One of my bots just received the following message from Google, verified in Google Webmaster Tools:
Notice of removal from Google Search April 3, 2015
Hello,
Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, we are no longer able to show one or more pages from your site in our search results in response to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.
These pages have not been blocked entirely from our search results, and will continue to appear for queries other …
For reasons I'll go into in a bit, this post didn't start off auspiciously. Just as I was about to put fingers to keyboard extenuating circumstances prevented the composition of text...
Long time readers of this blog are no doubt aware of two things: That I haven't posted much here in past weeks and my long and sordid history of dental problems. As it turns out, the two things are more related than it would otherwise seem.
I haven't had it in me for the past few weeks to sit down and write anything substantial, the queue of notes on …
3D printing anywhere but in heavy industry comes with a whole host of common complaints that have given it something of a negative reputation. Fabbed objects require additional detailing to get rid of the ridges and imperfetctions (true), you can't really print entirely hollow objects because internal structure has to be in place to support the upper surfaces (also true), a lot of hacks have to be done to the printer to make them more reliable (true... heated beds come to mind)... there are others but I'll spare the electrons. In fact, I think I'll cut to the chase and …
Organ transplants are a fairly hairy aspect of the medical practice and are a crapshoot even with the best medical care money can buy. Tissue matching viable organs seems about as difficult as brute-forcing RSA keys due to the fact that, at the proteomic level even the slightest mismatch between donor and recipient (and there will always be some degree of mismatch unless they are identical twins) will provoke an immune response that will eventually destroy the transplanted organ unless it's not kept under control. Additionally, unless the organ is perfectly cared for prior to installation the tissues will begin …
In years gone by I was a huge fan of the Lucasarts graphical adventure games, including one of their wildest and weirdest ones (natch) called Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders in which you play a group of four adventurous misfits (a tabloid reporter, an archeologist, and two college students who converted their Volkswagon microbus into a space shuttle and traveled to Mars). Just this morning Spadoni Productions, who are known for making short fan films that riff off of the classics released a fan movie based on the video game. It was shot in Italian and overdubbed in English …
In the tabletop RPG Shadowrun there is a character template that players either love or hate: The Rigger, characters who jack directly into vehicles or drones to pilot them as if they were their own bodies. As they are described, a rigger feels the engine of a vehicle as if it was their own pulse and respiration, sensors in a plane's aerodynamic surfaces replace the proprioceptive senses of their limbs, and sensor systems take the place of the senses of sight, sound, hearting, and taste. For all intents and purposes the rigger is the vehicle, android (let me tell you …
If you've been alive for any length of time you've probably been exposed to the wonderful, moving phenomenon that we call music: Patterns of sounds pleasing to the human ear and effective upon the mind. Music is a complex enough phenomenon that people spend their entire lives studying it and its effects upon the human condition. The psychology, the neurology, the mathematics, the accoustics, the physics... or, like some, they are called to compose or perform music of their own to enrich the world around them. (Whether or not some styles of music can be said to enrich the world …
The state of the art of personal 3D printing is still in a state of flux. Mostly, we're still limited to variants of low-melting point plastics and we're still figuring out new and creative ways of making more complex shapes that are self-supporting to some extent. What isn't getting a whole lot of press right now are some industrial applications of this technology, some of which date back a good decade.
For example, a research team consisting of personnel from Monash University in Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, and Deakin University recently unveiled the world's first 3D …
The short answer is, I've been busy. Very much so.
The longer and more accurate answer is that work has been running me ragged lately and I've been trying to conserve my spoons as best I can, lest I run myself into the ground (again). I've been routinely putting in 60 and 70 hour weeks, often over six or seven days so I haven't really been getting a whole lot of downtime. So some hard choices had to be made. Go out for my birthday or keep it low key? Low key, because I'm on call …
