efaardvark
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Everything posted by efaardvark
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Tired. On the road all day yesterday. Not enough sleep last night. Alarm clock went off way too early this morning.
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GLaDOS, because every evil AI should also be sarcastic.
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Keep your head down.. just in case.
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Molten salt nuclear fission is one of my favorite technologies that actually exist. If there's such a thing as steampunk nuclear, this is it. The guys at ORNL actually built one way back in the 50s. (1954 to be precise.) No high-tech here, at least by modern standards. Too bad Verne didn't know about it. Forget coal and sodium.. make the Nautilus nuke-powered!
https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2019/nuclear-goes-retro-much-greener-outlook -
Sliced my thumb on one hand AND stabbed a finger on the other in two separate incidents while cutting up a cardboard box. Normally not this clumsy but today... just put the knife down and walk away.
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Haha.. I did the same with Quake 4. I played the heck out of it back in the day, even beating single-player on "General" mode. Set it aside for a few years, then rediscovered it after building a new system. Found out I really, really sucked at it.
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There's a vending machine right across the hall from my office that has that stuff. I tried it once.. made my eyeballs buzz. ( ) I'll stick to coffee.
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I do have to be careful about wasting time though. When I stopped watching old-school TV I initially had so much "extra" time on my hands that I didn't know what to do with it all. Some time between then and now I figured it out. My anime (and book) habit already gets a huge chunk of my time. You should see my crunchy queue! The last thing I need is to add a bunch of "'Tube time". An occasional Saturday afternoon as a luxury isn't a bad idea however. The guy was good enough that watching a few hours was interesting. I even saw a couple tricks that I might be able to use in my own game play too, so not exactly a waste of an afternoon. In other news, I don't think I'll be switching to KSP 1.6 and/or adding the Kerbalism mod to my own game any time soon. There's some nice-looking if superficial texture updates in 1.6, but I didn't see anything that is a must-have. Kerbalism.. I do still like the idea of Kerbalism. The current implementation leaves a bit to be desired however. Maybe later, after a few bug-fixes.
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Today I am being lazy and just watching somebody else play with Kerbals. I found a guy that is streaming KSPv1.6 - I'm on 1.3 still - and using a mod called Kerbalism that adds a bunch of "realistic" features to the game like radiation, air and water as consumables, and some other stuff. (The base KSP game is really pretty easy.) Kerbalism is available for 1.3 as well, and for a while now I've been interested in installing it, but it changes the game a lot and makes it harder in general so I never quite got a round tuit. KSP1.6 just came out recently and I've been considering upgrading to that as well. I figured I'd watch this guy play for a while and see if all that is really something I want to get into. I have to say I'm also liking some of his visual mods. Part of the fun I have in this game is watching my rocket fly through the cloud layer, or checking out the aurora from space, or seeing sunrise or sunset on another world. I've got a decent enough gfx card so I've bunch of such mods myself. He's got a few that I don't have however that may be worth a look. "Realplumes" for example.
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@HanaApril If you're looking for non-violent then minecraft on "peaceful" is about as non-violent as you can get. On that setting the hostile monsters like zombies and skeletons don't even spawn, though you'll still get things like sheep and cows. If you don't want to deal with monsters and combat at all then go for "creative" mode. In creative there are no monsters, and you get unlimited blocks, unlimited health (you can not die), and can fly. Basically all you can do is build stuff, like pixel art. (I happen to find that rather boring, but for some people that's the only mode they'll play. To each their own.) If you're into WoW then maybe something like that or Skyrim, etc. with another high-level player that you trust as a bodyguard. Or just hang out in a safe area and socialize.
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When I want some no-stress gaming I usually play something I like on the easiest setting. Minecraft on "Peaceful" or "Easy" a common example. For me that's the computer equivalent of playing with legos. That or I'll re-play a game that I've finished, but rather than trying to finish it again I'll stay away from monsters or other trouble and instead go poking into the odd corners and just do stupid stuff... sometimes you're even rewarded with finding an easter egg that way. What games did you used to play?
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WoW was also good for machinima. I loved "Spiff's" music videos of some of Jonathan Coulton's stuff like Re: Your brains or I Feel Fantastic or especially Code Monkey.
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Not mine either. All of those kind of "battle-royale" or arena types leave me cold. Give me a good builder any day.
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It is snowing at Goldstone (California desert)!
- Show previous comments 3 more
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The thing about deserts is that there is no water. There is no water in the air to make clouds or fog so the sun hits the ground full-force and heats everything up. If there were water on the ground, either in the ground or in standing bodies or even in plants, then it could evaporate and cool things off a little, but there isn't.
One other thing that water vapor in the air does is trap heat at the ground. Since deserts have no water, at night all that heat collected during the day gets lost back to space. It is not at all unusual for the temperature in a desert to go from below freezing before dawn to over 100F by noon.
Snow in the desert is pretty unusual though. In my area the deserts are deserts because mountains along the coast block all the moisture from the ocean from getting inland to the deserts. Lately however we've had strong winds pushing very cold, wet air over the mountains into the deserts. We've been getting lots of rain on our side of the mountains as well, but conditions on the desert side this time turned it into snow instead. Definitely unusual.
