Subspace radio interference
I cannot reach ‘elfie.org’ right now… haven’t been able to since sometime yesterday, it seems.
No e-mail for me right now.
I canna give you any more power!
For the past year, the fan in the power supply on my G4 has been making a grinding noise. This week it got loud enough to drive raininva to distraction, so she asked me to please fix it. (Frankly, I was sick of listening to it too.) Replacement Apple power supplies run $130 – $230 on the web, so that was right out. Besides, it was only the fan itself.
I pulled the power supply out, then the fan, and took it to CompUSA. They had a wide variety of fans, but although several were exactly the right size and shape, they had three-pin connectors instead of two-pin, and the amperage ratings were different, which worried me. The technical guy there strongly suggested I just get a new power supply. (Fans are $10, power supplies $40. Hmm.)
Apparently, my G4 can use a standard ATX power supply, but the motherboard connector pinouts are slightly different, and I’d have to splice some wires (and me without a soldering iron or, indeed, much soldering practice). Also, my power supply is 237 watt. I think I can use a 250 safely, but I don’t know that.
On a better note, we played Plague and Pestilence and Dork Tower at Card Night last night, and both games went over well. Dork Tower even came with a free 8-page mini version of Dork FRAG, which means that by taking advantage of the Dragon*Con sale, I got two games for the price of half of one. Not bad!
Soooo tired.
Checking in
I’ve been gone for a while, here. Sorry about that, but I’ve been going through a rough time and haven’t been feeling quite outgoing enough to post stuff here. But I’ve got a lot of backed-up reviews and links, now, so I’ll at least slap them up here before they spill over.
Fantastic Four: Decently cast, well-executed, and pretty dull, at least until the last half hour. If you know some science, be sure to bind and gag that knowledge and lock it in the car trunk before entering the theater 🙂 OTOH, isn’t it great to be a comic-book fan in an year where the worst superhero movie of the summer is still fairly decent, and the best is Batman Begins?
War of the Worlds: Not necessarily better than the George Pal version, but certainly prettier. I sure would like to see Spielberg’s people do a Godzilla or Battletech flick – at least I would believe all the visuals. This is the first version of the story I know of that gives humanity a glimmer of a workable tactic against the aliens before the traditional denouement takes care of things. It would have been nice if they’d somehow worked a USS Thunderchild into the river crossing scene.
Half-Blood Prince: Far superior to Order of the Phoenix, both IMHO and in an unscientific poll of people I’ve asked. Hard to talk about it much without causing spoilers or boredom, but Tonks and Lovegood (not a 70’s cop show) are still two of my favorite characters.
Shortpacked! on why there will be a few changes to the G1 characters in the Transformers live-action flick.
Shortpacked! again on Batman reaching the pinnacle of human reflexes and agility.
Brad Hicks on “The Spaceship We Have”, parts one, two, and three. He talks about why we have the Space Shuttle instead of the equipment every space geek in the early sixties thought we were going to have by now; and why that’s going to be a real problem real soon.
Parallel computing universes
Damn.
Turns out all the web rumors were true. All Macintoshes will be Intel-based by the end of 2007. This is from Steve Jobs’ own lips at WWDC.
Just checked the calendar… it’s not April 1st.
My job’s just gotten more interesting.
Ringworld and kabobs
A poster on websnark this weekend pointed out exactly what’s bothering me about the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds trailers; they make it look like a run-of-the-mill disaster flick. Instead of concerning invading aliens, most of the scenes in the trailer could be cribbed from any asteroid impact – tidal wave – volcano – invading commies / killer bees / killer tomatoes / plague-carrying R.O.U.S. – movie.
Finally finished Ringworld’s Children. It was substantially better than The Ringworld Throne, and had an interesting bit at the end that nevertheless seems somewhat implausible for a Larry Niven novel. Still, two months to finish a single genre hardcover is a depressing record for me, and the Public Library isn’t much happier about it. 🙁
Scientifically implausible, with spoilers
6079 Smith W, reporting
Wired Magazine reports that researchers are developing a system that could tie your DVDs to your fingerprint, requiring that you authorize each playback with a fingerprint scanner built into your player.
And once they do that, the MPAA has sold me their very last g**d*** DVD.
Technicon 2005
I’ve always liked Niven’s Laws. I don’t slavishly agree with them, but they are an excellent source of topics to ponder.
This leads to the fact that I’ve just deleted a lengthy rant about SF/fantasy fans who, despite entreaties from their favorite authors that they start thinking for themselves, are still want to be told what to think and what to believe. The only thing we humans got that the rest of the animal kindgom didn’t is a more complex brain. It’s way past time that we as a race consider trying out some of its higher gears, just to see what happens, you know?
Ok, wow, Technicon report, cool.
Finally, spring
I have a long Technicon report I’m working on. For now, I’ll just say that the sun is shining, the air is warm, and we have ducks and bunnies in our front yard. Yay for spring!
OTOH, Elfie’s mailserver is rejecting my password. So I probably have a few days’ worth of mail on hold right now. 🙁
Your Sci-Fi Friday
Yoda is clearly a much better teacher of the Jedi way than Obi-Wan Kenobi. One month with Luke, and Yoda had him ready to take out Darth Vader with a match-and-a-rematch; Obi-Wan had Anakin for, what, 7 or 8 years and never quite managed to teach him that “The vengeful destruction of entire communities is *bad*, dude.”
—–
Spaceship engines I have invented (or helped invent):
The Noodle Drive – powered by the reaction between pasta and antipasto
The Arel Drive – twisting space by the efforts of anime fans and Nihonjin exchange students trying to get each other’s consonants right
The Warped Drive – converting the libido of freshman college students to energy (still theoretical only, every piece of experimental equipment has melted or gotten icky)
Yes, most of these inventions did involve sleep deprivation.
