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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
| Saturday, May 17th, 2008 | ||
|
jblindsight |
10:10a | PSA - what to do in an earthquake, unlearn what you've been told Just got this email from a friend, it makes sense. Even if you don't live in an earthquake zone, you may visit or travel through an area that is subject to earthquakes! This is info you will certainly want to share as well. Bob My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake. I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters. In 1996 we made a film that proved my survival methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul, University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test. We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did 'duck and cover,' and ten mannequins I used in my 'triangle of life' survival method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results. The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions, relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover. There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the 'triangle of life.' This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe , and it was seen in the US , Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV. The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under their desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn't at the time know that the children were told to hide under something. Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the 'triangle of life'. The larger the object, the stronger, and the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings on television, count the 'triangles' you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building. They are everywhere. TEN TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY 1) Most everyone who simply 'ducks and covers' when buildings collapse are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed. 2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it. 3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs. 4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake. 5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair. 6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed! 7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different 'moment of frequency'(they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged. 8) Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked. 9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them. 10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other office with a lot of paper, paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.
Current Mood:  working |
|
jblindsight |
10:07a | Digital divide I knew I wasn't alone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_di Current Mood:  apathetic |
|
jblindsight |
9:13a | Charter communications You might remember a rant I got into last year about Charter Communications. I have never dealt with any company, and that includes the phones company, with worse customer service. They barely have pretense to customer service. They don't have to, they have a monopoly in my area. I am now paying $57 and change (it just went up again) for the cable connection to the internet. I posted a copy of the letter, (see previous post) because there is no letterhead and no date, violating the most basic rules of how to write a business letter. I'm sure Charter is not alone in this, check with the policies of your own service provider. And while I'm at it.... Many, if not most, working class families in my area can't afford internet access in addition to their other expenses. While the price of computers has dropped into the affordable range, this is a significant form of class discrimination, effectively keeping the poor from access to the knowledge base available on the internet. It's wrong, and it needs to be changed. As with telephone, there should be a basic service, not exceeding $25/month. One of my friends posted a few months back about how the consumer protection built into the telephone regulations did not apply to the cable internet providers. Apparently not. I'm off to find the link to tell them I don't want their "enhanced service". I'll keep you posted. Bah and humbug! Edit: The opt out was surprisingly simple. Here's the customer service message after completion: Opt-Out is CompleteYour opt-out request has been received and processed. Please note that the opt-out cookie is specific to the browser and computer you are using right now. Your opt-out choice cannot be honored if you access this site using a different browser on this computer or from a different computer. Additionally, your opt-out choice cannot be honored if the cookies on your computer(s) are deleted. As a result, you should repeat this process with each browser and computer you use to access this site and whenever cookies are deleted from yourCurrent Mood:  angry |
