A.C. Flory's Blog, page 102

Hint…Roadrunner!

Matthew found this tw**t: This is one of the most brilliant political cartoons of all time. pic.twitter.com/6FG4Wsg5pb — David Moser (@david__moser) July 28, 2017

via The Acme Party — Why Evolution Is True

Back in the day, I always felt sorry for the Coyote, but this time I was cheering for the Roadrunner.

#MXene for batteries of the future?

At this moment in time, the biggest stumbling block to new, clean, renewable technology is old technology – the tech of the battery – but MXene, and new materials like it, could be the trigger that kickstarts general acceptance of renewable technologies.

Why? Because :

‘While MXene won’t be commercially available or integrated into current technology for about three years, the material has the potential to disrupt current charging tech by rectifying inefficient, long charge times, device deterioration, and systems with relatively short battery lives.’

Now, imagine having vehicle charging ports on every block, like fire hydrants, and electric vehicles capable of recharging their batteries at these port in just a few minutes. In such a scenario, even currently produced electric cars would be convenient enough for general use. Add new car technologies that extend driving range, for example, and you have a world in which there is no reason to have internal combustion engines.

Now think bigger still. Once car batteries become truly efficient, why not extend the technology to the generation of power as well? Tesla already offers storage solutions for electricity generated from renewables. What if these storage batteries become so efficient [and common] that every house or apartment building can afford to generate and store its own power?

Thinking further still, what if all these small, local power plants could talk to each other and shift energy sideways to wherever it’s needed within an entire city?

I may be letting my imagination run away with me, but in such a future, I can see electricity prices coming down and clean air going up.

Can you see what I see…?

Life’s been rather hectic of late, so my posts have been more sporadic than usual, but today I want to show you something that I think is quite wonderful. And no, I’m not going to tell you, I’m going to show you.

Have a look at these three screenshots and tell me what you see:

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Yes, all three screenshots are computer generated. And yes, they are all from a game, but the amazing thing is the mirror.

I’ve been playing games of one sort or another for close to 20 years, and in all that time I’ve never seen a mirror used in any game I’ve ever played. Now, it may be that I’ve played the wrong sort of games, or it may be that mirrors use up too many resources, or… Whatever the reason, mirrors haven’t been a part of the graphics, and I have always felt the lack.

Reflections are such a fundamental part of how we see the world, and ourselves.  Think about it. We catch sight of our reflection a hundred times a day – in mirrors, shop windows, highly polished tables, glossy cupboards, ponds, even spoons. They are everywhere in the real world, but not in the virtual world, and to me it feels odd. Like not having a shadow.

Remember when gaming graphics were so primitive that no one even dreamed of adding shadows? Now they’re commonplace in most games with high end graphics. I predict that one day soon, reflections will become just as commonplace as shadows because they add an almost subliminal element to our ability to immerse ourselves in a virtual environment.

For now, though, my friend George is the trail blazer in this area. The mirror is his, as is the game, and I think both are going to be quite extraordinary.

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: Games for big kids, technology Tagged: gaming, graphics, immersion, mirrors, reflections, shadows, virtual

‘Like a girl’ should be a compliment, but isn’t

I just came from Embracing Authenticity’s blog where she talked about body image and how hard she has to fight to recover from anorexia. Then I dropped into A Momma’s View where I watched this mind boggling video clip:

How can anyone in their right mind not think the two are related?

Half of the entire human race is female. Imagine what we could do as a species if:

we valued ourselves
and being ‘like a girl’ were a compliment instead of an insult?

cheers

Meeks

 

Filed under: My soap box Tagged: anorexia, body-image, girls, self-confidence, self-worth

7 Steps to a User-Friendly Blog

This should be required reading for every new WordPress blogger! And some old ones as well.

Beware! Origin Energy email scam

I just received a warning from the government website – Stay Smart Online:

https://www.staysmartonline.gov.au/alert-service/malicious-emails-impersonate-origin-energy

It’s free to register and the warnings can save you from malicious attack. Anyway, this particular warning referred to a new email scam that was reported by the Herald Sun newspaper on the 19th of July, 2017. You can read it here:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/origin-energy-scam-emails-new-malware-attack-hits-australians/news-story/9d5bd312efa909a548fb9e9e3ac00e23

Basically, the scammers have copied the Origin Energy bill payment email format to trick customers into clicking on fake links that will expose them to malware or worse. Sadly, this is an eventuality I predicted over a year ago when I wrote a post about this very issue:

‘What’s wrong [with email bills] is that each link is a potential opening for scammers to steal your information, especially that big, orange ‘Pay now’ button. You see, these days, the really good scammers can reproduce the Origin Energy logo, its fonts, the colours, even the text…PERFECTLY. If you were to receive one of these reproductions, you would need to look very, very carefully to pick the fake from the original. And let’s face it, how many of us scrutinise each email we receive, especially when we are expecting to receive it?’

