Like a phoenix

Without the need to burn to the ground, of course. What I mean is renewal, and as some of you may notice, this blog of mine has undergone some of it. Hope you like it!

Of my quarters requiring rearrangement and other problems.

So, dear readers, I have been away from you again, but I will try not to.  What can I say. Nothing quite big happening around here aside from two spectacular failures an a need for me to rearrange my room to maximize useful space, but there is only so much you can do in a somewhat cluttered room. Also I may bite my pride a bit and get a regular job, seeing how clients appear to be absent and I therefore am low on economic resources. Inevitably there will be a few flights of fancy that will result in crash-landings of reality. Oh well, one must march on to the future, whatever that may be.

Rêves Doux.

Reading comics...

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va tojours? A dear friend of mine was kind enough to share his neil gaiman comic collection, so I've just devoured Death - The High Cost of Living. Gaiman is quite good.

On other news, I happen to see a forced eviction today. Not a nice business. There were even some riot policemen, to prevent any confrontations, I presume.

oh, well. Rêves doux, chers lecteurs

Ice?

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va? Any of you both here in the city and elsewhere in the world heard of the ice skating rink they set up in the Zocalo (downtown plaza) here in the city? Its very pretty and over three thousand square meters in size, and a waste of money considering the other unattended needs. Not to be mean, it's nice to have pretty things like that in one's city. Not to be unfair, it's privately funded. But the cost of keeping it running until January 12th might as well be spent helping restore Tabasco which is still in very poor conditions, don't you think?

Rêves doux.

You may have already seen one of these...

If you live in MX City. Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va?

I recently came across an Alcoholimeter Checkpoint (that's what we call breathalyzers here, Alcoholimeter) and the police officers there were kind enough to let me snap this photo of it.

The breathalyzer is an Intoxilyzer® 400 Made by CMI Inc. Breathalyzers are not 100% accurate and might produce abnormally low or high alcohol counts given a situation. Here in Mexico, if you believe you have been detained unjustly due to a wrong B-Alyzer test, you can request a blood test, which the state must provide. Also, so you know, onion, mouthwash or breathmints can fool a person but not one of these, before you try anything funny. Oh, mind you, the checkpoints have a towing truck readily available, so if you don't pass the test, I do believe your vehicle gets towed, so to add insult to injury, you would have to go get it an pay an extra fine too.

Rêves Doux, chers lecteurs!

Been to the theatre recently?

I just did! Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! I was given tickets for a play named The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales (which was originally a movie).

I highly recommend it. It has a good deal of morbid humor, religious fanaticism is mocked, some very nice acting... all in all a very nice play.

Season's over but if you live in Mx City and wish to go, next season is in January.

Info on the original movie here.

Rêves doux!

Oh, so that's what it looked like when it was young...

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! Comment ça va? See this? Imagine seeing how this dear galaxy of ours looked like in its early eons. Thanks to more advanced telescopes, astronomers were able to see small patches of faint light that will merge (have already? maybe they're so far away that what we're seeing happened an eternity ago and the galaxy is now as formed as ours) to form a baby galaxy.

Beautiful, is it not?

Rêves doux!

So, they agreed to reopen...

And I was hoping for a permanent shutdown. Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! So, they decided to reopen the cathedral at downtown MxCity, with mandatory searches on all those going in by the PBI (Industrial and Bank Police). And on top of all, some of those faithfully going to be told how to lead their irrelevant lives by their chosen imaginary friend representative complain about the extra security, go figure.

Oh well, someone willing to believe that the social standards from two millennia ago are the truth of truths, and that all other beliefs are false and therefore erroneous is not a very intelligent person to begin with, is it? Oh well, you all know how I feel about religion.

Rêves Doux

And they probably did it willingly...

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs, comment allez vous?The limits to which idiocy can go, never really cease to amaze, do they? Especially religious idiocy. Today I came across this bit of news.

So the family believes these two women have been cursed and proceed to exorcise them, first damaging their eyes and then drowning one of them.

Just how much claptrap are these people willing to believe, and worse, act upon?

