Archive for the 'Off Topic' Category
France Ranked Best Place to Live—Again
January 7th, 2010Via: International Living:
To produce this annual Index we consider nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. This involves a lot of number crunching from “official” sources, including government websites, the World Health Organization, and The Economist, to name but a few. We also take [...]
Does Anyone Know How to Express Linear Regression Channel Lines as a Strategy/Signal Component in EasyLanguage
December 13th, 2009I’ve been trying to convert code from a linear regression channel indicator into a strategy. I haven’t been able to figure out how to do it.
In short, what I want to be able to do is buy when:
Close is less than the lower channel line (I have no idea how to express this), plus some [...]
Otakulypse Now: Japanese Man Marries Virtual Girlfriend
November 29th, 2009Via: Stuff:
We may occasionally wish our spouses had an “off” switch but a Japanese man will have that luxury full-time after he married his virtual girlfriend in an official-looking ceremony over the weekend.
In a bizarre story reminiscent of the film Lars and the Real Girl, the man, known by his nickname SAL9000, fell in love [...]
Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter?
November 15th, 2009This is an interesting article about independent video game developers. I enjoy stories about people who figure out how to hack the system in innovative ways. If you do too, you might want to check this out—whether you ever play video games, or not.
Via: New York Times Magazine:
These game designers, a self-described indie scene, form [...]
Vanished Persian Army Said Found in Desert
November 11th, 2009Via: MSNBC:
The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.
Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate [...]
Telecom XT Mobile Broadband Working; Bye Bye Farmside
November 4th, 2009Farmside, our satellite ISP, represents our largest monthly expense. Every few months, I think about how much we’re spending on Farmside and how much I’d like to find an alternative. Telecom New Zealand launched their new XT network a few months ago. I just assumed that we wouldn’t be able to connect to this network [...]
Something Pleasant for the Weekend: Machinarium
October 24th, 2009I don’t play many video games, but I indulge my childhood habit about once per year. Machinarium is a beautifully handcrafted little game by a tiny, independent Czech game company called Amanita Design.
Most of Machinarium involves solving puzzles that get progressively more difficult as you move through the screens. I actually wasn’t able to start [...]
Large Hadron Collider Sabotaging Itself from the Future?
October 21st, 2009Via: Times Online:
Explosions, scientists arrested for alleged terrorism, mysterious breakdowns — recently Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun to look like the world’s most ill-fated experiment.
Is it really nothing more than bad luck or is there something weirder at work? Such speculation generally belongs to the lunatic fringe, but serious scientists have begun to [...]
Windows 7: Open Thread
October 15th, 2009There’s nothing worse than this OS vs. that OS threads, but people are asking me about Windows 7.
I’ll be very brief, so my head doesn’t explode:
Would I pay to upgrade my Windows XP box to Windows 7? No way.
Would I avoid Windows 7 like the plague/Vista? No.
If I was buying a new computer, would I [...]
Fly, Colt, Fly: Police Suspect ‘Barefoot Burglar’ is Stealing, Crashing Planes
October 9th, 2009The kid should have become a CEO of a large, crooked corporation. Then he would have been rewarded with taxpayer funded bonuses for his sociopathic behavior…
Hmm. Why aren’t hundreds of cops and helicopters, etc. trying to apprehend those CEOs for doing pretty much the same thing as Colton “Colt” Harris-Moore, but on a planetary scale?
In [...]
