Randox

The only thing I would advise is that generally the longer you wait to pursue the post secondary education, the less likely you are to follow through, at least for a significant length of time. I've observed that the general tendency is to become less comfortable with the idea of student debt, and the reality that the longer you wait to incur it the later in life you will be dealing with it. Langzor, don't say things like that. I can't tell if your joking or not (I can certainly picture you with a flask tie).

That should be a god send the next time they update the game. The KSP servers always melt to some degree, which is somewhat understandable but still very annoying.

I love draw distances. When I first played GTA4 and unlocked the second island, I spent a solid 5 minutes on that street running through the equivalent of times square just starring at it. Then I got in a helicopter and just foated at one end of the map while starring at the other, because I could and it was beautiful. Camera angles permitting, and if the draw distance really does lose it's ridiculous limits, I will be climbing white wolf mountain so I can go stare at Ardoungne. Since it was brought up, I do the same thing in Skyrim. I have a couple pictures from Throat of the World and that one quest that takes you way up in the air for a minute, of me looking at buildings on the far side of the map. I am however fully expecting that this will still not be possible in RuneScape, not until I see an image from the actual game showing it off or I see it for myself.

Despite my picking some of the worst examples (because those can be covered in other ways, even if they end up being more expensive in legal fees and taxes), most of the something like...apparently 1400 rights and privileges you get through marriage can't be done except by being married, because they are bestowed upon you by the government. A really big area that's affected is parenting and adoption, since it looks like you end up, in the eyes of the law, with one parent and one bum who lives in the house with you and your kid. You can make your partner a legal guardian, but parent still trumps guardian legally, and if my understanding is correct, if the worst happens the child actually goes to the family because next of kin would also trump legal guardian if they wanted to make a fuss about it. For the most part your just loosing out with financial options, but there are a lot of things that get hairy if you and your partner split, or one of you dies and you don't get along with their family.

Inspired by Scott Manleys sky crane, where he rescues a stranded mining rig off the moon so it can be outfitted with a new part (the original fuel lines were done incorrectly), in which a special ship hovers and grapples the miner before flying off with it, I have constructed a prototype VTOL craft, which is more or less just a really weird helicopter. Wings are for wimps. At maximum thrust with the props at max pitch, it will achieve just over 2.6 g's about half a second after liftoff, and I tested it by carrying a previous version. While it did a fair bit of damage dropping it again (mostly because I was unable to steady the craft and steady the vertical velocity at the same time, so I released while dragging it a bit) a rudimentary RCS system proved to be able to counter balance errors (the rear has a bit more lift, and it will tend to nose dive while carrying load). It was a nail bitter of a ride. At one point I nearly crashed trying to turn, as carrying a ship that weighed almost as much as I did meant I didn't have a lot of thrust to spare, and I spent to long in a tilt and came down very fast. I might try to build a full helicopter version as well, since I now have the parts, and I can also build a larger version of this with stronger VTOL engines. I didn't think I could actually get this to work because of the balance issue, but here I am, giving rational thought the bird: Take this sanity! The only problem is the weight of the RCS system, which means that instead of taking off at 66% in hover mode, it's closer to about 90%. This would have gone badly if the crashed plane had also had RCS. It could still carry it, but not the way I am turning in this picture. Might use lighter RCS tanks. Still, in level flight in cargo mode, with the engines tilted up 10 or 20 degrees (to avoid being nose down) it will do over 150 m/s at 2-3km. It can't keep pace with a jet craft, but it's not *that* much slower. There are also larger engines I could use rather at 150 thrust each, rather than the 45 thrust versions I am using here. Just in case I wanted to lift and entire small rocket I guess. I also have a conventional propeller plane knocking around, inspired again by Scott Manley who created a solar plane which could fly forever by keeping up with the sun (why I downloaded the firespitter mod the VTOL is made from actually). Mine can't do that, but it runs 3 gas propeller engines which are pretty low fuel consumption, and two electric versions which in direct sunlight can go full power without losing charge (without sun that would use probably more than 60/s). The original design was just one gas engine to keep the plane in the air when the electrics were charging, and it would probably have substantially improved range, but the bigger one can do 120-140 with all engines going fairly hard as opposed to about 90, and the electrics can still keep it in the air without the gas engines (and for a long time with enough sun). I'd fly it around kerbin perhaps, but it's very slow and it would take many many hours. I'll probably build a hybrid idea into a substantially smaller plane to see if I can get better fuel economy without sacrificing speed.

