I wrote a bit about the wild inaccuracy of the sword fighting people see on film and at most renfairs a while back - particularly about the insanity of really hard swings with edge-to-edge attacking and blocking.

I haven't looked at the videos, but judging from the photos and what this guy is saying in the article, he's legit. Some of the photos show the binding/grappling I was talking about in my comment about this.

He's telling the truth about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 7:32 PM on June 15, 2012

I wonder if he discovered that on his own.

Probably not. It's the standard "tuck and roll" skateboarders have been practicing and teaching each other since the stone-age of skateboarding with clay wheels and skinny little sidewalk surfing boards.

It's even detailed in some early 70s era tragically unhip instructional skateboarding safety film. If I recall correctly the film even suggest practicing it often in soft... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:40 AM on June 15, 2012

A very square public service announcement over-explaining the joke in the interest of public safety preventing unwanted stabbings at concerts:

The original post is indeed sarcasm.

Bugging a sound engineer for any reason during a sound check or at any time during the show may get you ejected from the venue and/or shived right between the ribs.

Even if they are indeed sometimes also DJs - requesting songs will also likely... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:04 AM on June 14, 2012

The Onion: Nation's Sound Engineers Gather To Talk About Their Ponytails.

OK SO I NEED A HAIRCUT STOP STANDING ON MY SNAKE AND DI BOXES
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:07 AM on June 14, 2012

A few years ago I saw Kultur Shock (think Gogol Bordello) at Neumo's in Seattle. It was a full house, but the audience stood rooted to the floor, staring at the stage as the band threw down its madcap gypsy prog.

Yeah, some parts of Seattle have a major problem with not dancing at shows, but Neumo's is it's own fucked up problem.

Every show I've seen there it's like there's some kind of bad vibe vortex just sucking all the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 4:08 PM on June 14, 2012

2. The sound guy with the pony tail is actually far more interesting than anyone on stage. Holy crap - I had no idea. You and the light guy should get all the action.

In the slim chance you're not being facetious - no! Don't do that! You'll upset the order and balance of the universe. The sound and light guys need the stoic celibacy for their craft! Do you have any idea how hard it is to memorize delay timing charts or formulas while getting some?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 7:57 AM on June 15, 2012

The punishment for religious extremists destroying art (or anything) because of their extremist beliefs should be death. Preferably by stoning.

Hey, wait a second.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 5:43 PM on June 14, 2012

Well, if you need a funky porn soundtrack to accompany the article: I've heard somewhere that there are gay penguins.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 7:46 PM on June 9, 2012

That's one hell of a beard.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 4:01 PM on June 9, 2012

The only device I've ever bought at full retail price and then had major post-purchase sticker shock was a Palm IIIe (IIIxe, maybe?). It was something like $250 at a Fry's. The very next day the new/cheaper m100s and such came out and they were under $100 before taxes. I backed up this mistake by buying one of those nifty little folding keyboards for $100.

Not long after that people were just giving me old Palm hardware left and right. At one point I had something like... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:35 PM on June 6, 2012

Video taken from recent Quebec student and community protests about tuition fee hikes and anti-protest legislation.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 4:26 AM on June 6, 2012

I once witnessed the battering and deep frying of a Shure SM-58 microphone while it was live and recording.

It survived. As far as I know they just washed all the crud out of it and kept using it.

Unsurprisingly the recording sounded like an extreme audio closeup of something being deep fried.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 3:52 AM on June 6, 2012

Noble and awesome, but if I was injured or collapsed I'd probably want to be left where I was.

"What the heck are you doing? Please put me down. Call a doctor, for fuck's sake!"
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 4:20 PM on June 5, 2012

Ok, that's two comments I've made in this thread that have been deleted without a note. I thought it was policy to send a message or leave a note in thread?
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:01 PM on June 3, 2012

The deleted comment is on my profile. I'm not in danger. Please don't harass the mods, the issue is mainly resolved.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:00 AM on June 4, 2012

I'm pretty sure that's the sound of a 56k digitally modulated (PCM) modem, probably of the v90-v92 / v42-v42bis variety. This is basically the last of the true Plain Old Telephone System analog/voice line modems before ISDN and ADSL took over and engineers stopped trying to cram more and more bits down the legally available center audio bandwidth of a POTS analog phone line.

If so the initialization procedure for one of these modems is actually a bit more complicated... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:42 AM on June 3, 2012

+++
ATH0
NO CARRIER_
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:44 AM on June 3, 2012

Oh, I meant to mention something about recordings and modems:

Yeah, you can replay recorded modem noises to another modem and sometimes they'll be able to decipher it and you can replay the session, at least with older/slower modem signals.

I'm not so sure about v90/v92 PCM modems, though. It may not work even with CD quality audio recordings since the sample rate will introduce aliasing and errors, and it's extremely likely it won't work at all... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 3:02 AM on June 3, 2012

Old? Please, I'm 27. Being culturally ignorant sucks, I kniw exactly what a Mary Lou Retton cut means. Have these people not seen Scrooged? Gah, just say you want a pixie cut, that the barbarians should know.