|
jblindsight |
8:39a | sometimes it pays to read your junk mail  Current Mood: angryCurrent Music: kpig |
| Friday, May 16th, 2008 | ||
|
the_s_guy |
9:33p | Toys part 4 Raaaaaaail Racer! Yes, it's everyone's favorite most-often-mistaken-for-sex-toys combiner team. In their individual robot modes, they're very nearly a long-legged bishie threesome, which doesn't help. The combined mode is where things come together, if you'll pardon the pun. After some initial problems with transforming the upper shoulders correctly which prevented me from hooking Railspike to Rapid Run (until I realised that the super robot shoulders are supposed to double-hinge forward to overlap with the back of the head), it all went smoothly. Rail Racer is a coherent-looking, well-articulated gestalt, with little hip panels reminiscient of a gladiator skirt or something. His lower legs and arms are exceedingly long, though - not too much of a problem when he's just standing around, but some of the more extreme poses highlight his elbows and knees being much too close to his torso. Likewise, I feel more could have been done with compacting the legs of the various component robots instead of extending them - just folding the lower leg panels outwards in a 'peel' and then pushing the knee down to the hinges would have worked. Additionally, the way that Rapid Run connects to Midnight Express at the waist means that his hips and legs are really about half a centimetre too far forward. Combine this with his oversized rocketpack (pretty much all of Rapid Run), and this makes for a very back-heavy toy. Even the oversized extended heels don't always cut it. If only the ankles were tilted forward just another two degrees, it would be a lot more stable. Still, he's a nice toy. Big, too. All the pieces (guns, kibble) have places to go in all three modes, even if it's just 'being held as a weapon'. There is no combiner-kibble - everything packs away into the individual robots. The hands for the large robot have two points of articulation, which is a nice increase over the usual zero. The enormous back kibble has been turned into a rocket pack, and fairly successfully I think. Rapid Run's hands may be visible on Rail Racer's back, but they don't draw attention and are able to hold the gun and shield when the big guy isn't carrying them, so I'm counting them as a slight positive. |
|
particle_man |
7:24p | geekery ahead! Been playing around with XBMC for OS X. Very nice. With my media library it's taken me quite a while to get all my video added (and let's not talk about the audio content) but now that it's all in there and I've grabbed thumbs and plot info for all of it everything looks great. I'd actually considered getting an original XBox just for use as a media center so it's cool to see the programmers porting this software to other platforms. |
| Thursday, May 15th, 2008 | ||
|
jblindsight |
4:55p | On being two places at the same time There are a lot of things I like about Wordpress. It's easier to load and post photos. The design styles are more sophisticated. You can see who is reading your blog, and what interests them. They have both tags and categories, and there is an auto referral system to people who have tagged with the same words. Searches within their data base are easier, and if I'm on my blog and hit the SumbleUpon button, I Stumble through Wordpress blogs, apparently at random. A person could spend a lot of time doing that! (hangs head in guilty mode) BUT...I miss the give and take of Live Journal, I miss my friends here in all their idiosyncratic beauty and mystery. Comments on Wordpress are just that, there is no conversation. So I find myself here...and there, and liking both for different reasons. I've decided I'll continue to post both places; LJ will be more personal. I'm off tomorrow around noon to go camping for two night in Big Sur. I should have reservations but I don't, it could be a sleepless night in the car, but I don't care. Alan, I'm taking the new camera, determined to spend some time figuring out how it works. I have a client who is a semi-professional photographer, I'm going to ask him if he'll trade out photographic lessons for massage. I was walking at Los Osos Oaks on Mother's day, heard some rustling in the bushes, a squawk or two that sounded familiar. I knew I was being warned off a nest, so I waited around five or ten minutes, and the male flew up to check me out:  Quail are the most inherently lovable birds I know of, I don't see how anyone can shoot them for fun. But then I don't understand how shooting anything is fun. One of my clients is a doctor's wife, and her husband shoots animals for a hobby, he's really into the whole macho gun thing, and it makes her so unhappy because, of course, he wants her to participate. Does that seem like a weird thing for a doctor to do or is it just me? I don't know, in my mind a life is a life, whether it is a bear, or a whale, or a human being. I don't subscribe to the philosophy of ahimsa, but I think that human beings have a covenant with the domesticated animals - there have been no new domesticated animals in 4,000 years - that they will give up their lives to feed us and so protect the wild species. Current Mood:  confused |
| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 | ||
|
the_s_guy |
11:17p | Bleagh. Just been feeling a little... meh, the whole week. Like I've caught some really minor bug that's disrupting my sleep, giving me occasional bouts of not-quite-queasiness, and making me not want to exercise any more than I absolutely have to. On the plus side, for some equally unexplained reason I am noting significant improvements in guitar-playing, despite my weekly practice usually being limited to one or two panicked hours before each lesson. I can actually fingerpick (slow versions of) some flamenco melodies when I'm in the groove, and can occasionally nail a few of the easier chord changes without having to stop and hunt around for five minutes. Of course, I still can't play anything worth listening to, but it's almost as if each time I pick the guitar up, I can genuinely hear that it's better than last time. There's still a loooooong way to go, though. |
|
jaanka |
9:30p | Photo spam of Show horses, showjumping and hunter trials You have been warned. Just wanted to share with fellow horse fanatics :D ( Not Dial-up Friendly ) x-posted Current Mood:  sick |
|
particle_man |
6:18p | Stolen from PostSecret I am sorry that I can't be what you want me to be mom. It's a shame cause I kinda like myself the way I am. |
|
the_s_guy |
2:07p | Much banging and screwing later... The larger set of shelves is taking shape. Taking a short break now to recharge the flat batteries on the power drill and practice guitar. |
|
particle_man |
7:50a | From CNN "Clinton currently trails Obama across all fronts -- superdelegates, pledged delegates and the popular vote, according to CNN's latest estimates. Obama leads in the race for superdelegates, 277 to Clinton's 273, and he's ahead in the overall delegate count, 1,869 to 1,697. At the beginning of the year, Clinton led the superdelegate race by more than 100. Clinton has vowed to stay in the race until someone gets enough delegates to clinch the nomination." In other words she's going to destroy the confidence of the American people in her party by dragging this shit out until August even if she has ZERO chance of actually getting the nomination. Bitch. |
| Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | ||
|
the_s_guy |
5:01p | You've got all the right pieces, now you just have to get them in the right order. Right, the Ikea stuff showed up this morning and was carted upstairs, where it is currently covering most of the upstairs landing. There it will pretty much stay until I can move the fifty-odd shelves off the flatpacked bookcases, assemble the bookcases, put together the giant structure which will take up the west wall of the landing, move a whole lot of crud onto there, move one of the current bookcases out of the den to make room, move all the books onto the bookcases, and then finally tackle the custom shelving project for the den. Whereapon I can put stuff onto those shelves as well, and then finally sit back and work out if I need any more shelving. |
|
the_s_guy |
4:54p | Toys part 3 Movie Longarm. Another movie toy done right. Plenty of articulation, the kibble is mostly tucked away and doesn't generally interfere with movement, and both modes look good. I'm not entirely sure about the gun being screwed to his right hand, especially with its very long back end meaning he's almost continually striking it against his chestplate, and the shoulder kibble can interfere with the shoulderblade kibble in some poses - in my opinion it would have been better to make the doors on the shoulderblades able to swing 180 degrees, not just 90, and point backwards. Overall: very nice. |
| Monday, May 12th, 2008 | ||
|
jblindsight |
9:00p | Heads up Tropical Storm OPHELIA is forecast to strike land to the following likelihood(s) at the given lead time(s): Red Alert Country(s) or Province(s)the United States probability for CAT 1 or above is 55% in about 33 hours probability for TS is 95% within 9 hours Red Alert City(s) and Town(s) Wilmington (34.2 N, 77.9 W) probability for CAT 1 or above is 50% in about 33 hours probability for TS is 90% in about 21 hours Yellow Alert City(s) and Town(s) Myrtle Beach (33.7 N, 79.1 W) probability for TS is 90% within 9 hours Charleston (32.9 N, 80.0 W) probability for TS is 70% within 9 hours Hatteras (35.2 N, 75.6 W) probability for CAT 1 or above is 20% in about 69 hours probability for TS is 50% in about 45 hours Kitty Hawk (36.1 N, 75.7 W) probability for CAT 1 or above is 15% in about 69 hours probability for TS is 40% in about 45 hours Raleigh (35.8 N, 78.6 W) probability for CAT 1 or above is 10% in about 45 hours probability for TS is 45% in about 69 hours Norfolk (36.9 N, 76.2 W) probability for CAT 1 or above is 10% in about 69 hours probability for TS is 40% in about 69 hours Note that Red Alert (Severe) is CAT 1 or above to between 31% and 100% probability. Yellow Alert (Elevated) is CAT 1 or above to between 10% and 30% probability, or TS to above 50% probability. CAT 1 means Hurricane strength winds of at least 74 mph, 119 km/h or 64 knots 1-min sustained. TS means Tropical Storm strength winds of at least 39 mph, 63 km/h or 34 knots 1-min sustained. For graphical forecast information and further details please visit http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/ |