Rêves doux

Super Mouse

And I'm not talking about the cartoon. Bonsoir mes ches lecteurs, comment ça va? look at this little curiosity I found.

A genetically enhanced mouse.

By tweaking this rodent's genome (specifically the gene responsible for the PEPCK-C), they managed to enhance it, to the point that it can run at a speed of 1.2 Km per hour for about six hours. Talk about endurance.

This little achievement is explained by the extra mitochondria in their muscles, which also explains why they eat twice as much but weigh half as much as a normal lab mouse since they burn whatever comes in.

There is a little side effect, though. These overpowered mice happen to be rather aggressive.

Further reading here and here.

And I return...

Albeit, tired, mes ches lecteurs! Tonight was the VNV Nation concert! And a lovely concert it was. Despite the fact that it was tiresome (that, or I'm really getting old), it was quite nice. Mr Harris was very charismatic, and their repertoire as good as expected, perhaps even more. If anyone of you, chers lecteur wnet, I hope you enjoyed it as well. In the meantime, I sleep.
Rêves Doux.

I return with more news from beyond!

The atmosphere, of course. Bonsoir, mes ches lecteurs! Remember that new module for the ISS I was telling you about? Well, the crew of the ISS just took a 7 hour spacewalk to properly install and connect the module. Watch:

Imagine the view! These two are the ones who did all the spacework, (right to left) Station Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Dan Tani:

Oh, I do envy them greatly, mes chers lecteurs!

More information here and here.

For now, I'll go dream of the stars

Rêves doux de'l espace, mes lecteurs!

What do you mean my brain is weird? I only have a headache!

Mes chers lecteurs, comment ça va? Any of you heard of or suffered migraine? For those of you who don't know, migraine is a neurological disease, commonly associated with horrible headaches, photo and audiophobia and many other ailments. It can go from annoying to life threatening. More info here for those of you interested.

Now, scientists have discovered that people who suffer migraine have some structural differences in the brain. To be specific, the somatosensory cortex (Click here if you don't know what that is) was about 21% thicker, specially the part that processes sensory input from the face and head.

I imagine it comes as a consequence of the migraine, given the fact that it is constantly stimulated by the recurring headaches and other symptoms.

Who knows, maybe this new information will lead to a cure for that ghastly illness! Meanwhile, Ibuprofen will usually do the trick.

More info on this new discovery here.

Rêves doux, mes ches lecteurs.

If you saw these work...

You are at least as old as me. Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! Time for a little nostalgia!

Remember these?

Yes, mes chers lecteurs, the 5.25" floppy! Considered a minifloppy by its time (its predecessor was 8 inches wide), it could store 360 Kilobytes ( .03% of a 1GB Flash memory). It was used from 1976 to the early nineties. By then the 3.5" floppy had all but eradicated the poor old 5.25"s.

And to top the evening, this is an anti software piracy video from 1992. Enjoy!

I'm getting old...

See the whole video, including the credits, I didn't know some of those companies were THAT old.

Info an all floppies here.

RIP, floppies.

Rêves doux!

Network Rant

Bonjour, mes chers lecteurs, though this day was a bit of a horror as you may imagine from the title. Today I had to fix a network that is barely functional, and poorly laid out. To top things, it was for these clients that are quick to demand service but slooooooow to pay. Bet you've heard of them before.

Besides, whoever built that net didn't know what he was doing, charged a laughable amount, and did a really poor job.

Secondhand cable, some of it on the brink of breaking, network nodes scattered all over the place, most of them non functional, net cable side by side with electric cable, switches everywhere and no server...

And they want us to make it work perfectly, those maniacs.

</rant>

Rêves doux, mes chers lecteurs.

So, now they're whining...

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! Comment allez vous? Heard the news, lately?

Here it goes:

A group of people in a political meeting got upset because the bells of the cathedral had been ringing for too long, and was disrupting said meeting.

They then went into the cathedral and demanded that they stop, and allegedly, attacked some of the cattle...er oops... churchgoers and caused some damage inside the church.

And now the archdioceses is getting all whiny, saying that, they have lost their freedom of religion at least in that cathedral (lost it, yeah right, the catholic church, losing their power over Mexico, that'll be the day...) and that they will close the cathedral indefinitely (yay!, no complaints here).

