Messages

My condolences about David. And I naturally feel somewhat bad for crapping all over a touching and obviously personal story, but it must be said (again):

Even without bringing in the circumstances involving the cat (broken routine, etc) consider hindsight bias, outcome bias, confirmation bias... The cognitive mechanisms that make us perceive "phenomena" like these are strong and well-established enough that something way more awesome ought to happen before fantastic explanations are desirable. I read about the nursing home death-predicting cat (not the original story, however), and it didn't seem impressive to me. Add all the biases inherent in journalism, and such a story is even less convincing. Precognition and stuff would be awesome, sure...but your own brain already undoubtedly is awesome. It does a lot of things to your perception of reality that you never notice.

I can't say I'm particularly on the fence on this one right now. I am deeply enough in awe of the lump of cells in our heads that we've hardly begun to understand the inner workings of.

And yeah, whatever floats your boat is fine as long as it's consensual, all participants can legally agree, and everybody involved enjoys it. Well... except if we're talking about this. I'm not sure what that does to the consensuality thing.

Nothing at all, for many decades to come? Or am I missing something?

Boring? Yes. Functional? ALSO YES.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdLib

External links in particular.

If you're just after the general "kind of sounds", rather than accurate emulation, as Boyd says any FM synthesizer is potentially useful, if you're willing to learn to use it, or find decent patches.

The hotel looks sort of cartoony, with the freaky windows and the sort of wedge shape, while everything else is rather straight, so to speak. That doesn't really make sense to me. Also, the two lines in the middle of the reflection of the house are way dark.

Usually the front and main entrance of a building like this faces the direction visitors are supposed to come from--the road in this case? Here new guests arrive from the side, while the facade conveniently faces the camera. Or are you supposed to arrive across that mirrorpoolthing? If you are, why isn't it centered relative to the building?

I should also say that all in all, I really like the feeling I get from this background. I really want to walk around on it, and examine that fountain. And those topiaries.

Oh, speaking of the topiaries. You could use at least one additional shade there, maybe a darker crest shadow. They're somewhat flat as it is, and I think they could look more alive with not a great deal more effort. It's possible that they could attract unwanted attention, though, if the contrast is increased too much.

Also, I've got to thank *** *** and **** ******* who are fun to work with on that project that I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about being involved with. 

It's EldKatt with double T, and preferably as a single word, and I'm not even working on a project with you, so what the hell are you talking about, but thanks anyway for mentioning me.

I'll let Nacho speak for himself about whether he agrees or not, but to me, these words, and this entire line of thought, seem to be yours, not his. Why is a conflict any less "our problem" because it's far away, or on the wrong side of an entirely arbitrary line? China is certainly not in Europe, and I'm sure you agree here as well, but that's no excuse for me to flip them off. At first glance, lacking as I do any kind of knowledge of who you are, your statement here seems to be revealing your attitudes far more than they do Nacho's. Just saying.

I did not say that this is what he thinks. I said that his argument bothers me because it provides cover for those attitudes.

Does it? I can agree that it is not a politically neutral question, and that its political implications were, as you say, "unfortunate"... but in the particular sense you talk about, it only expressly "provides cover for those attitudes" if you subscribe to "those attitudes" in the first place. Why should you?

I'm not bothered by his argument providing cover for some random scary attitude--any argument can do that if you're inventive enough. The random scary attitude itself is what bothers me. If you're building your case for "caring about Georgia" on it being European, that's where the problem lies, because your argument, in that case, is much more directly providing cover for not caring about countries which certainly are not European. I don't need to give you a bunch of examples of where that's undesireable. So however your post relates to Nacho's or whatever, fact of the matter is that on first glance, the former rubs me the wrong way more than the latter does. That's all.

So is the game called Compiled?

Innovative and refreshing.

While the nomenclature doesn't change the conflict and is mostly irrelevant, I think the excuse that it's "not Europe" can easily be code for "it's not our problem". Which it most emphatically is.

I'll let Nacho speak for himself about whether he agrees or not, but to me, these words, and this entire line of thought, seem to be yours, not his. Why is a conflict any less "our problem" because it's far away, or on the wrong side of an entirely arbitrary line? China is certainly not in Europe, and I'm sure you agree here as well, but that's no excuse for me to flip them off. At first glance, lacking as I do any kind of knowledge of who you are, your statement here seems to be revealing your attitudes far more than they do Nacho's. Just saying.