|
the_s_guy |
9:26p | Can we assemble it? Yes we can! One trip to Ikea later, and about fifty linear metres of assorted horizontal surface are due to show up first thing tomorrow. I may actually be able to unpack stuff from the move two years ago. Once I get everything bashed together, of course. I also want to try a hack on one aspect of the shelving. This may involve a handsaw or something similar, as I want one vertical riser of a 'ladder-style' shelf support, but not the other. I figure I can chop the spare wood up into some neat little items which will reversibly jam the semi-unsupported shelves in place. This way, I can set the shelves up reasonably high and put a couch underneath in future, where the other half of the support structure would normally have been. Come to think of it, if I do it right, I won't even have to take a drill to anything. The extra support beam comes with the right-size holes predrilled. |
| Sunday, May 11th, 2008 | ||
|
particle_man |
5:43p | WTF?!?!?!! https://www.checkpointusa.org/ US Border Patrol is now stopping people while travelling in between US states and within those same states?!?! How in the hell has the country of my birth become so completely fucked up? Current Mood:  Pissed Off |
| Saturday, May 10th, 2008 | ||
|
the_s_guy |
9:49p | Toys part 2 RiD Landfill. A lot of people in the fandom say that this is one of the best combiners out there. And it's innovative in places, I'll give it that. The threefold connection system opens up all kinds of possibilities. Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different. The individual figures are, for want of a better word, clunky. Clumsy, even. The overall combiner is an ungainly, kibble-covered mess with proportion problems out the wazoo. It's as if all the skill and design talent went into the flash of inspiration which was the connection system, and everything else was kind of bodged onto that piecemeal. It doesn't help that three quarters of the team have to be quad-formers. The vehicle modes partially get around the issue of kibble by being partsformers, shedding a signature piece to become, in at least two cases, a featureless block on wheels. There isn't even a "primary" mode where the team looks great. The altmodes vary from OK to Suck, the robot modes are highly variable, and even with three super robot forms to choose from, there's nothing which really makes me say "Wow, that's a good reason to buy it." On the plus side, it doesn't have any detachable super-robot kibble (head, hands, feet). On the minus side, there are three significantly large pieces of altmode kibble which just kind of end up tacked on randomly or or pretending to be fairly lame weaponry. A little more design variation would have been nice. Making Heavy Load a thinner, longer open-top truck with a fold-up bed wouldn't have been too hard, and it would have been more in scale and gotten rid of that stupid 'capture claw'. In the end, it does the job, and it certainly has more articulation than most gestalts. It just doesn't quite measure up to the hype. |
|
the_s_guy |
7:17a | Toys! OK, unwrapping toys! ( Stockade! ) ( Landmine! ) ( Ratchet! ) ( Swindle! ) ( Optimus Prime! ) ( Payload! ) ( Dropkick! ) ( Scourge! ) Well, that last one was disappointing. Let's try something a little different. ( Wheeljack Bust! ) There are more to go, but I'll leave off for the moment, especially as it's now past 7am. |
| Friday, May 9th, 2008 | ||
|
jaanka |
4:53p | Adult rider club Last weekend was a big weekend for Jazz and I, we attended our first Adult rider club at Perth Horse and Pony. She floated down to the club perfectly, though Travis scrambled badly the entire way - on the way home we switched which sides of the float the horses are on and he floated home perfectly. Upon our arrival at the pony club grounds, Jazz instantly got all stressed and worried, and broke out in nervous sweat. I hosed her down and walked her around till she was nice and calm, and then tied her to the float until it was time to saddle up for a lesson. Once I had saddled her up, I went and introduced myself to our instructor who is absolutely lovely. And decided to be 4th in line to have my private lesson, this would ensure