The brain scanner that can read people's intentions
Mice cured of autism
Wizardry at Harvard: Physicists move light
Quantum computer to debut next week
Engine on a chip - the dream of the personal turbine
Ocean planets on the brink of detection

Still no flying cars.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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But what the problem actually is I have no idea. So I'm going to reset the modem.

...

Nope, that's not it. Bah.

...

Okay, I did a ping test from the modem itself, and now everything works. Double bah with extra cream.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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And I think I just did that to myself in another field.

I've been wandering about the material on offer at MIT's Open Courseware and Berkeley's Webcasts, and the course I decided to start with was MIT's 9.00 Introduction to Psychology.

I just finished listening to it today (except for lecture 10, which is AWOL), and I have to say that I would cheerfully pay for this series if they had it on CD or something. It's that good. Now, part of that is that it's a subject I've always been interested in but didn't think to take when I had the chance, but a lot of it is the presentation. Jeremy Wolfe is a brilliant lecturer, funny and engaging and able to clearly get the point across. You lose a little with the audio lectures because you're not there, but they are nonetheless superb.

I've tried listening to 9.01 Neuroscience and Behaviour, but it's just not the same.

So if you're at all interested in how your mind works, in what makes you you, in a riotous Freudian analysis of Hansel and Gretel and Snow White, I can't recommend this lecture course too strongly. Download it, evict some songs from your iPod, and listen to it on the way to work. Then you can come back here in a few weeks and thank me.

Really. It's that good.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:16 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anyway, the show: It's good. It's not a direct adaptation of the books, at least not so far; there are hints that some later episodes will be closer to the source material.* Also, there are changes: Harry's apartment is aboveground; the Blue Beetle has been replaced by a Korean War era Jeep (which is fine; the reason Harry drives the Beetle in the books works just as well for a Jeep, and a Jeep would make some of the scenes in the books work better); Murphy is brunette; and Bob has gone all Quantum Leap on us.**

None of these present a major problem, and Paul Blackthorne makes a great Harry Dresden. He's not quite how I pictured Harry... or wasn't, until I saw him playing the part. Valerie Cruz isn't Murphy, but I think she'll make an acceptable not-Murphy. Terrence Man isn't quite Bob either, but given the changes that they needed to make to Bob for TV, I think he'll do fine. Conrad Coates as Morgan hasn't shown up yet, though it's a good sign that they list him as a major character.

Overall, a strong thumbs up from me. SciFi have put the whole first episode online so you can take a look.

* From this page, episode 6 is titled The Storm Front; Storm Front is the first book in the series.

** You'll know what I mean when you see the first episode. You'll say "Who the heck is that?!" That's Bob. "Oh... He's gone all Quantum Leap on us!" It works okay though, and book-style Bob would have been tricky to bring across to TV.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:43 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Why? Well, it seems that the boot sector is getting corrupted or something. I say "or something", because if I run a fixmbr and a chkdsk in that order, it will boot. If I only run one of those, generally it won't reboot. If I run chkdsk and then fixmbr, it generally won't reboot either.

What I'm not seeing is (a) any file corruption, (b) any viruses or malware, or (c) any system or application crashes.

This is pretty much how the machine died last September: It was working just fine, then I rebooted to complete an update for iTunes, and it never came back. Only in that case the disk was verifiably toast - it barfed on chkdsk and locked up the computer. This time, the disk is fine, the files are fine, it just won't boot.

So every time something (thanks a bunch, Microsoft!) decides that it has to reboot Windows, it takes me an hour-and-a-half of stuffing around with the Windows Recovery Console to get it back.

I need a new computer.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:37 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Just waiting for Ryoga and Mousse to come online actually, then the hardware preparations will be complete. And all that will be left to do is... everything else.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:59 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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It would be quicker, and on recent experience, less painful.

Bah.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:29 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Whee!

Update: Added Mousse. 8 servers, 13 CPUs, 17GB of memory, 5TB of disk, 14.5TB bandwidth.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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