Dude? I don't know how to tell you this but I'm pretty sure you may be fabulously gay while living in the fashion capitol of the entire Universe and you may be imbued with a number of super powers whose very names will never,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 10:06 PM on June 2, 2012

I know it will probably be criticized here as "that's not how we do things today" but my dad just threw me in a pool when I was first learning how to swim. He was there with me, but I never would have stepped in unless he had pushed.

Same here, but replace the pool with the Pacific Ocean with 3-5 foot surf, and my brother and I were thrown off a rock jetty a few hundred feet from shore.

Also, we were begging him to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:42 PM on June 1, 2012

The map is not the brewery!
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 3:11 PM on May 30, 2012

Screw everything about this. They should just do a show all about"abuse a telemarketer" or even better "abuse a telemarketing executive" or even merely "abuse an executive".

Executives like money, right? Basically more than everything else, including themselves, no?

I think we're on to something, here. Line up all the executives and we'll throw genuine silver dollars at them really hard. The executives are finally... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 10:49 PM on May 28, 2012

Huh? Most of those call center people aren't telemarketers, they're phone support. The people people talk to when the having a problem with their internet service, or whatever.

I was talking specifically about unsolicited telemarketers, but some call center employees should probably be included, yes.

Then I figured it would be more attractive as a plot element in this theoretical TV show that it should really be about the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:37 PM on May 28, 2012

I once spent a couple of months working at a university campus, and living nearby just off campus in a greenbelt/arroyo alongside a large freeway.

My stuff was stored in a nearby commercial storage unit. I knew folks that lived in the official on-campus "trailer park" that had showers and laundry facility available. There were other showers on campus in various buildings if you knew the right folks or had the right keys.

And there was a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 7:48 PM on May 28, 2012

And, yeah, no exciting stories. Thankfully.

The whole thing was really mundane above and beyond the fact I was saving up a lot of money since I was still working and not paying rent or bills. I guess if my bosses weren't so cool I could have been potentially fired just because I was homeless, but I wasn't actually living on campus, and I had legitimate permission to use the laundry and showers from friends in residence, and my bosses didn't care at... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 7:52 PM on May 28, 2012

Oh yeah, Schwa. I still have my Planet Operator's license framed in my writing room. I lost a lot of the other stickers, signs and doodads that came with that.

I still have some Schwa stickers. Random story time:

There used to be an Shakey's or ex-Shakey's pizza joint where my local BBS had weekly (!) meetups where people basically hung out, played the arcade games, bought access credits from the sysadmins, drank pitchers of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 5:14 PM on May 24, 2012

There was some shop on Haight Street that sold Crowley-themed stuff as well as the obligatory rave/"cyber" themed clothing.

That was probably "Housewares", and the store was very well known among the cyber/rave/industrial scenes. I can't find a link for it but I think it's still in business in some form.

They used to have some seriously crazy clothes. One of their specialties was holographic foils. Yeah,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 5:19 PM on May 24, 2012

So did wannabe cyberpunks really think they were going to walk comfortably carrying what looks like 15kg of electronics strapped to their body?

Yeah, I actually tried that at one point, but it was later in the 90s after I got my first real laptop. I didn't have a head mounted display but I mainly wanted to be able to have my laptop running in my backpack and be able to control winamp with voice commands so I didn't have to pull it out of the bag to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 5:29 PM on May 24, 2012

...doom-doom doom doom-doom-doom doom doom-doom. I'm bored. Can I stop singing the doom song now? I want waffles.

I strongly dislike and disapprove of eschatological thinking and "planning", because it doesn't really help any.

But, yeah, we're basically fucked. Idiocracy wasn't a comedy, it was a documentary sent back from the future as a warning. That, or Brave New World, or 1984, or They Live or Soylent Green.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:44 AM on May 24, 2012

MetaFilter: Metaphor storm.

Oh boy this is an upbeat thread full of late-night worries and deep thinkers.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:08 AM on May 24, 2012

In a sense, I agree. Let's not blame God for avoidable extinction level events.

I wasn't just talking about religious apocalyptic thinking of most denominations, but the also the kind of eschatological and doomsday thinking or sentiment of the sort found right here in this thread and in the posted article, as well as both natural and man made existential threats.

We need to keep hope.

This whole... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:31 AM on May 24, 2012

Related: Box on conveyor belt.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:23 PM on May 23, 2012

Somewhere, someone will get a graduate degree by explaining how this thing could go on for so long. By explaining the auto-correction thing. Quantitatively.

I won't be able to quantify it because I'm not a math nerd, and, woah, fuck man, springs in motion - but I'll put on my layman's hat and describe the course correction in plain English:

The slinky is on a moving inclined plane, doing what slinkys do - storing and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:20 PM on May 23, 2012

I could write and take pictures like that when I was nine, but I also had parents that were writers, artists and/or photographers.

