Just read a great article that was full of good tips on how to survive the apocalypse. Be it bombs, aliens, zombies or monsters - these tips have you covered. Original article here

Never Go Through A Tunnel

It seems like a quick and easy way out, but dark and scary passageways usually house bad things that you don't want to bother with in the middle of fleeing for your life. It's simple: tunnels=death, for at least one person in the group. This is a tried and true fact of apocalyptic movies. Take for example the idiot drivers who decided to take the tunnel in Independence Day, toasted via fire ball (except for the ones who had that dog, but more on that later). Also who could forget the night vision moments in Cloverfield walking through New York's subway system. Avoid tunnels at all costs.

Do Not Join A Theme Gang

With the world ending, there will be many sad sacks who will try and recreate a Mad Max road warrior gang. Resist the urge to join anything theme-oriented. Basic rule of thumb: if you look like an idiot with a face tattoo or a fool running around in Medieval garb, you're going to get the sharp end of the death stick. Doomsday spelled this out pretty clearly: everyone who looked ridiculous got a ridiculous ending. Motorcycle gangs count too, don't forget even Romero's Dawn of the Dead leather riders got their just rewards for their hideous outfits and bad attitudes. Stick to the rag-tag refugee look, or lone wolf army motif. If you have to join a gang, stay in the back and never do anything you might later regret — like eat people.

Do Not Go Back For Loved Ones

If the world is ending, you may feel the need to find love ones that are in Princeton, a New York Library or a high rise apartment. This is a bad idea. Let go of your emotions and assume that everyone else in the world is dead, or trying to steal your food supplies. Going after loved ones almost always means your own death or the death of someone in the group. Look at it this way, it your loved one has survived and you meet up with them, bonus for you. But most likely they died from the plague, zombies, earthquake flood or whatever.

Never Be The First

I can't believe this even has to be said but no, do not go exploring in rooms, attic, caves, hallways or apartments where you are the first one in the door. My favorite character from Resident Evil Extinction, L.J., got bit by a zombie lady because he was checking out all the rooms to make sure it was safe. Let someone else do this, get a job as a medic or cook. There is no need for you to be first to go anywhere — let someone else do the exploring. If they find something really good, you can kill them and take it anyway.

Bring Your Pet

If you don't have a pet, I suggest you go to the pet store and steal one, looter style, or take care of your dead neighbors'. You may need this pet to help you keep your sanity or sacrifice its life for you, like in I Am Legend. Either way, animals are good luck when the chips are down for humans. You never know when a pair of love birds will come in handy to calm down a flock of murderous seagulls and crows. The same rule sometimes applies to children, but you will have to feed them considerably more.

Ditch The Biggest Guy In Your Group

They will turn into a zombie or rage machine, it's proven. Kill them before they kill you, or just ditch them at the next pass.

Don't Trust People In Uniform Unless They Have Defected From The System

Never trust the government, especially when the world is ending. It's a terrible idea, they would rather nuke the whole place than deal with people. If you see the military, run the other way or hide. Do not do what they say. The friendly people of Hollywood followed the advice of the government from Right At Your Door, and what happened to them? Same with the people of Raccoon City, from Resident Evil Apocalypse. Granted an ex-military person hell-bent on sticking it to the man can be a wonderful asset during the end of the world, just be sure to know the difference between the two.

Don't Barricade Yourself In

It always seems like a good idea, but 9 times out of 10 whatever you're trying to keep out gets in and now you're trapped. Think of the mess it caused for the cute little family in the beginning of28 Weeks Later and Shaun of the Dead. I say build a sky city in the trees.

Wow, I read a really great blog entry today. You know it's going to be a good entry when it starts out mentioning star trek! :) But then to actually use that as a lead-in to a reflection of ones past, relive life-changing events, and draw strength from them is really great.

Unfortunately for most of the rest of the world this is a private blog. It's probably the most consistently well-written and profound blog that i read (and i read a lot of blogs). It's a shame that i can't get an rss feed for it, because i only sporadically check it. I really need to do better and go there more often.

I hope that one day my writing is half so good. Until then, i will continue to read, be inspired, and try to find my flute.

I decided to try a little experiment. I just finished it in fact. The experiement was to drive a little bit slower and see if it had a noticable impact on my gas mileage (and thus on my wallet). Almost all of my driving in my car is on the highway to and from work. I tend to drive just a wee bit fast, so there was plenty of room for me to "slow down" and still not annoy anyone on the highway. :) I drove my car until it was on fumes. Then I fueled it up. My car has a 12 gallon tank, and i usually get 300 miles out of it (that's 25mpg). At $4.00/gallon for gas, that's $48 to fill up the tank. Flash forward to about two weeks later. My car is on fumes again and guess what - the trip meter was showing 330 miles. Which means i got a 10% increase in gas mileage. That's 27mpg. Or another way to look at it is that at $4.00/gallon, i just saved $0.40 per gallon of gas, effectively giving me me gas at $3.60. Let's look at it another way. I drive approxmiately 20 miles each way to work, or 40 miles round trip. Assume that i drive in to work around 200 days a year (sounds about right after you factor in weekends, holidays, working from home, etc..). That's 8000 miles. At $4.00/gallon on my old gas mileage (25mpg), that would be 320 gallons of gas, or $1,280. Assuming the new gas mileage (27mpg), that would be 296 gallons of gas, or $1,184. Giving me a total savings of: $96.00. So the question becomes: Is it worth it for me to drive agonizingly slow every day, adding about 5 minutes to my commute each way in order to save $100/year?

Whoever did this crop circle is a genius. The circle is actually the first 10 digits of PI. No, seriously. See if you can figure it out, and then read the article which explains it. Very cool stuff.

