• I don’t have much to say. Um, yeah. Except in some cases…
• I have too much to say. When I really get going on a subject, I’ll end up with walls of text about space probes or megabytes or hamburgers. tl;dr
• I lack focus. My blog is too general to even appeal to me.
• I’d rather do than write. I’ve tried to write about my interests, but writing about them necessarily takes time away from doing them.
• I lack the ego. It really takes the wind out of my sails when there are hundreds of millions of blogs and there is literally no reason for anyone except the people I know to read mine. Besides, I could just tell them what I want to say directly. But then they don’t get to deal with my superfluous italicizing.
• I never know how to end a post. Um, yeah.

Time-traveling bosons can try as hard as they want, but the Large Hadron Collider’s real Achilles’ Heel?  Bread.  And birds,  apparently.

A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating on parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic safety detectors would have shut down the machine.

I admit there are some eventualities you just can’t plan for, but come on!  How are you going to destroy the world if you’re thwarted by bread?!  I mean… no.

(via Universe Today, Bread Dropped By Bird Causes Problems for LHC.)

There’s no denying it: America is fat. The obvious answer to this problem is healthier diets and more exercise. Instead we hope for the miracle obesity cure while we fill every orifice with low carb, fake sugar, fat substitute garbage that is probably far worse for us than old fashioned lard. Well, some of us do anyway. There are several different schools of thought when it comes to food:

• It’s completely natural and possibly soy based. Let’s go jogging!
• It’s made almost entirely out of chemicals. It will magically make you thin!
• It isn’t moving and probably won’t kill you if you eat it. Chow down!

To cater to this third group, things like “supersizing” and hamburgers stuffed full of smaller hamburgers were created. We all know about the Monster Thickburger, which ruins my ability to call it a monstrosity by advertising that fact in its name, developed by the evil foodologists at Hardees/Carls Jr. This burger packs a whopping 1400 calories, and with a small soda and fries constitutes the average 2000 calorie intake for the day, all without providing any significant nutritional content! And people willingly pay for this! There is also a low-carb Thickburger that replaces the bread with lettuce, which through some ill-understood arcane ritual makes the death-burger healthy, apparently. In either form, the thickburger features two 1/3 pound beef patties, two slices of cheddar cheese, and enough bacon to do something ironic. For once, they could have gotten away with calling this the Ultimate Cheeseburger, since it very well could be the last thing you eat. Then Wendy’s came along and gave us the Classic Triple Cheeseburger.

When I first saw an ad for this burger, I couldn’t believe it was real. Three 1/3 pound patties? When I just finished being outraged by two? In my day I’ve seen a lot of burgers with a lot of meat, but most try to disguise the fact that they are a gussied up pile of cow flesh by inserting various less beefy things in between the patties. Cheese, bacon, onion rings, and — god forbid — non-grease laden things like lettuce, tomatoes, and bread all serve as a distraction from the fact that you are consuming a stack of dead bovine. This obviously doesn’t deter anyone in the slightest, so I have devised a new, extra-meaty burger to foist upon the ever widening public in the hopes that they’ll gleefully shovel fistfuls of this detritus down their gullet holes. I give you the Beefbun Burger!

If there’s one thing America likes more than delicious, heart-stopping beef, it’s gimmicky food. Here we have a burger much like those Oreos that inverted the chocolate cookie and cream filling. Sandwiched between two beef patties is a slice of bread, which has been coated with cheese to make up for its relative healthiness. There will also be the Ultimate Beefbun Burger, which replaces the cheese-bread with beef wrapped in bacon. Can you say “bypass?” Probably, since it’s a simple two syllable word.

And that’s all I’ve got. The post sort of ran out of steam right about here. I had grand plans for graphs and photoshopped burger pictures, but my enthusiasm for the subject has waned. There were also some hastily typed notes that sort of formed a conclusion, but the only line worth saving was the very last: “Remember, the only inedible part of a cow is the hooves!” I think that’s a good a place as any to call it a night.

I hear a lot of talk about how great Linux is, stable this, open-source that, blah blah blah, but it came through where both Windows (micro$uck, am i rite?!?!) and Mac OS (more like crap os!!1!1) failed horribly and repeatedly, specifically transferring files between the platforms. Let’s go to the chart.

Windows, home of NTFS and FAT32. I’m leaving FAT16 and FAT12 out of this since they are really quite old and no one likes them because they’re FAT. Also, there is no chart, that was just a segue. Sorry to disappoint you. NTFS support is a Windows exclusive, so that won’t work for cross-platform file transferification. FAT32 is more or less universally accessible, but has such exciting features as a 32 GB partition limit and 4 GB file limit. Of course, the FAT32 specifications actually allows for partitions up to 2 terabytes in size, but Windows XP is all like, “oh no you di’int” and gives you a logical drive error if you try to format over 32 gigs. It turns out that Mac OS has no trouble at all formatting FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, Microsoft. Still, the 4 GB file limit is real buzz kill. Let’s go crash Apple’s party.

