The random ramblings of Micah Cowan. Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer…
I believe in love.
I believe it’s really silly to believe in love.
I believe in love.
Albert Sweigart, What One Atheist Believes, http://coffeeghost.net/
So, Sonic the Hedgehog turned 15 years old on June 23rd. Although, he’s actually been 15-years-old since he was born (which makes this date especially important).
At any rate, Digg gave a very cool site, with a printable PDF that will allow you to make your own three-dimensional version of Sonic’s Green Hill Zone. Enjoy! 
Digg recently brought a lot of attention to this blog, run by Kevin Barbieux—a homeless man with a laptop. I thought that, in light of the huge amount of misinformation and poor assumptions about homelessness and people suffering from it, it was worth adding to my blogroll.
I also added Norsehorse to the blogroll. Kevin pointed his site out as another blog run by a homeless man, who is described as “an advocate for the mentally ill homeless.” IMO, this combines homelessness with yet another thing that suffers from very poor general knowledge and false assumptions.
About a month ago, I impulse-bought the Flashback system (can’t find the website, but here’s the Flashback on Amazon), which plays NES/Famicom carts. Comes with two controllers with A and B buttons, shoulder-button equivalents, and turbo button versions. Supports PAL and NTSC video outputs, and uses RCA-style output cables.
When I bought it, I didn’t have any NES carts, so I didn’t even bother opening it. Yesterday Kirby arrived thanks to eBay, so here’s a shot of my system:
I had no idea the thing was so friggin’ small… it’s actually kinda cute. Except when there’s a cartridge in it.The system is, like, half the size of the NES carts you plug into it! (Not volumetrically, but from a 2D visual standpoint.
The one thing I wish it had is a power LED, so you know when it’s powered on.
Snail sex (click the image for the full-resolution version)!
A lovely shot from the mostly unnarrated documentary, Microcosmos. A great movie, even without taking the above scene into account. 
I thought this collection of tongue-in-cheek guides to successfully cheating on university English papers was hilarious.
I think my favorite quote may be:
As a corollary here, try not to plagiarize the teacher. You will be less likely to suffer her ire, since it will amuse her and her colleagues to no end, but you are more likely to be caught. Steal her ideas and rephrase them in your own prose, because there is nothing teachers like more than knowing that students can write well but have no original ideas.
I found this post from Bruce Schneier’s June 15 Crypto-Gram computer security newsletter.
(Sorry I haven’t posted in a month; I’ve been busy with programming projects. I’ll post more about them when I’m more ready. This article seemed worth citing.)
Summary: Despite Gore’s “vast majority of scientists” agreeing, the actual community of scientists whose profession and experience actually have to do with understanding climate change are in disagreement regarding the existence of global warming as a phenomenon.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
Update: if you look at the comments, you’ll see that I was pretty much immediately notified that the article’s veracity is in question. Thanks to Bruce Perens for doing a follow-up and looking closer, and to thickslab for bringing Bruce’s retraction to my attention (otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed until the next Crypto-Gram!).
I had wondered how that tied in with observations I’d heard from people who really are in the climate-change-causes field. Though, the article only claims that that community of scientists have not reached a “consensus,” not that they all think that global warming is bunk.
Here’s a rebuttal to the content of the article.
While it would be an ad hominem argument to discount the article entirely merely because it turns out that its author is a paid political PR agent, and the article does actually raise some important points, it also seems clear that some of the points are deliberately misleading. Take it with about a pound of salt…