Kaleidoscope

Check out this Kaleidoscope. Just drag parts into the 'radar' area and watch

http://www.zefrank.com/byokal/kal2.html

Swamp Thing - Spore

Another Spore Creation - a swamp creature

Front


side/back

New Spore Creature

So I'm spending too much time building Spore creatures, but this may be my favorite yet.

He's called a Night Smother










Here's a litte video of him in action:

More Spore

Check out my Artillery Beast. The Creature Creator is just too much fun...

He's got venom shooters of some sort in his cannons, and they shoot a good distance.

Here's a pic of him gettin down -

good eating

Been eating pretty good over the past several days.

I went up to my dad's during the week, and he grilled out some of the better steaks I'd had in a long time. Ribeye's with nice tender meat. Very good.

Another day he cooked up some walleye he'd caught fresh a few days earlier. It was also good.

Then today I grilled up something called country style ribs that I picked up on sale at the Food Lion. I was walking by the meat case checking out the marked down items and noticed four pieces of what I'd call "hunks of meat" for lack of a better term. I figures they're only $2.50, how bad could they be?

Well I grilled them today and they were awesome. I think they were beef - tasted somewhat like what I get at Famous Daves - and I'm not sure of the cut, but they didn't have bones in them like ribs. Very thick cuts though. I cooked them slow on the grill - cooked for about an hour at least - but I'll be having those again (once I finish the other 3 leftover pieces that I've got now).

Spore Creature Creator

I've been getting into the new Spore Creature Creator recently. I'm excited to see how the full game is when it comes out in about 6 weeks. Spore is designed by the Will Wright, who also designed "Sim City" - one of my favorite games

Anyhow, my nephew and I worked on this scorpion together today (and Dad suggested we make it black because he saw a scorpion on TV today that was black). We didn't know much about scorpions so I did a google image search to refine things a bit, especially to help get the posture and leg positioning right. Anyhow, here's what our scorpion creature looks like.



And while you're at it, check out this more "fun" creature just made with the Spore creature creator. Here's the the description:
"Born with his powerful supply of dilithium crystals, this little fellow explores strange new worlds, seeks out new life and new civilizations, and boldly goes where no man has gone before."

.. but you gotta click to see him.

Here's some of the other creatures I've been working on.

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell on UFOs

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell on UFOs. I think the interviewer does a poor job of extracting specifics during the interview on British radio, but nonetheless another piece info for consideration.

19 tomatoes

19 tomatoes - it sounds like a drama - a secret stash with each tomato having it's own tale to tell, but no - they're all just normal vegetables that'll end up in my belly.

I went out and pulled 19 tomatoes off of our 2 Roma tomato plants this morning. We've been grabbing 2 or 3 at a time for a while now, but this is the first really big batch to be ready. I love slicing the Romas in half, salting the sides a bit and eating them that way. There are lots others out there that are just a day or two away also. It's about to the point where I really don't have to worry about running out.

We also have 1 cherry tomato growing, but it seems to want to come "in" later than the Romas. There are lots of green ones one it, but they're not ripening much - no reds one on it right now. I've had a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes so far this year, but the plant is just slower to develop.

Black Holes and Gravity

Interesting. I hadn't thought of this perspective regarding the same mass of a star and black hole, the small size of black holes allows for stronger gravity to be felt at very close distances.

Star Wars

This video has been watched over 8.2 million times on YouTube. It's a 3 year old's movie review of Star Wars.

Volume level and compression in recordings

I was listening to CDs the other day as I spent most of the day building a solar oven (more on the solar oven later).

I probably listened to 8 CDs or so, and I happened to notice the difference in volume levels and compression present in recent recordings vs. older recording. In particular I was rocking out to Abba - yes it can be done - and the dynamics in the music were considerably wider than that present in today's music.

Even the "quiet" parts of today's tunes have an overall loudness far in excess of even the loudest choruses in music from 20-30 years ago. The net result is that most of today's music starts out almost clipping (in the red) and stays there for almost the entire album. I actually like the big loud compressed sound of today's music in doses, but over the course of an album it's fatiguing on the ears. The choruses can't get louder than the verses - everything starts of as loud as it can possibly be.

It reminded me a little bit of what Stevie Ray Vaughan meant in a comment about how he tried too hard to have a big show - wanted to blow everybody's socks off.... He couldn't do it. To make the music work he had to just let it come to him nice and easy. He couldn't rush the blues for it to work. In a similar way it's like today's music is trying too hard to impress me from the get go - hitting me in the face from the first measure and keep hitting until the album's over 45 minutes later.

When you get a chance put in some old CDs - stuff like Steve Miller, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison - and mix in with some newer stuff. You'll probably easily hear what I'm talking about. The older mixes have more room to breath. The newer mixes just come at you hard the entire time - even when they're trying to be quiet they're still amazingly loud.

Skyscrapers Dubai

Look at this impressive photo of Dubai taken from what will be the tallest building in the world. (hat tip to the Agitator).

I'm not sure if it's a real photo or artists interpretation (Not sure if the new skyscraper being built is that tall yet, but still - very cool photo.)

Just keep quiet

NYTimes: In China, those whose children die in school collapses during the earthquake call for an investigation. Some are arrested.

Nobody knows the grounds for his arrest, but many people have the same idea. Mr. Zhang said, “It may be because the schools collapsed, and so many children died.”

Boone Pickens Plan

Check out this energy plan by Boone Pickens. It's nice and even somewhat inspiring to see someone from the energy community coming forward with some productive alternatives other than "drill more oil."



Essentially he's saying to take the 22% of natural gas that currently goes to electric generation and replace it with wind power. Then move the natural gas to fuel vehicles. Here's a 4 minute video.

Here's a web page version of the business case.