Our fearless leader resorts to insulting the press when faced with questions
So simply they are telling us the BREAKING NEWS is that our President is.... Wait for it... Rude.
ok, onto more important things...
The really good news that will actually have an effect on our FUTURE, and the FUTURE OF OUR CHILDREN.
Solar Cell hits 42.8% efficency!
If you don't care about solar, then you really should just take a quick second and read this anyway. The bottom line is... solar is NOT efficient enough yet to be cost effective. It costs more per kilowatt to produce the solar panels then it would to buy the electricity from another source. But the real point is that its renewable, and clean. You obviously have to take into consideration the chemicals involved and the energy cost of production, but the numbers are only getting better. Its only a matter of time before the efficiency climbs to a point where it is equally or more cost effective to use solar.
Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric are planning on building a couple plants in the desert that will only operate at around 30% efficiency, but they're not using photovoltaics. Instead they're using an "external heat" engine, so it looks like they're going to be able to MAKE COMPLETELY CLEAN electricity and make it BIG! The bigger of the two plants is 500 megawatts, so this is no little thing.
"Director Danny Boyle knows zombie flicks (28 Days Later). But futuristic sci-fi? Meh. Eight astronauts — including the translucent Cillian Murphy — are sent to reignite our dying sun with a bomb. Good plan, until the whole thing turns into the lamest ghost-ship mystery since, well, Ghost Ship."
— Adam Rogers
Ouch
But in my case I left it in the cart and Jen bought a $10 book and checked out without looking at the subtotal.
:)
I got the confirmation email and laughed. $1,609.34. And its all ready to ship. I knew exactly what had happened, so i called Jen and told her. She almost had a heart attack.
So i canceled the order.... but i'm thinking about it now.... i could have had a new TV and Jen would not have been able to give me shit.
update
So the original Amazon cancel didn't go through and they actually passed it off to the third-party vendor. I got another email confirming the credit card charge and the shipping ready to happen.
Jen flipped out
So a phone call later with the vendor... and a little laugh from them when i explained the cart mix-up... I'm not getting a new TV. :(
but i gotta admit long exposures of helicopters are fun, and it gets me ready for the hundreds of long exposures i'm going to be doing tomorrow night for the meteor shower.
When you inherit a piece of shit code, you have to fight through structure that makes finger painting look like The Dutch Masters. I usually start by opening a flash file and viewing the Library. The number of "Tween 1" instances usually is a dead giveaway how much hair you will eventually pull out of your head. I got a set of files this weekend that had a "Tween 6" rating. I won't explain, but i know the 2 of you out there are dying laughing. Well, fuck you. It fuckin sucks.
These people tween EVERYTHING. They don't have any clue what the difference between movieclips, graphics and buttons are. But they'll put 20 fuckin things on a layer and tween them. I don't care, I'm just going to lump them into one big category just like they dump shit on layers. From this point forward, i am going to refer to these bottom feeders as "button tweeners".
Who in their right fuckin mind tweens buttons?!
So even at the max point of the Perseus shower last night, it was really not too spectacular. I really only saw a couple bright paths, and I only caught one in an exposure. The top one... yup, i know... really lame.
BUT, the pleiades were really clear with Mars just below them. AND the more shots I took the more I realized I was starting to get good Messier blur on a couple points of light. So i started looking at star charts and found the blurs were exactly where they should be. I was getting great pictures of M31. And its kinda obvious, M31 is Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our Milky Way. So its a nice big blur in the sky that you can't miss when you're pulling a long exposure.
So i think the camera and the hand controlled telescope have to go. Its time i stepped things up and got a computer controlled system. I don't expect to get pictures of M31 like this, but it will sure be better than a tiny blur spec in a wide angle picture.
Today's reason:
I regularly use metric. I find myself thinking in metric while driving.
I even tried to get my wife to convert to metric when she's feeding Paige. Milliliters just make so much more sense. She wouldn't have any of it...
The best single instance was when we were in Hawaii last. Jen and I were on a hike above the Seven Pools on Maui. We hiked to a waterfall and were on our way back down the path. We pass a few people on their way up, and they ask us how much further it is to the top. I say, "about 100 meters". The guy passing us says, "well how far is that?" (with a little bit of a pissed off tone in his voice). I respond, "Sorry, its about 110 yards" to which now he gives me this puzzled look as if to say... but how?... what?.... huh?... how do you know that? I could tell in that split second he thought i was NOT American, but he couldn't figure it out cause I spoke with no other accent that just the craptastic southern californian drawl. long pause... "Oh, thanks."
March of the Pigs
I laughed out loud, and a couple people looked at me in their normal manner.
