For a while Today on the Net lived on it’s own hosting, but sadly due to issues with funding, the newer postings were deleted and sadly I had not backed them up before then.
But now, I am back, and using Posterous for posting and announcements for the blog. Soon posts will be coming again, let’s see how we can do!
So it has been a while since I last posted anything to here due to going back to collage this semester and work and class taking too much of my mental bandwidth. I am posting though today because I could really use everyone’s help with something. I’m sorry about the form-letteritude of this post, but I wasn’t able to sum it up better myself.
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On Saturday, October 17th, 2009, I will be be participating in the second annual Extra Life 24-hour gaming marathon funding pediatric cancer research and treatment at Texas Children’s Hospital. This event is a SarcasticGamer.com community charity event.
The money raised, every penny of it, will go directly to benefit pediatric cancer treatment and research at Texas Children’s Cancer Center at Texas Children’s Hospital. Texas Children’s is one of the largest pediatric cancer and hematology centers in the world, and sees kids from all 50 states and over 80 countries. Every child gets the same ground-breaking treatment, regardless of their family’s financial situation.
Cancer kills a classroom full of kids every day worldwide. It takes kids from all walks of life, and respects no borders. Cancer doesn’t care about ethnicity or religion. It doesn’t care if a child is from privilege or poverty.
To learn more about this event, visit the Extra Life web site. Click here to visit my Web page.
Each gamer has a set goal to get at least 4 people to sponsor us for just $1/hour for 24 hours. I ask you to consider making a gift to help me achieve this goal. I want this year to be a tremendous success and we need your help to achieve it. I will gratefully accept any donation you are able to make, big or small. All donations are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation.
Thank you for your consideration in making a contribution to support Texas Children’s Cancer Center. Your donation is a part of great things to come.
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While my life has not been directly touched by someone who has had to try living with pediatric cancer, I know people who have not been so lucky.
For that reason, and more I am participating in Extra Life this year, and I am hoping that some of you might be interesting in sponsoring my time. True, it is not a relay being run for 24 hours, or a 40k race, but playing video games for 24 hours straight is what I believe I can do, and so I am going for it. That said, I have never done this before, with the closest I’ve come has been ~8 hours straight.
If you to sponsor me you will see different options for donating, from $1 an hour ($24 total), to $8 an hour ($192 total), or a choice to donate whatever you feel like. To start I am setting my goal for money raised at $200. At that low of an amount, it would take just 8 people saying they would donate $1/h to just about make it.
If you cannot donate anything, it is understandable. I have definitely been in financial situations that have precluded being able to help out with things like this in the past. If there is anyone else you know who might be interested in donating, or doing as I am, and trying to raise money feel free to send this post to them, or even just send them the links that are under the cut.
Thanks in advance.
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do an update due to work and starting school again… but today Warren Ellis brought to my attention something strange enough I had to share it.
First off, did you know fish have tongues? Honestly, I had not thought about it before, but it makes sence as many animals do.
Next, do any of you know what the thing on the right is?
That little bugger is known as Cymothoa exigua aka Tongue eating louse.
See? I was actually getting somewhere with those questions a moment ago.
From Wikipedia (as of 4.33pm on 9-11-09)-
This parasite attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper’s (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue, entering the fish’s mouth through its gills. It then proceeds to extract blood through the claws on its front three pairs of legs. As the parasite grows, less and less blood reaches the tongue, and eventually the organ atrophies from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish’s tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue. It appears that the parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish. Once C. exigua replaces the tongue, some feed on the host’s blood and many others feed on fish mucus. They do not eat scraps of the fish’s food. This is the only known case of a parasite functionally replacing a host organ.
There are many species of Cymothoa, but only C. exigua is known to consume and replace its host’s tongue.
Yeah, you read that right. It replaces the host’s tongue with itself. Crazy huh?
Oh, an I might as well include the picture that started this off that Warren Ellis posted on his website:
[via Warren Ellis: Your AAA WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT Moment For Today, and also BBC News]
I have to admit, I haven’t read the book yet, but it’s on my list of ones to read. I bring you the Trailer for The Men Who Stare at Goats.
