Jaunt Technologic

Portal 2d (in Flash)

Damion Fury — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:50:47 +0000

A long time ago, this cool game called Portal came out. It used the source engine and all that, and it’s premise was deceptively simple. You can shoot this gun that will put a portal wherever you want it, then you put the other end of the portal wherever you want to go to. Using this neat tool, you need to solve a series of room-base puzzles, in order to leave.
Now, you can play a great 2d version of it anywhere. Well, anywhere you have a browser with Flash Player installed anyway. Check it: http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/portal.php

EFF fights RIAAs “Making Available” Argument

Damion Fury — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:19:44 +0000

I hate the RIAA. They use their vast resources to bring thousands of individuals and companies to court over alleged copyright infringements that they’ve often only performed the tiniest investigation into. On top of they, they allege grossly inflated damages and bully defendants into settling out of court simply because these people can’t afford to properly defend themselves.
On the other hand, I love the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They keep an eye out for issues that I might never see coming and they have the money to pay for lawyers to research and develop arguments that often make the RIAA’s lawyers look like the donkeys they are.
Recently, the EFF got involved in an ongoing case in which the RIAA alleged that simply making a copyrighted work available for download constitutes Copyright Infringement. You can check out the article on Slashdot and read the full amicus curaie brief here.
The brief is typical legalese but it is actually very informative on the issue and, in my opinion, pretty much shuts down the RIAA’s entire argument. This has been an interesting case where the court had previously made a summary judgment in favor of the RIAA, only to reconsider at the request of the Defendant. In December, the RIAA submitted a supplemental brief claiming that it is illegal to make a copy of music you legally own and compress it into mp3 format. This claim is in direct opposition to the stance of the RIAA’s own lawyers in previous cases, and is contrary to many established precedents and interpretations of the Audio Home Recording Act.

In short, this whole case should be dismissed as one of a number of attempts by the RIAA to prosecute someone without bothering to build a real case first.

GMail goes IMAP!

Damion Fury — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:56:23 +0000

All I have to say is ‘About freakin time!’

More info here:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78799

Invest in Google

Damion Fury — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:18:06 +0000

I don’t really like to talk about finances here because that’s not what this blog is all about, but I keep telling people and they don’t listen at the time, only to regret it later. Add Google to your investment portfolio. Not right away, sure, but keep your eyes on them and get them when they’re low(-ish). Yes, I realize that Google is over $600 per share right now, so wait it out. From what I’m seeing, it looks like the price is going down for a few more days, but they’re going to turn around and shoot over $700 again really soon. There’s a ton of speculation about them fielding their own phone and/or phone service. They just announced their own phone OS. If you don’t see them as the next Microsoft/Apple, you’re blind.

Saturns B movie & Assassins Creed

Damion Fury — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:23:04 +0000

Saturn
Every so often it makes headlines: Radio waves from Saturn sound like sound effects and music from a B movie. It’s true, too…sorta. For a variety of reasons, Saturn and many other planets (including Earth) are sources of completely natural radio wave emissions. Obviously us Earthlings are transmitting a fair amount of non-natural ones too, but if we were all to shut up simultaneously, you’d still be able to listen to the music of our Aurora Borealis. The Cassini-Huygens, probe orbiting Saturn, started picking up these same phenomena from Saturn when it arrived. Scientists recorded these signals and converted them into something we could actually hear and the results are…eerie. It sounds like something out of Doctor Who (the old ones) or the Forbidden Planet. Give it a listen: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/sounds/

Assassin’s Creed
Video Games are a lot of fun and offer me the opportunity to do things I could never do in real life. Assassin’s Creed is a game about one of those things. You’re a medieval Assassin task to carry out a variety of missions. I don’t know anything about the plot, beyond that, and I don’t need to. You can never have enough bad-ass assassin games. Only one thing could kill a game like that: bad gameplay. From everything I’ve seen, this game won’t have to worry about that, though. The cities are dynamic and the inhabitants react in complex and realistic ways. I couldn’t begin to describe it well so you should just go look at it: http://www.assassinscreed.com/index.php

Rentable, Electric Car? About time.