So much internets... wasted...

I saw Putin stating that Georgia has done Genocide on Russian people. What is your opinion on that, true?

Why are such lies necessary in this situation?

I have no opinion whatsoever (although in this case I would say "understanding" or "knowledge", because my opinion doesn't change what's true and what isn't), but it's clear to me which one I'm expected to have... 

Any links to back up the idea that it's a lie? Any links to suggest that it's true? That Putin was even talking about it? These things help if you want to get a meaningful discussion going. Just saying.

[really]

All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.

Ironically, in my experience, just about the only people who even suggest that science would ever aspire to "absolute truth", are those who are eager to announce that it can't. A scientific theory is a model that can explain the stuff that actually happens. The scientific method is a way of devising and testing these models, and one that happens to be successful at accomplishing just that. That's all there is to it. Who says it's absolute truth? No physics or chemistry textbook (or teacher) tells you, "this is what atoms really look like". It tells you: if atoms looked like this, then this would happen, and since that's what actually does happen in the real world, it's a successful model, and good science--regardless of what atoms really look like. To be honest I've hardly ever heard anyone claim, with any other motive than immediately refuting it, that we really do know exactly what atoms look like, or by extension that any scientific theory or model is infallibly true and nonnegotiable.

Hmm, is Saddam the new Hitler?

(I realize that I've just made two really off-topic and pointless posts in a row. No, I have nothing interesting to contribute.)

In Soviet Russia, Georgia invades you.

No, wait...

You all saw this coming, I hope.

Well there are only two types of people who are more likely to get the irony of that... those who have studied Nazi Germany and those who have memorised who hosted the Olympics over the years...

I can only speak for Sweden, but here at least "Nazi Germany" is a given part of the history curriculum of primary education. We've all "studied Nazi Germany". Although I'm sure a lot of young people don't remember much of it, there's still this batch of old-fashioned grumpy old men who somehow think it's one of those things people should know about...

Regarding the particular detail that they hosted the Olympics in 1936, yes, it might not have been as "sickening" years ago if a lot of people admitted to not remembering it... but right now, the Olympics and its political implications is a current issue. The 1936 Olympics is an important part of the background of the issue. If you're keeping up with current events in any way, is it that odd to also expect some knowledge of the background of these events? Stupot wouldn't have known about it "until about 5 months ago"--but by now he does know about it, because he doesn't live in an underground linen closet in a cave on a desert island. Correct?

I watched a bit of the opening ceremony but I got put off with China's choreography of a little girl singing to a millitary march.

I don't remember that happening...

The way I see it, you can think whatever you want about China, but they pulled off one hell of an opening ceremony. You don't have to despise everything they do just for the fun of it.

Wait. This is when the personal attacks started flying? The threshold seems arbitrary to me, sir.

Did you watch all the Pts of David Adair? David Adair is actually a well known scientist.

I can't find anything on his credentials (yes, this is an invitation for you or someone else to share your sources), but there are plenty of "well-known scientists" (and even well-educated ones) who are full of shit, so that argument on its own is pretty futile. Just saying.

Googling "free audio editor" finds a piece of software called "Free Audio Editor" (edit: oh, LimpingFish already linked to it). No idea if it's good, but it looks usable. Otherwise, Audacity is the only truly successful free program of it's kind that I'm aware of, although I've seen several others (open source, can't guarantee existence of Windows versions) that I can't remember the names of. Considering that the "visual look" of Audacity to the extent you describe it is identical to any other similar program, there are probably several alternatives. But do try the beta, and yes, running as admin is worth a try from what I've heard about Vista.

Sometimes (well, actually very often!) you have to let go of an idea that in itself is really awesome, because it doesn't fit in the context of a particular larger work. Learning when to do that, and how to do it without feeling bad, is a very important skill in any creative craft.

(And, if you haven't guessed, I think your "current date" idea might be such an idea, but that's my opinion, and I don't want to diminish the effect of the perfectly good general advice above by saying something you may not want to hear...)