So, what about the church attempting to trample the rights of the congress people to choose when they threatened to excommunicate them if they dared legalize abortions in this city of ours? A bit hypocritical of them, is it not? They have no problem with trampling the rights of others, but when it comes to their so-called sacred temples, they start complaining. Mind you, I am not justifying the aggression against the churchgoers and the cathedral, I'm just exposing the hypocrisy of religious institutions, with this incident as an example.

Further reading here and here.

And come on, mes lecteurs, I hardly ever get any feedback on what I write for you! Does anyone of you agree? Disagree? Anything? Comment, please!

In the meantime, I sleep.

Rêves doux.

A glimpse

A spark of passion

A shedding of tears

A dripping of blood

A glimpse into eternity

A step into oblivion

 

Inspiration, mes chers lecteurs! Isn't it a beautiful thing?.

Rêves doux!

Rant, And I hadn't published one in a while, had I?

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! It's been a long while since my last rant.

Here it goes.

So, I got on the subway, and this lowlife gets on and starts going "blah blah, I'm no thief, I'm no swindler, I'm a beggar, give me money" in one of those pre-written speeches that all of these people seem to use. Mind you, he was talking on an expensive mobile phone as he stepped on. Either we hasn't as needy as he led on or it was stolen, in any case, what was this imbecile halfwit thinking?

Not only that, but also he was putting a demanding hand in front of anyone he could (the tube was packed).

This reminded me, in a way, of those beggars who pretend to be blind to gain the sympathies (and money) of those around.

Argh.

And to top things off, when I tried to get off, I had to fight a tidal wave of humans who wouldn't let me off because they wanted to get on without letting anyone off.

Morons.

I really do hate having to push my way through a crowd.

</rant>

Rêves doux, chers lecteurs.

Moratorium on death penalty?

Bonsoir, mes chers lecteurs! How are you tonight? I imagine you saw the title. Here it goes. There is a proposal for a global moratorium on death penalty in the UN. Supporting it, some 88 countries,incluiding Mexico, the whole of the European Union, Venezuela, Austalia, Phillippines, about eight African countries, another ten Latin American countries, and some others. I wish I could be more specific but I have so far been unable to find a list of the countries that favor this moratorium. Opposing it are China (execution central of the world) The US, Singapore, Botswana, Jamaica, Iran, Egypt and others.

Anyone of you, mes lecteurs ever heard the opinion of the Marquis de Sade on capital punishment?

"A State that kills has no right to condemn murder"

I wonder if that is true. Anyhow, in my humble opinion, this particular moratorium should be ratified. Executions not only seem barbaric, it's also an incentive. If a criminal knows that what he or she did will get him (or her) executed, then said criminal will have nothing to lose, and increase the criminal rampage.

Also, there is the point of miscarried justice. If you find out that the person in jail is innocent, you let it out, but if you execute said person, there is no way to bring him or her back from the dead is there?

Too bad no one comments, I would love to get some feedback on this issue.

In case you want to read more, go here, here and here.

Rêves doux, chers lecteurs, see you tomorrow!

It would have been beautiful...

But it was cancelled. Bonsoir mes chers lecteurs! Tonight I bring you a page from recent history.

                 

                                THE X-33

It was a prototype for the larger VentureStar, which was meant to be a successor for the aging space shuttles. It was a Single-Stage-To-Orbit (SSTO, meaning no additional rockets or tanks to take it to space) reusable launch vehicle. The prototype was intended to test an array of new technologies meant for new space vehicles, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the design. The VentureStar would not only be utilitarian but also commercial.

Sad news is, the design had some flaws, and the prototype was left at 85% completion when the project was canceled in 2001.

A damn shame if you ask me.

Sadly enough, once the shuttles are retired, they will be succeeded by the Orion which I imagine will sport the latest technologies, but looks like the Apollo, but they say the Orion will be taking people tothe moon in 2020 and subsequently to Mars. Hopefully!

I really do wish I can get to orbit one day.

Rêves doux, chers lecteurs!