You can read the full post here:

http://wp.me/p25AFu-2mi

The Origin Energy response has been to ‘teach’ customers how to spot a fake email. Not good enough. Here’s what I wrote in that same post from June last year:

‘And what do you think the big corporations are going to do about the theft of all my money? Will they pull their hair out by the roots and cry ‘mea culpa, mea culpa’? Not on your life. They’ll say that the fault was all mine. They’ll say that they warn customers about ‘scammers’ so it’s a case of ‘buyer beware’.

Having our accounts hacked is too high a price to pay for the convenience on offer. NEVER pay your Origin Energy bills via their emails. Pretend they’re just paper bills and go into your internet banking to pay them safely. Origin Energy created an opening for scammers and you didn’t have to be a psychic to know this would be the result.

A fascinating peek at Hungarian history

The policy of the house of Austria, which aimed at destroying the independence of Hungary as a state, has been pursued unaltered for 300 years. Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894) A bronze winged genius, a protecting spirit defiantly bearing a torch of freedom, stands guard with a powerful lion atop the recently restored massive wedding-cake-like mausoleum memorializing […]

via Postcard from Budapest, Hungary: Graves reveal layers of Hungarian history — postcards from san antonio

As some of you may know, I was born in Hungary but left as a very young child. I have been back to visit relatives, but there’s so much of Budapest I’ve never seen so I’ll be journeying with Post Cards from San Antonio along with everyone else. Enjoy!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Missing in action

Apologies for not answering comments the last couple of days but I’ve been at the hospital where the Offspring has just had a malfunctioning appendix removed. This was preceded by a great many tests, all of which proceeded at a glacial pace, and very little sleep, for either of us. The op. went well and the Offspring should be coming home today or tomorrow. Normal transmission will resume as soon as possible.

Office #Word 2016 really is a piece of…

[image error]Shyte.

What follows is a raged induced rant so look away now.

-breathe-

I’ve just wasted an hour trying to fix the Word 2016 dictionary. It started with ‘Mira Than‘.

No, actually, it started with the combination of two big episodes of Innerscape into one very BIG Word 16 document. How big? 375 pages. Apparently, Word still has issues with very big files. That’s the reason I originally migrated my writing to a dedicated writing package [StoryBox]. Unfortunately, to publish a print version of Innerscape, I have to go Word >>PDF>>Createspace.

Anyway, after spending hours wrestling with Word’s section breaks [more on that in another post], I began doing a this-is-absolutely-the-last edit, when I realised that every time I typed in Miira Tahn, Word would ‘correct’ it to ‘Mira Than’ as soon as my attention moved elsewhere.

I tried getting Word to ‘Ignore All’, but it wouldn’t – and no, it wasn’t just variations on the name, like ‘Miira Tahn‘s‘ etc. And then it began throwing up other ‘errors’, all to do with US spelling. So, naturally, I used the nifty option at the bottom of the Spell Check pane to change the dictionary back to UK spelling:

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My efforts obviously confused Word because it suddenly switched to the French dictionary. -growls in rage-

The French dictionary finds every word written in English to be incorrect…

I changed the dictionary back to English UK.

Nope…Word now wants to stay in French.

I look up fixes to the problem. I attempt to reset my language preferences. I restart Word…

Now Word wants to use the US dictionary again BUT the page full of French ‘errors’ is still set to the French dictionary. And then Word stopped working.

It’s back now, but I haven’t been game to check my document in case I end up throwing the monitor across the room. There are many basic, useful formatting functions in Word, and it works well for short-ish, business type documents, but the more Microsoft tries to automate the process, the more mangled and unstable it becomes. Especially with big documents.

I hate to think how convoluted the Word code must be because Microsoft almost never delete anything. They just keep adding to it, and adding to it, and adding to it…

Sadly, while this rant did make me feel a little less homicidal, it’s only a temporary distraction from the main event. I have to get this stupid piece of shit to play nice or I may never get my hands on those lovely, shiny books.

Miira cover – in 3D

Just finished the Miira cover, version nth [honestly? I’ve lost track], so I thought I’d celebrate by playing around with a 3D version. I think it turned out okay.