But I was touch-typing before that age and reading stuff like Brave New World and I basically grew up reading adult books from before I was even in school.

It's not that uncommon. You shouldn't underestimate articulate 9 year old kids.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 1:54 PM on May 23, 2012

How likely is it that you can hit cardboard at that speed without serious paper-cuts (like losing your head)?

I can answer this one from direct experience being an idiot with access to too many boxes and a large industrial building and a proclivity for jumping off of things.

Corrugated cardboard boxes aren't very sharp. You can't really get a paper cut from them, especially when they're folded into boxes since all the edges... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 1:41 PM on May 23, 2012

Yeah, the pieces of this story don't fit together. It just doesn't play well as a whole. It's the very model of an oddball news story, because what kind of smart person would brick themselves in like that? Seriously, it just doesn't click, I can't puzzle it out. Barring some kind of weird personal coda where he felt guilty about indulging so heavily in a personal hobby and recognizing his own stripes, but I'm not sure where selling them off like a horse-thieves stolen studs fits into the scene,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:10 AM on May 23, 2012

Just buy a cheap Lego set, and then scan the barcode at home.

Or you could just write down the UPC number. Or take a picture. Or use a smartphone barcode scanner in the store. You don't have to even buy one. Then use a barcode generator or mock it up yourself in a graphics program - the schema is public.

Sure, RFID is harder to spoof than barcodes, but optical recognition would be cheaper than RFID and even cheaper... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:30 AM on May 23, 2012

I'm imagining optical recognition of the whole package, not scanning text on the package. So, it saves you from manually scanning the bar code. It also saves some real estate on the packaging itself. If you can tell what something is by eye, surely a computer (someday) can tell what it is.

I understand what you're saying and I'm replying as someone who understands the printing/packaging industry and how digital cameras and machine vision works and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 1:48 AM on May 23, 2012

But I didn't want to be exposed to where Citroëns came from!

Seriously? What?
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:35 AM on May 23, 2012

I love this post but like the hackaday comments read it's unfortunately probably BS or an elaboration or recreation.

But then again, if he had a water source out there it's remotely plausible he did something like this with a hacksaw and hand tools.

He would have been totally space crazy or desperate to do it instead of simply trying to fix the original problem somehow, but stranger things have happened. Bush pilots have rebuilt planes with duct... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:49 AM on May 23, 2012

Hey, America? This economic crash is what happens when you literally burn a couple of trillion dollars on an unjust, unwanted war to line the pockets of a few war-profiteering oligarchs while they distract you with a glut of easy credit.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 1:51 PM on May 22, 2012

This is a hell of a thing.

Does anyone know when the docking attempt is scheduled?
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 1:42 AM on May 22, 2012

I'm generally for private ownership, but I see nothing but trouble coming from the situation of private citizens having the technology and capability to launch rockets capable of carrying a heavy payload into space. If you can put a rocket into orbit, you also have a ballistic missile you can drop on pretty much any city you want.

True, but if we've survived the Cold War, we'll probably survive this as well.

We technically... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 2:47 AM on May 22, 2012

Hey, Google? Are you reading this? I bet someone at Google is reading this. You should read this, but it's probably much too late.

I'm one of your earliest adopters. I'm one of the people responsible for your success. I'm one of the millions of nerds that turned your brand name into a verb that means "to search".

I adopted gmail very early on when it was barely in public beta.

And I've basically had enough of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 8:52 PM on May 21, 2012

DuckDuckGo is great and all, but it's like 60% or more Bing. And while DDG may not be tracking you, I don't think they warranty what happens with the data sent to Bing.

Ouch. Figures Bing or Microsoft would somehow be involved with that. Meh.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:02 PM on May 21, 2012

But I really just can't fathom a "color forecast", and I have no idea at all what it means for browns to be growing in importance. I don't know how to interpret a "Top 10 List" of colors. It's just beyond my comprehension. I'm kind of dumbfounded at hearing that this all exists.

Well, you can take your normal scientific methods and causality and throw them out the window.

The fashion and design world where... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 8:03 PM on May 21, 2012

Yeah, I normally hate zombie games and most modern FPS games, too, but this one looks like a winner.

Hell, it looks like a winner just as a first person shooter done right. Extreme ammo and supply scarcity, long reload times, a large range of values between simply "wounded" and "instantly dead", almost zero enhanced situational awareness, voice chat only when in proximity, real in-game consequences to death (like losing contact with groups), the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 6:35 PM on May 21, 2012

Did they really link to "Stayin' Alive" in the post? *facepalm*
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 9:20 PM on May 20, 2012

Order in the court!
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 8:50 PM on May 20, 2012

Theory: Due to the laws of physics both known and unknown - matter in this universe has a tendency to collect into aggregates, some of which have patterns. Some patterns self-replicate, self-preserve and evolve.
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 9:39 PM on May 19, 2012