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Probably not likely. Anything that blows in would have to deal with the desert conditions & coming from wetter areas they'd likely die. Unless this is more of a permanent weather change of course.
There are plants that are already there and adapted to the desert however. Usually they lay low most of the time, waiting for the infrequent rains. When the water does come, there's an explosion of activity as they do their thing while they have access to the water. Some desert plants have seeds that can last for hundreds of years, then sprout, grow, flower, go to seed, and die in the course of a couple days or a week, and desert blooms are often quite impressive, though hard to catch.
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How Do You Keep Track of the Anime You're Watching/Have Watched?
efaardvark replied to Geano's topic in Anime Discussion
I am too. I've got a stack of old-fashioned composition books that I keep most of my brain in. Though strangely enough I've never kept lists of stuff like my anime or books in them. I started back in my college days - my physics prof. required us to keep a notebook for class- and labwork - and I've kept up the practice ever since. I've been trying to put more stuff online, but it is hard to beat old-fashioned paper.
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I do know quite a bit of spoken Japanese already. I'm not conversational - mostly because I have nobody to practice on - but when watching anime for example I always go for the subs version and even then I often barely even look at the text. Sometimes I even turn the subs off entirely. I can read kana text middling-well already too. I'm just looking for a fun way to tackle the kanji and get a little more practice on reading kana. I've tried the flash-card thing for kanji and while that works somewhat.... booooring! Looking for something a bit more entertaining.
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Ok, so here's a question... For a while now I've thought about getting into manga as a way to learn to read Japanese. I can handle most spoken Japanese in anime - "anime Japanese" is easy(er) anyway - and I can do a decent enough job sight-reading kana. With a little practice I could probably read it pretty well. (I'm very good at reading English material btw.. I can read a whole novel between bedtime and breakfast and have absolutely no trouble keeping up with subtitles in anime.) My only real problem reading Japanese seems to be the kanji. I've tried reading regular Japanese text, like in a novel or newspaper. It is not pretty. Every kanji character becomes a speedbump or pothole and getting through a page of that is exhausting. OTOH, a lot of Japanese-language manga is aimed at younger, school-aged people and often either avoids kanji altogether or uses "hint mode". (aka furigana.) I'm thinking that might be a fun way to practice reading Japanese for someone at my level. I did once impulse-buy a copy of Toradora that had furigana but the text was a little too small for my eyes so that experiment turned into something of an exercise in frustration. It almost worked though. I just need to find an engaging story that has easier-to-read text. And/or uses only kana, though I think I'd actually prefer it if it had kanji+furigana, since that way I can get used to seeing/reading the kanji as well. As long as the rubi text isn't too small I should be ok. Anyway, if any of you manga-readers are reading the Japanese versions and knows of such please feel free to make suggestions. Unfortunately that's not the kind of information that is typically available in online stores, and the nearest good brick-and-mortar store with anything like a decent selection of Japanese-language manga & graphic novels is far enough away that I don't go there much. ISBN #s would be super appreciated if you have them so people/I can order it online and still make sure to get the right version.
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Lately every time I look in discord it says my brother is playing The Sims. That or the kids took over "his" computer again.
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The weather here is like this... Brrr! The snow level is down to 1,500ft too and they're calling for rain this evening. I'm at 1,400 so we'll probably get snow or hail later, though if we do it probably won't stay.
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Most Messed Up Anime You've Ever Watched?
efaardvark replied to BleachKing96's topic in Anime Discussion
I previewed a couple episodes of Pupa & I'd have to agree. To weird for me. -
Got a contract to put up a space station in KSP! This one cost about double what the contract paid once you take into account the launch, but it is overbuilt so that I can use it for other things, including future contracts and science research. The contract only called for 5 kerbals, an antenna, a docking port, and some solar panels. This one has berths for 12, including 2 on a science research module. It also has vacuum-optimized engines so it is somewhat mobile, 6 attachment points (the circles around the middle just "below" the solar panels) for future expansion, and one of the service bays is only half-filled, so I can add more scientific instruments for the research module once I unlock some more of the tech tree. There's also *6* high-gain antennas for long-distance communications. If I wanted to I can take this thing all the way to Duna (Mars) once I get some more fuel capacity and some refining gear attached. Probably also some sort of auxiliary craft would be good so that I have something that can transport things like Kerbals and ore to & from the surface. This thing has pretty efficient engines, but the TWR is so low it will never be able to land on its own. Hopefully I can find some more contracts to help pay for all that!
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Definitely easier said than done. Even if you're physically able, schedules leave no time. Part of my problem is I'm not a big fan of the 30 minutes at the gym thing. Sooo boring! I do love to walk/hike however. (I even did the Deuk -> Mt. Lukens loop hike a few years ago, which is supposed to be one of the harder ones in the area.) I'd like to keep it up for as long as possible, but finding time is a challenge.
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Hmm... the girl sounds like maybe Makoto Noro from trickster... [mal type=character id=142098]