Any of the things talked about in here can be looked up on your favorite search engine. Feel free to verify. I'm just going to ramble on for a bit.

Today i read an article that talked about a company in California who has genetically altered e-coli bacteria so that it can eat bio waste such as woodchips, corn stalks, sugar cane, etc.. (pretty much anything you want to throw at it, they can genetically manipulate it to use that as the food source). Anyway, the little bugs grow in large vats eating this stuff, and they poop out crude oil! How cool is that? And the net carbon emission is negative - they suck more crap out of the air than they produce. Very green indeed. The company spokesman said that they think they can get to commercial scale production levels within a few years and produce a barrel of oil for around $50. Another benefit of this is that no existing infrastructure need be changed. Your car and the gas stations and pipelines all continue to work unmodified.

SwiftFuel. Along similar lines is a new type of gas being developed for the airline industry - but that could be easily adapted for the auto industry. It doesn't use bugs, but it is a way to create a gas alternative that is around 15% more efficient than gas, costs WAY less, has a net carbon emission of 0, and wouldn't require any infrastructure changes whatsoever. And it can be mass produced for a final sale price around $3.00/gallon.

Another algae based gas solution which feeds off of waste products and produces a gas-like substance is here. Didn't read much on this but have heard of it before. ... Hell, speaking of things i've heard of, i remember watching a pbs show (or discovery or who knows...) years ago talking about a guy who had modified his car to run on fermented apple juice. He had an orchard out back. I just hope he didn't drink all his gas on friday nights. :)

Other things include fuel cell cars that run on hydrogen. These are being introduced in a small scale in parts of California soon. California is the only place in the USA that has hydrogen fueling stations (3 at that...). If they catch on, however, the infrastructure will build out i'm sure. And let's not forget full-on electric cars. Of course, you have to plug them in, and that power comes from somewhere ... most likely coal burning plants. But there's enough coal in the USA to last for hundreds if not thousands of years at current consumption levels. Too bad it produces all that smoke.

But we don't have to burn coal. Spanish Fork just put up a network of massive windmills at the mouth of the canyon. I read an article last month that talked about how large windfarms around the country could easily supply 20% of all our energy needs. Other innovative energy solutions are using ocean-power. Specifically they use the up and down motion of waves to act like pistons in a huge engine and pumps power onto land. Or you put a huge pipe deep into the ocean and the temperature differential causes a breeze to blow up the pipe, which turns a fan, and produces power; i.e. a constant wind source.

The venerable solar panel is constantly getting more efficient and less costly. You could put miles and miles of these out in the deserts and collect huge amounts of power. Some people have even suggested using the breeze generated by passing cars on the highway to turn fans and generate electricity.

And back to oil.

Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates combined.

There are massive oil shale fields in desolate desert areas that, if mined, could produce all the worlds oil needs for hundreds of years at current consumption levels. And it could be done for $30/barrel. Large oil companies like Shell and Exxon are looking into mining up to several hundred thousand barrels a day from these fields (although it will take up to a decade to get everything in place -- too long, perhaps. Other technologies may overtake them by then).

I could go on, but you get the point. I guess what i'm trying to say is that people are finally at the 'fed up' point with our current energy supply mechanisms (mostly due to economic reasons at the pump), and are looking for change. Change is in the air. I think the tide is coming in and foreign oil won't be able to keep a stranglehold for much longer.

I've just posted a new batch of pictures from the latest miniature project i'm working on. Check out the cavern chess pieces.

Yesterday was a sad day ... Even after much rationing, I ate the last of the salsa ... :(

I don't carry around a planner or use online calendars or even my software office package to keep track of appointments or todo items. I either send myself a quick email or text message, scribble it on a piece of paper, or just hope i remember it when it's time (although the later method often gets me into trouble...)

Funny, considering that i work with computers all day. But it looks like i'm not alone. There's an emerging trend of people who want all the reminders and organization that a traditional calendaring/todo system can give you, but without the overhead and burden of actually having to deal with filling it out. Enter text-based computing and natural language processing. A number of (for now) free offerings allow you to just type (web), text (sms), or say (phone) what you want, using natural speech ("Lunch with Luann tomorrow afternoon"), and it generates your calendar for you, and will even send you reminders (via phone/sms/email) when its time to do something.

Here are a few quotes from the article:

The problem with to-do lists and schedules is that you need to fill them out.

Most organizational systems break your flow. They try to make you do something else for a moment [add a calendar entry, todo, etc..], and then you can go back to whatever you were doing in the first place.

For two decades, software has been dominated by graphical user interfaces, which employ visual features like windows and icons to convey information. ... The command line is making a comeback--and increasingly, natural-language processing is bringing the ease and simplicity of text-based computing to the non-tech-savvy.

There are going to be more and more applications which are less monolithic screens, and more dashing off quick missives.

Original Article

At a recent conference, futurist Ray Kurzweil made some new predicitons.

• Within 5 years the exponential progress in nanoengineering will make Solar power cost-competitive with fossil fuels
• Within 10 years we will have a pill that allows us all to eat whatever we feel like and never gain any unwanted weight
• In 15 years, life expectancies will start rising faster than we age
• In about 20 years 100% of our energy will come from clean and renewable sources, and a computer will pass the Turing Test by carrying on a conversation that is indistinguishable from a human’s.

Original article

Can't get enough classic sci-fi from the 50's and 60's and even earlier? Burned out with the really good but sometimes overly-heavy Battlestar? Just want to watch some cheesy effects and have some good old fashioned pop-corn movie watching fun?

Ignore the horrible 1990's website design, and click here! This page has hundreds of hours of old tv shows and movies like Flash Gordon, Land of the Giants, Twilight Zone, etc..

Thanks