Yes, you heard that right. Caffinated Jerky. As in beef jerky, with caffiene in it! From the Perky Jerky website:
Perky Jerky is caffeinated beef jerky. That’s right, two great tastes that taste great together. You no longer need to spend your next road trip eating boring regular beef jerky while sucking down an energy drink. Perky Jerky is a delicious, healthy, low-carb snack with an extra kick!
We never joke about meat snacks. Perky Jerky is as real as it gets, the world’s first energy jerky that will leave your mouth watering and your body buzzing for more.
Each 2 oz pack of Perky Jerky contains roughly 150 mg of caffeine, or slightly less than the caffeine amount in 2 Red Bulls. We recommend that you only eat 1 oz per serving, but hey…
Aren’t you paying attention? 2 oz of jolty jerky goodness in every pack
More info can be found, including neutrition information and ordering, via their website: [Perky Jerky]
There's Livejournal drama between those who want to wear human suits over fursuits and those who just take off the fursuits.
[via – xkcd]
So classes just started up again for me, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of being a full-time student again. As such, I do not currently have as much time to update as I used to. I will be trying to still update as I can, but things might be a bit sparser than usual.
Sorry about the trouble.
It’s been no secret that CCP, the developer behind EVE Online, hates players who work the system to profit in real money from its game. In June CCP decided to enact a deastic plan that they had been working on for weeks, if not months, codenamed Unholy Rage. Ars Technica was able to talk to Einar Hreiðarsson, one of EVE’s lead GM’s, during Gamescom this week and was able to find out a bit on both the how and why behind Unholy Rage.
RMT operators take up a lot of server power. They use macros to run missions, rat (grind PvE) and mine 23/7. This adversely affects other players’ chances of making a simulated living as all sweet-spots for this sort of activity are totally overrun with RMT-type users,” he explained to Ars. Prices for mission-related items are adversely affected as well, which hurts regular players. Then there’s the criminal element.
“Practically all credit card fraud we suffer stems from the RMT element which uses stolen credit cards to register expendable accounts that they know we will ban as soon as they start using them, e.g. accounts used to spam ISK sale adverts and such.” Further, almost all hacking problems involve accounts being cleaned out by ISK sellers. The game suffers, credit card fraud becomes an issue, and accounts are hi-jacked. Something had to be done, and “Unholy Rage” was what they named CCP’s response.
For weeks they studied the behavior and effects these real-money traders had on the game, and then they struck. During scheduled maintenance, over 6,000 accounts were banned. Hreiðarsson assures us that the methods were sound, and the bannings went off with surgical precision. “We are quite confident that false positives are practically non-existent, but we examine all requests for review,” he explained. “So far less than a dozen have been found to be false positives.” The project is ongoing, and so far CCP has banned approximately 9,000 accounts.
What they found was these real-money traders were not only soaking up in-game, virtual assets as well as hacking accounts, but also taking way more than their fair share of server cycles. The result was dramatic.
i09 recently sat down with director Neill Blomkamp and found out some interesting things about his movie District 9.
After the District 9 roundtable and a one-on-one with director Neill Blomkamp, we found out a lot about what went on behind the scenes while making the alien feature. And some of the District 9 fact we uncovered may shock you, all quotes are from Blomkamp:
One actor plays all of the talking aliens.
It’s only one actor who plays every alien, it’s Jason Cope. He plays every single alien.
Most, if not all, of the alien interaction and dialogue with Wikus during the eviction scene was improvised by Jason Cope or the actor Sharlto Copely (Wikus).
So we would film the two of them and then we would go to a different shack. And he’d pretend to evict a new alien. Then we’d go somewhere else and somewhere else. So it was just the two of them. It’s the conversations between those two, the actual dialogue and what actually came out of them was totally improved. Any details in words and the language between the two happened right there on the day of shooting. That what makes it feel like they are really communicating…
But stuff like when he walks up in to the shack and says, “this is a gang sign, we’re in a gang area right here,” we would draw the sign on the wall and he would randomly say it’s a gang area. And that meant because he’s walking up to a shack that has an alien in it with a whole story that we’ve written with those guys distilling their fluid and I’m like, “that’s interesting you just said that the supporting alien character is a gangster.” But if it works, we keep going.
Read the rest, including information about the location used for the titular district and the home of the aliens over at i09 [5 Things You Didn’t Know About District 9]
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