On the think different side of things, Mac OS is just as bad. HFS+ is just like NTFS: only its native OS can read it. There is MacDrive, a program that allows Mac volumes to be read by Windows, but it’s not free and that simply isn’t acceptable. I fully expect every piece of software I use to be completely functioning and open source or creative commons or whatever it takes so that I can use it without paying anyone. That’s the right attitude about software, right? Am I laying it on too thick? HFS, the previous Mac file system, isn’t any more helpful than its beplussed successor, and just like FAT32 comes with the apparently very hip 4 GB file size limitation. Not so good for moving around large DV files or pirated movies. I mean no.

Then, like a Phoenix rising out of Arizona, the Linux file system appeared to me. Ext2 it was called, and free drivers existed so that it could be read on all platforms, with only a minimal amount of file system weirdness. It supported any size partition that I cared to throw at it, and there were no file size limitations as far as the eye could see. The G5 I’m using is a bit touchy, and sometimes decides that it’s not going to mount the drive all the way, but a swift kick to the case trip to the Disk Utility sorts that out right quick. Without actually using Linux I am benefiting from it. Some die-hards might say that it would simply be easier to use the Linux file system from within Linux, but I think I’ll just sit here and capture digital video while they’re busy compiling Firewire support into the colonel. Kernel. Whatever.

I think I will close with some facts that you can use if you want to impress people at parties. Did you know that NTFS has a theoretical limit of 16 exabytes? One exabyte, or EB, is equivalent to one billion gigabytes! If bytes were pennies and you had an exabyte worth of them, good lord man, that would be a lot of pennies! Also, I am the only person on the Internet to ever use the word beplussed.

This calls to mind an equal number of questions.

• Was one of these flyers not enough to secure my interest in a Boom Boom Huckjam?
• What, in the name of of God’s green Earth, is a Boom Boom Huckjam?
• Why are these being sent to me in the first place?

Truly questions for the ages. Luckily, I have some time on my hands, so I can get to answering them now.

The answer to the first question is: of course not! Obviously I wouldn’t even be writing this if I hadn’t gotten three extreme postcards for this extreme event with the extreme name! Boom Boom Huckjam indeed! How can I not attend such an event? I am completely unable to resist promotional materials featuring two skaters, one of which may be illustrated. If I had gotten only two of these cards though, I probably wouldn’t have cared, as they wouldn’t be taking into consideration that at some point in the future I may spontaneously grow a third eye! I just can’t take the chance that in this highly improbable situation, all three of my eyes wouldn’t be filled with the glory of extreme abbreviations and marketing tie-ins.

Now that I am hell bent on going to a Boom Boom Huckjam, I should probably find out what I’m getting myself into. I’ll just hop on over to Wikipedia and see what they say. Ah-! According to them, there is no such thing as a Boom Boom Huckjam. So, it’s nothing. It shouldn’t cost too much to attend, then.

The final quandary is a tougher nut to crack, a harder onion to peel, and more difficult food metaphor to cope with. Why am I getting BBHj invitations at all? Is there something about my age bracket that just screams extreme sports? And if so, could it kindly be quieter, it’s late and I’m trying to type. I am well aware that credit card companies sell your personal information and spending habits to the highest bidder or any old homeless guy that wanders in looking for vodka, but I can’t think of anything I have purchased that justifies Huckjam ads or this poorly written sentence. Wait a minute, there’s something I missed! This is Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huckjam! I didn’t recognize him with the helmet and the ravages of age, nor could I make out the extreme font very well. I suppose I have purchased a few Tony Hawk games in my day, somewhere around… all of them. It all makes sense now. Except for the title of this post, which betrays the fact that I knew Hawk was there all along… or does it? I’ll leave that question for another age.

Earthquakes are merely one result of the movement of the tectonic plates deep beneath the Earth’s crust, and probably the least worrisome when you consider that searing hot magma could be exploding all around you just as easily as the ground shaking a bit. To help you plan for the least amount of geologic troubles, the following is a highly detailed and accurate map of where some sort of tectonic activity could occur on Earth at some point in the future.

(Note: this map is for scientific use only and is not intended to aid in the locating of nearby Denny’s restaurants. Always consult a physician before attempting to dine at Denny’s.)

While you may not be able to escape the Earth’s violent spasms, there are still options for those looking for a respite. Some suggestions include moving to outer space or the moon, or shedding your corporeal form and becoming a being of pure energy. Keep in mind that, while there are no earthquakes on the moon, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of moonquakes. You’re on your own for how to deal with those.

So you’re experiencing an earthquake: what now? Assuming that it isn’t strong enough to turn the area into a Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic landscape (which I will cover in the forthcoming Thunderdome Watch 2005), here are some tips to make sure that your next earthquake is safe and educational.