The problem goes way beyond taxes, and is also the reason what we in Canada call common law marriage exists (I don't know what it's actually called, nor am I sure what a real common law marriage is). Essentially if two people live together for long enough they automatically assume many of the rights and responsibilities of marriage regardless of being married in any way or not. I assume Americans have something similar. If two people live together, and they buy a house together, and are not married or are legally recognized by some cohabitation law, and the one whose name the house (or car) is under dies, the partner probably doesn't get it regardless of how much money they put into it. Instead, their property is treated like that of any dead person, and generally becomes property of their surviving family. It leaves open the possibility that even if the will leaves the house and car to their partner, the family can try to challenge that will in court and take it for themselves. It's even worse in the more likely event someone leaves, as depending on whose name is on what someone might end up walking away with everything with the other unable to legally challenge it like would be possible in a divorce. Telling gay people they shouldn't be allowed to get married and thus at the same time denying them joint ownership of possessions in the eyes of the law seems like a pretty mean thing to do. Screw taxes; they want to make sure their freaking house doesn't walk out from under them, that they can have a joint savings account without being open to having all their money vanishing over night. If their partner dies, they want to be able to collect a pension. You need to have something that gives people in this situations the legal rights that marriage affords, otherwise your asking people to live in a very dangerous financial relationship that can end with people living on the street. Given that people enter into marriage already explicitly for tax and legal reasons, it seems pretty stupid to me to deny that same ability to people who actually love each other when your allowing strait people who have no feelings for each other whatsoever to get in on that.

KSP! KSP! KSP! Something similar. Saw Scott Manley's vid where he rescues a broken miner with a skycrane so he can bring it back into orbit and give it a new part. Inspired me to waste hours of my life on a VTOL plane (plane might be generous, as it has no wings, just engines) that dives into the ground whenever I try to lift anything heavy enough to be useful.

Possibly because I know I drive some of you nuts when I do this, but mostly because David Wong has a point and I don't feel like plagiarizing it while simultaneously making it worse, I want to take a turn at handing out some suggested reading. I'm going to cherry pick a couple parts that are specifically relevant and that I don't have to edit too much for the censor just in case, but this should really be mandatory reading in school. The entire article is 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person, which as always contains adult language and a video on the second page that you absolutely do not want to view at work.

I would never. Laws are pretty uptight and you could get sexual harassment for that, even if the girl initiates. I handle coworkers with a 20 foot poll. But in general a hug means nothing Urgh, sexual harassment laws. Both when I was a volunteer counselor and when I learned to teach swimming lessons, there was a part of the training specifically on not getting sued and put on a list. I know more than one male lifeguard who absolutely hated teaching girls to swim in the early levels when you have to help them float. The way some of the parents look at you does not help. In that respect, being a girl is much easier. For being a counselor, we were actually taught how to keep a kid from hugging you. We have two hugs. The friend hug, and the romantic hug.

I know of sleep paralysis, or hypnagogic states. Thinking about it more, that might have been it. Each time it seemed to start with my brain seriously messing up the same sensory input (I usually sleep with one heel against my other knee, and for some reason I thought foot touching the knee was moving, as if sliding across the bed), and concluding that the bed was moving, and so causing me to see that. I don't know if I couldn't move, or if I didn't want to. I know the second time I didn't move for several minutes, so perhaps I never even had a choice. Oddly, I don't think I ever tried to breathe, so no chest pain. Would explain why it didn't feel right too I suppose, and probably why I was so certain that I really didn't want to turn around (the 'malevolent presence'). Assuming sleep paralysis, that was more enjoyable than it could have been. The phone would seem to rule out the more common auditory hallucinations, and I didn't see anything except creepy wall. Just got the sense of dread and malevolent presence, so go me I guess. Still, I think I prefer whatever you call it where your falling asleep and you'll have a muscle spasm (normally accompanied with a sense of either someone flying at you, or suddenly falling). It's not pleasant, but it's over quickly. I still have no sense of time. I swear at least 30 minutes went by writing this, and it felt like 5.