Damion Fury — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:31:34 +0000

I was reading an article on a device claimed to be a functional, commercially viable, quantum computer, when I stumbled upon images of this little beauty. I love the idea of a stackable electric vehicle that I could rent when I’m traveling in a big city. With my wife from New York and me from near Chicago, it would be wonderful to be able to take the train into the one of those cities and then, if need be, rent an electric car to get where we want to go. Some of the features include customizeable interior and exterior, new and novel restraint systems, and fully self-contained wheels that allow 360 degrees of rotation. Imagine walking up to a car, swiping your credit card, hopping in and customizing the color and instrumentation to match your style and preference. Even better, you know that companies will do things like storing your preferences so you can swipe and the system will apply the preferences you last used. Anyway, it’s still in the prototype phase so we’ll see which features actually make it.

I can’t decide…

Damion Fury — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:22:34 +0000

I love the new Seasons of Doctor Who. If you consider yourself a serious Sci-Fi junkie (or enthusiast if you prefer) then you already know of the show. The BBC revived it in 2005 and it’s been great ever since (though I’m not too crazy about their choice for the new companion). Anyway, I was watching the Season 3 finale the other day (I download them cuz SciFi channel takes too long to bring them over) and it began with a catchy song that I had to dig up. If you are trying to remember what song I’m talking about, it’s the one that the Master is dancing to at the very beginning of the Episode 13. I can’t help liking it…it’s delightfully psychotic and I think it’s so catchy because it’s one of those dark topics that they counterpoint by making it a catchy, poppy, happy tune. Regardless, I did some digging and the song is called “I Can’t Decide” by the Scissor Sisters.

I got questioned by the Secret Service

Damion Fury — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:35:18 +0000

My wife has to spend the next couple months in the Washington DC area, attending some training. Because she’d be out there so long, she wanted to bring her car. To make a long story short, I decided to drive her out, see some sights along the way, and fly back home; we arrived today. Being that we have some time to kill before my flight, we go to see the White House and other large granite-and-metal objects that tourists always flock to. Thing is, we’re both night owls and it’s late at night (about 11:30 pm). We walk around, take a few pictures, yell at some geese, take a few more pictures, actually manage to completely miss the White House on our first pass, take some more pictures, then walk back to the car. On our way back to the car, my wife sees a bike that has been secured to a signpost to prevent thievery. As the pictures she took will attest, this did not stop them from stealing the wheels off the bike. We chuckle a bit and climb into the car, only to notice two men in civilian clothes come walking up to us. I roll down my window and, lo-and-behold, they’re members of the Secret Service. It seems that they were chilling out inside the car parked in front of the bicycle that provided such amusement for us, and they needed to make sure that out camera didn’t get any pictures of their license plate. We show them the pictures (sorry guys, no plates…hell, the car wasn’t even in the pictures) and then we were on our way. It’s interesting to note, however, that we wouldn’t have had any clue that the car belonged to the Secret Service if they hadn’t told us. Regardless, we both understand why they had to check and were happy to comply. Plus, now I get to claim that I’ve been questioned by the Secret Service.

For the record, we also got to converse with a gate guard for the NSA, since it was 1 am and we needed some directions, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Fuel economy…in a rocket?

Damion Fury — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 20:22:51 +0000

Until now, all chemical rocket engines function essentially the same: spark off the reaction and hold on for dear life. You could redirect the thrust and, sometimes, turn it off entirely, however it was pretty much a light-switch type reaction. Although this certainly made it easy to calculate fuel use, it was also extremely inefficient. See, an engine must be capable of accelerating the rocket to escape velocity, and keeping it at, or above, that speed. Since our current rocket engines are only capable of accelerating, we have to calculate the exact break even point where the rocket runs out of fuel but has enough velocity to reach it’s intended orbit. This means a lot of wasted fuel and problems if we miss our mark. It’s basically like driving a car with only one gear, no brakes, and a throttle that is either open all the way, or completely closed. To get anywhere, you must accelerate to a point where you can just coast the rest of the way. Fortunately, that’s all about to change. Some researchers at Georgia Tech have designed an new rocket engine that would be 40% more efficient, and be smaller, than what we have now. It’s basically the equivalent of upgrading to a five gear transmission with full throttle control.

Curious? Read more here.