• If you are indoors when the earthquake occurs, calmly move outside, carefully avoiding falling bookshelves and broken glass.
• If you are outdoors when the earthquake occurs, calmly move inside, carefully avoiding falling clouds and broken dreams.
• If you are in a doorway when the earthquake occurs, calmly split in two, positioning half of yourself completely outside, and half inside.
• Do not panic during the earthquake. There will be plenty of time for that afterward.
• Stop, drop, and roll.
• Make sure to store plenty of food and water, as well as first aid supplies, in a safe location. In hindsight, I probably should have told you this before the earthquake.
• Be sure to freak out as completely as possible at even the smallest tremor, despite the fact that you live in an earthquake zone and really should expect this by now, so that the local news interviews you and thus has to do even less work to pad out an already fluff-filled half-hour of evening news.

With these tips you are reasonably assured of at least knowing that an earthquake is happening, as opposed to a meteorite impact or the Rapture. Remember, earthquakes are the planet’s attempt at obliterating the parasitic infestation that is humanity, just like a dog scratching behind its ear. Well, in that case it’s fleas, not humanity. Dogs are actually pretty fond of humans, and scratching their ear wouldn’t do much anyway. Now go out there and get those earthquakes… before they get you.

Monitors have resolutions. The UN has resolutions. I’ve never really been one for resolutions. Still, now is a time for looking forward and possibly sideways. Diagonally, if necessary. But mostly forward!

• Update my blog regularly. Seems simple enough. I give it until March.
• Finish editing my novel. Seems simple enough. It’ll probably take me ’til October.
• Stop using puns. I was originally going to title this post “I’m Feeling List-less,” but that wasn’t quite as relevant. I give this resolution about 11 nanoseconds.
• Go back to school. I believe there is nothing more important than – HA! Really had you going there, didn’t I?
• Turn my web page into a leading center of commerce and scientific exploration. Wait, that’s Deep Space Nine.
• Come up with some actual resolutions. This whole post really went nowhere, didn’t it?

So there you have it. Proof that I am not a resoluting kind of guy. I could mention my “to-do” list that would wrap around the planet three and a half times, but it’s full of terribly mundane things like “get a new chair,” “fix the broken fence,” and “put a person on Mars by the end of the decade.”

Overnight, Opportunity’s solar panels produced between 2% and 5% additional power, perhaps due to Martian dust that had settled on them being removed.

I think I’ll skip this Opportunity for a joke.

Suuure, NASA, whatever you say. Dust magically fell off of the rover’s solar panels. Wind? Where do you think the rover is, Earth? And somehow the power increase happened overnight? You know, night? As in no sunlight for the solar panels to collect? Explain that one, o mighty scientists. You couldn’t hypothesize your way out of paper bag. I could come up with a better theory in my sleep. More plausible scenarios include:

• Opportunity had the power all along but it was stored in the metric system
• Opportunity stole the power from Spirit
• Friendly Martians gave the rover extra power
• Unfriendly Martians accidentally gave the rover power
• Dinosaurs gave the rover extra power
• NASA made up the whole mission
• There’s no such thing as Mars

Put that in a rocket and smoke it, NASA.

You could go to Jupiter, but why? Jovians are very rude to tourists. Also, you would die.

With all of this talk of Mars, though, people are failing to look at the smaller picture. There’s a very nice planet named Venus a mere 26 million miles away, half the distance to Mars. At the proposed speed of the Mag-beam whatsit, a round trip to Venus would only take a month and a half! Granted, the surface temperature is 740 Kelvins (hot enough to melt lead), the surface pressure is 90 atmospheres (strong enough to crush lead), and the air is full of sulfuric acid (sulfuric enough to… really annoy lead), so that may not work out so well. Let’s think smaller still.

I hate to burst your moon bubble, Stanton A. Coblentz.

The moon. We haven’t been there in a while. We haven’t called in years. What, are we too good for the moon? Well no more! The moon is a mere 240,000ish miles away. Traveling just over 26 thousand miles per hour, we could put an intrepid group of moonologists on the surface of our favorite orbit-buddy in nine hours!! That’s faster than a non-stop plane trip from San Diego to London!! Is my increased use of italics and exclimation marks getting my point across?! It’s the moon, people! Not to be confused with “the moon people” which, sadly, do not exist. I suppose the reason we haven’t gone back to the moon is probably the lack of moon people. That and it’s unspeakably dull. Let’s work with this London idea.

Let’s say I live in San Diego. I set up my magical beam propulsion system, and have my friend Tony set another up somewhere in London. I hop in, hit play, and I’m off to England, and all the fog I can eat! Time for some math. If I am moving at 34 times the speed of sound, and London is about 5500 miles away, how long ’til I get there? Twelve minutes. That’s all! If you weren’t totally blown away by the answer, see me after class. I could be playing cricket and dining on bangers and mash on my lunch break, without missing a minute of work! This is what science is all about. Too bad all of the “scientists” are busy trying to figure out how to play golf on Mars.