Briefly, last night as I was going to sleep I opened my eyes to see that my bed sliding across my room, feet first, into my closet. I decided that awake, sleeping, or hallucinating this probably wasn't the prelude to anything I wanted to be a part of. I think it's the first time I have ever dreamed a fully realistic version of my surroundings too, since my dream world was a dead on replica of the wall I was facing, and for bonus points, I could still hear my phone running a family guy episode to fall asleep too. Not being a particularly awesome experience, I decided to wake back up. After a quick drink of water, I figured I would give the whole sleeping thing another go, only to have the exact same thing happen. This time I am quite worried, because I already accidentally planted a couple unpleasant ideas in my head, and I guess it had a bit more of an ominous feeling to it. Specifically, I suddenly became very determined to not turn around because I can almost guarantee there would have been something/someone standing right over me, or some other unpleasant setup about not being as alone as I'd like, and I just really wanted to wake back up before any dream senses could determine that I was in anything but an empty bedroom with a surprisingly mobile bed. Still, kind of a waste of a lucid opportunity. If it happens again, I hope I can chill out and see if I can get a dream going. I don't normally have a chance to be lucid from the start, partly because methods for doing that are a really good way to go through hypnagogia, which I'd like to avoid as much as possible. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I never did get back to sleep, though my memory of the night is now pretty weak and time in general is just flying by for some reason, so I might have just not noticed. All I know is I am now very tired and the day is really still starting and that sucks.

Yeah, lab ethanol is a special case because of that. Quite poisonous (though technically ethanol is the treatment for methanol poisoning. Still, wouldn't count on that). Not much happening today. Today was a slow day, and it feels later than it really is.

You can drink anything strait if you like. If you could get pure Ethanol, which you can't, it wouldn't kill you, though your mouth might be in some agonoy. Still, you can achieve the same effect by gulping down about 2 and a half shots of vodka in one go. I think if you tried to boil the ethanol out of vodka, you could probably get about a 90% solution, maybe a bit better. It would taste closer to what ethanol actually tastes like as well, as you'd have less of the distilled water taste mixed in (water has a pretty gross flavor when distilled, the ethanol is quite frankly improving it). A word of caution for anyone who wants to try it. Vodka is flammable at a little over 25C, while it boils just bellow 80, so you don't want any ignition sources near by. Your resulting 90% some odd concentrated ethanol will be flammable at room temperature (17C), and it burns with a nearly clear flame that is invisible in daylight. I think 95% is the highest concentration you can get that is fit for human consumption. I remember that distillation only get's you to about the mid 90's, and to go further you need to use chemicals, and the chemicals used are quite toxic (think eating mothballs). And yeah, I didn't realize there was such a strong love of booze here.

Time to get back into this game. So far, I have crashed a spiritual recreation of what was once my main rocket, and which just about all the rockets I use are still roughly based on, though they are far superior. The "Thor" class will probably be making a return as Orbital heavy lifter ships. This new spiritual recreation of the old Mk III can actually do something the old ones never did, which is achieve a low orbit. I included a later design improvement of gimbaled engines in the center. It's still dangerous as balls to rollover at the normal point (14km), but a low quality roll can be done from about 16km (it is slow to roll without crashing, so it likes to end up at 100km which is actually a bit high. This was succeded by the Loki class, which replaced the booster mentality with asparagus staging. While they are a lot more efficient, they have less lifting capacity because they quickly lose engines at the start. Because the Thors can actually lift substantially more weight, they are going to see a comeback as orbital cargo haulers I think. They aren't going to be the Thors of old, but I wanted ships to fly under that name again, and this would be keeping to the original design ideals. I have plans to run through a new space program to get my skills back, and then start sending ships to Duna and Jool. I also came up with an idea to send multiple ships at once without stress (so I could send a ship with a tanker all in one go), which is to simply tie them together in a symmetrical fashion. Building an orbital tug to arrange connection pieces wouldn't be an issue, and I figure if the ships are of similar mass (or rather TWR) they wont rip apart during acceleration, though I worry that bringing them through an aero brake like that will probably end in a spectaular disaster when a ship inevitably crashing into another one while in atmo, resulting in awesome. Of course I'll have to try it.

Feeling sleepy sometime in the afternoon (for someone who is active in the day) would be considered healthy I think. The body runs colder for a bit later on in the day, and you would expect to be a little drowsy. Really, if your running on a shorter sleep schedule, and it didn't happen of it's own accord, what you really want to watch for is how awake you really are, as some people do have a tendency to massively underestimate the impact of sleep deprivation on their minds, which is not something you want to be doing while in school. If your mind is tired and making mistakes, that impacts that part of your brain used for self evaluation, so you want to pay attention to work that was done while you were short of sleep so that the next time it happens, you can guess at the quality of your work based on experience. For example, I made peace with the fact many years ago that if I do math after 10pm, it will get 'creative'. Math (and general thinking) done while tired is just riddled with mistakes.

