Hey guys, it's been a while.

Well, I screwed up the light-capturing rig so it ended up not charging the mini-capacitor-bank. But this doesn't mean it shouldn't work! It just means I'm fallible. Hey look, a distraction!



I could amuse myself with this for days.

We can't break the laws of entropy but we sure can cheat them a little bit! I don't understand why a solar panel taking light from a light bulb to power the same lightbulb is a bad idea. Sure, it's not a perpetual energy device, but it's more efficient than without the solar cell. And we're all about efficiency nowadays, aren't we? I'm setting up a proof-of-concept solar capacitor charger right now and I'll make a blag post with photos later.

For those of you who've played Sonic Adventure 2: Battle

Has anyone else noticed that Rouge the Bat is a little...jiggly? Not in the stereotypical video-game-female-jiggle manner, though--Rouge's bust is as unmoving and chaste as a bronzed nun (which is probably for the best, seeing as it's a frigging BAT). No, it's her ears. They just don't stop moving. Ever. To me, that's way creepier than the visual image I just gave myself of dipping a nun in molten bronze.

Basically I just wanted an excuse to say "Bronzed nun." I think that's my best simile ever.

Fidel Castro

Holy hell, he just won't die. Fidel Castro is clearly a descendant of Rasputin. No, wait. Fidel Castro IS Rasputin.

***THIS IS A BREAK TO INDICATE A TOTALLY DIFFERENT SUBJECT. I AM AN EXCELLENT SEGUE-WRITER.***

Foodwatch 2007: Hour five. I'm fasting for Yom Kippur. I've never done it before so I don't know if I'll last until Saturday evening. I'll probably be hungry and cranky during the physics lab tomorrow afternoon, which will affect my results in interesting ways. I'll probably have things like V² = V₀² + SCRW YOU GUYS THIS SUCKESS. I can't wait!

h-diaeresis

We need a character for h with diaeresis. Well, there already is one (ḧ -- you might not have the right font to read that) but it's not in common use. Actually, it's not in use at all. Wikipedia acknowledges its existence but does not have an article nor mention any use for it. I would suggest it be used like ä ë ï ö and ü are used in English: namely, to indicate the start of a new syllable where it might be missed, like in naïve or coördinate.

There are many places where one could use an h-diaeresis! Take The Great Gatsby. There's a character named Wolfsheim. That's not pronounced WULF-shaim, it's pronounced WULFS-haim. Other words which could benefit from an h-diaeresis include the following: lighthearted, lightheaded, butthead, misheard, fathead, shepherd, lefthanded, and, of course, asshat. I've already started using h-diaeresis in my homework, but it's not that often that I get to use it. Maybe someone will notice eventually.

UshankaUshanka: Did I tell you my plan for Fiji?
bladez740: no
UshankaUshanka: Okay, some background info
UshankaUshanka: Fiji has had four--FOUR--military coups in the last 19 years
UshankaUshanka: Every one is because someone thought the current government was either a) too racist or b) not racist enough
UshankaUshanka: The majority of Fiji's population is Hindu descendants of Indian slaves, but the majority of the government and economy are controlled by native Fijians.
UshankaUshanka: So, in the most recent coup this February
UshankaUshanka: The army/police chief, who is in charge of EVERY FIREARM IN THE COUNTRY, noticed that of the 1000 tracts of land the government gave away that year, 997 of them went to native Fijians.
UshankaUshanka: "That's pretty racist!" he thought. "I have all the guns and all the soldiers in the country, I should do something about this!"
UshankaUshanka: So he drew up a list of his demands
UshankaUshanka: and gave them to the prime minister saying that he had three weeks to comply or else the military/police forces would rebel and take over.
UshankaUshanka: In other words, he gave three weeks' warning before staging a coup.
UshankaUshanka: They knew three weeks in advance that he was going to attack them. They had three weeks to prepare.
UshankaUshanka: And yet he still succeeded in taking over the country.
UshankaUshanka: But he's not much better
UshankaUshanka: like, lynching people and stuff
UshankaUshanka: So the way I see it, I should take over Fiji. It can't be too hard if you can stage a coup with three weeks' warning, right?
UshankaUshanka: I'll kick everyone out, deport them to Antarctica or something.
UshankaUshanka: And I won't let them back in until they can prove that they can play nice.

At long last!

I've been trying to read and translate a Spanish guidebook on Silbo Gomero for a while now. At long last, I've reached the part where it explains the mechanisms behind the identification of letters! Now I understand how to speak Silbo Gomero! The next problem is actually speaking Silbo Gomero.

Silbo is a whistled language, intended to be heard over a range of a couple miles. To generate a whistle loud enough to travel this distance, one has to use the "fingers-in-mouth" method. And boy is it difficult. All I've succeeded in doing so far is to hyperventilate and to cover my fingers in a film of slobber. I'm going to keep trying, so don't shake my hand for a couple of days, alright?