that I would have plenty of time to warm Jazz up and let her get used to the grounds. It took ages to calm her down, she was completely on edge though there were moments of time where she did work really nicely, by the tiem our lesson came up I was able to walk her around the grounds on a loose rein. In our lesson we worked just in the top part of the dressage arena, we wanted Jazz to feel comfortable to have a safe zone in which she would relax and begin to work in. At first we did lots of walking and asking her to flex around my inside leg and engaging her haunches. At first she was really resisting, and whilst she was working on the bit, she wasn't soft and was really chomping and chewing on the bit - a sure sign that she is stressed. From there we started workin on a 20 metre circle with lots of changes of rein and figure eights and then off we went into a trot. Oh my poor legs - I am so unfit, more motivation to loose more weight and get fitter. Anyway as we progressed, I could feel that she was starting to soften and relax in her back, though I had to make sure that I kept my outside leg on behind the girth to remind her not to drift off the circle we were working on. My instructor absolutly loved Jazz and couldn't stop going on and on about her which of course made me feel great :) afterwords we broke for lunch and sat around on the ramp of my friend Naomi's horse float and chatted for about an hour. THen it was jumping lesson time. It was the first tiem (I believe) that Jazz saw proper show jumps and she cleared everythign without any problems. She did look the first time but still jumped it. The jumps were only about 50cm high so not very big but i want to start of small and work on that. My parents came down to visit, and were really impressed at how good Jazz is looking. I showed dad my new (2nd hand saddle) that I had bought of Leonie - a Wintec 2000, and he asked what kind of saddle it was. I told him it was a Wintec; synthetic. He then looked at me and said its time you got yourself a nice new leather saddle, and told mum that she was to go out with me during the week and buy a new saddle. OMG!!! Soooooo I am now the proud owner of a brand spanking new Bates Caprilli AP, 17 1/2 inch, narrow gullet with Cair. It's lovely. I have only ridden in it briefly as I have been to busy with studies and the flu to have a chance to ride. But come this weekend I am going riding!! ( ARC Riding pix ) x-posted Current Mood:  dorky |
|
the_s_guy |
7:01a | Raytheon Exoskeleton http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/techno Now this has the reaction time and flexibility that might make it useful for large-scale cosplay. It shouldn't have any problem moving itself and a hundred kilos or more of panels and mechatronic devices, plus suitable battery packs etc, while making it able to avoid the operator-fatiguing clompy-boot shuffle. |
|
the_s_guy |
5:59a | 6am update There have been a lot of military helicopters flying low over the local area the last couple of days. I can only assume that there's some kind of training exercises going on, but do they really have to buzz the houses for five miles in every direction? My latest box of toys has arrived, but I haven't had time to open it yet. Will do shortly, although I'm running out of horizontal surface, which should hopefully be taken care of in the next week or so. Got the latest version of the will back from the lawyers', but again have not had time to peruse it. Mainly informational updates, converting nitpicky changes to legalspeak, and whatnot. Managed to get back to Tai Chi this week. Have learned the entirety of their Level 1 sequence. Only forty bazillion levels to go. Redoing basic yoga as well. Maybe one of these months I'll actually be able to manage Downwards Dog without collapsing in a heap after thirty seconds. Watched large chunks of the second season of _Supernatural_. There seems to be much in the way of "more emo than thou". Also, genre shoutouts. The new WAP seems to be going well. I haven't attempted to update the setup on it as there's no time I've really felt awake and alert enough to tackle any potential problems. Sleep cycles are shot to hell again, explaining why I'm still awake at 6am. |
| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 | ||
|
particle_man |
11:36p |  LOL!!! |
| Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 | ||
|
particle_man |
7:47a | Busy Much? At this moment I'm playing WoW, Watching M.A.S.H., installing xCode 3.0, downloading a couple movies, and copying 2 gigs of movies from my laptop to the household media server machine. The wonderful thing is that my Macbook Pro is keeping up with all this with no trouble at all. Frankly I'm a bit amazed. Current Mood:  surprised |
| Monday, May 5th, 2008 | ||
|
the_s_guy |
9:09a | Expanding circular tables I like 'em for the clever engineering. But they'd also be good space savers... ( Cut for multiple videos ) |