If your talking about physical standards, there really shouldn't be any thought at all should there? The whole process for picking a suitable mate is handled by your subconscious which should be providing you with decisions pretty much the second you look at someone. It will even let you know if someone with a really high score is in sight whether you were thinking about dating or not. If your referring to talking to people, that's a more interesting issue. Again, you already have a set internal criteria. For example, I couldn't date the male equivalent of Jillian from family guy because I would get bored and frustrated very quickly because I wouldn't be able to talk about anything of interest to me. Ginger is spot on that people love to talk about themselves. Attention and not talking about yourself are both bonus points to the opposite party, and it's a very effort free way to keep a conversation going long enough to figure out what else you can talk about. You are fishing for common ground. If your anxious about talking to someone, it is a massive advantage to be the one that initiates conversation because it forces you have a premise for talking to them. It doesn't matter what the premise is, what matters is it gives you a starting point, and by not being caught off guard you can muster something intelligent enough to keep a conversation going. I also agree with Kaida, that it would be of benefit to get practice in with people your not interested in dating. It allows you build the relevant skill set, and confidence.

Xena cleared it up for me. For some reason I got it in my head that the game was HTML5, when it's the client that uses it (which makes a lot more sense). I'm told that HTML5 allows them to write the new client in javascript with the WebGL API instead of using a java applet, which is all very cool and would massively increase compatibility. I don't have the foggiest idea why it allows them to do more with eye candy, I'm assuming that relates HTML5 features like the data storage the bestiary is using.

I am wondering if someone can explain this to me, because every time I think I get this strait I am just more confused. The way HTML5 is being talked about seems to imply the game code is written in HTML5, which doesn't make an ounce of sense because HTML5 is a markup language, not a programming language. Saying the game is written in HTML makes about as much sense as saying your writing an operating system in python. It's not the right type of language for the task. So when they say the game is in HTML5 what does this actually mean? Is the game still written in Java? Does it require a different programming language? Are the mechanics of displaying the game just entirely different? Why does changing the language displaying the content allow them to add new features to the core game? I am so confused.

Too true Ginger. Fantastic way to pick up new skills quickly. The feeling you get after too, once you have competency is just fantastic, and makes the time you spent not being able to find your own ass with a map worth it. Glad to hear it's working out so well for you, don't expect it's been an easy road to get there.

Stumbled across this putting on something to watch while eating. I like this very very much. http://youtu.be/Bu-hlTUWLTM

Nice to see the HTML5 is finally coming. I look forward to seeing exactly what they do with this. A better cache (like, not overwriting itself so that you can9 store the entire game area and not load between sectors) would be a lovely option for those of us who have more storage than they know what to do with. And I think this does make sense. As stated, RS2 brought a fully 3D engine with it, and RS3 will be an entirely new environment in which to run the game, as opposed to the runetek upgrades which simply improved the existing environment. Absolutely fantastic this is!

Is this the same girl you were going to, or did, ask out to the prom a week or two ago?

Got interested to take another look into it. Europe heavily subsidizes things like beef far beyond what Canada does. Canada instead heavily controls supply to maintain prices high enough for farmers to turn a profit. Europe and Canada have been using quotas for a long time to shut each other out of their respective agriculture markets, so I can see finally opening this up being probably the biggest deal of the whole negotiations. I do not envy the people who have to negotiate that deal. The biggest problem for us will probably be drug patents. The Europeans want them to last longer, and we don't want to pay another billion or two in drug costs. I fully expect we will end up with a compromise that will end up costing us a few hundred million though, since I gather the Europeans are pretty adamant about this (can't blame them, it's awesome on their end).

I totally forgot about this when I read it at the time. It seems Canada is finally getting close to hammering out a free trade agreement with the EU. What jumped out at me were that apparently we are still stuck on agriculture and intellectual property. I don't have the faintest idea what the agriculture problem would be, but I have to wonder if the intellectual property issue is our stance on software piracy. The latest data I could find on it (2009) pegged Canada in 10th place by volume, which is kind of bad when you consider we are 35th by population. I think we are still without an international copyright treaty, and have not yet pursued the casual pirate (personal not for profit use). There is a case moving slowly along though I think against torrent users, against people how pirated a movie from a BC film studio. Will be interesting to see where that goes, since I think it would be the first time ever in this country this happened. I can certainly see the EU using this to try and get us to take things a bit more seriously (heck, it might even be why the Harper Government finally got the ball rolling). In any case, I am happy to see a free trade agreement on the horizon. It would allow us to diversify our exports more, and lessen our tie to the American economy a bit.

My understanding is it's normally under 50% to prevent it being flammable. EDIT: Looked it up again, answered my other question.