the Symphony of Blah-Blah. Crazy, but sad.

Downtown, unfortunately, wasn't much better. While many new buildings - especially condos - have been built all over downtown Seattle since the last time I was here, not much else has changed. Coming back from the Pike Place Market, I still saw the 14yr old homeless teenage girl wearing nothing more than a zip-hoodie running across the street in 35° weather. Collected around the coffee shops were huddled several homeless people, shooting the breeze, peddling newspapers, or haranguing the complacent suburbanites who were walking about with full shopping bags, looking for a warm, quiet place to read their books or eat a pastry.

Not that this scene wouldn't play itself out in any other city in the country. It's just that Seattle is a small city, and so it all collects in the tiny downtown area. I think in the larger cities, especially those that butt up against a major one, it's easier for me to forget that crazy people exist. And that sometimes, that they're not so much crazy, as they are desperate. Desperate just for a bit of help to get them started down the road to self-sufficiency again.

Posted by Michael at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)