March 2021

HDWGH – Story 23 – A Summer Night Stroll

–From The How Did We Get Here Series–

Now: Cam (short for Camille) Dallas is walking home in the pale moonlight on a nice summer evening. She is 100% nude and desperately hoping no one sees her.

Before: Cam Dallas woke up with a slight burning sensation over most of her nude body. It took her a quick moment to realize that she had fallen asleep in the tanning bed. Why didn’t anyone wake her up? She thought to herself. She opened up the lid of the tanning bed to discover it was dark. She stood up and fumbled around for a light. After a few moments, the lights came on. The first thing she noticed was that her clothes were gone. That was weird.

She opened the door and to her surprise, the entire office was dark. What time was it? She walked back into her room and looked up at the clock. 1:57 am. What the fuck! How could they leave her in the tanning booth? She looked around frantically for something to put on. Nothing. Not even a fucking towel.

She thought for a moment. Since it was early morning, she may get away with walking home nude. Thank goodness the mini mall didn’t have super security. She pushed open a back door. No alarm.

March 11, 2021 by How Did We Get Here?

RIP – Lou Ottens

Via Engadget…

Ottens started work on the cassette tape in the early 1960s. The way NPR tells the story, he wanted to develop a way for people to listen to music that was affordable and accessible in the way that large reel-to-reel tapes at the time were not. So he first created a wooden prototype that could fit in his pocket to help guide the project. He also worked to convince Philips to license his invention to other manufacturers for free. Philips went on to introduce the first “compact cassette” in 1963, and the rest, as they say, is history. But that wasn’t the end of Ottens’ career. He went on to help Philips and Sony develop the compact disc.

March 10, 2021 by Engineering

Revelations over 50

These are just a few things that I’ve done on the other side of 50 that some may consider weird. When I say weird, I mean weird from the perspective of a younger age group. I remember what it was like when I was 35 and how I thought old people did weird shit. Well, as it turns out, they actually DO weird shit.

I’ll give you some examples below.

  1. They make noises when they do most everything. Ever listen to an old man pee at a urinal next to you at a bar, restaurant, or other venue? They are making noises. You may hear things like “Ahhhh” and “Oh, yeah.”

  2. They don’t give a fuck. When we are younger, we are so self absorbed that we don’t see the rest of the world around us. Older people are over that. They don’t care what you think. They don’t care what you think about anything. Why? That thing you are doing? Living your life at 35. Yeah, they’ve already done that. It is like young mothers giving advice. Well, young mothers let me give you some advice. Shut the fuck up. There is nothing you are going through that someone else already hasn’t. Not one fucking thing. Shut your pie hole. Don’t give a fuck.

  3. Nudity. Here is another area where older people just don’t give a fuck. We laugh at the old guy that walks out to get his paper nude. “He’s forgotten to put his clothes on,” People might say. They would be wrong. That old guy just doesn’t give a fuck if you are offended or not. If they are a nudist, it can be even worse. Try getting them to put clothes on. Go ahead. I dare you.

  4. Driving. I realized a long time ago that I needed to stop driving. I just knew. I have no regrets. I don’t go out much so I don’t care. If I really need to travel somewhere, I have other options. One thing I am not doing. I’m not spending all of the money on it. I’d rather buy a new MacBook Pro.

  5. Sex. I stopped caring about this one a long time ago. If you are worried that I am eyeing you up and down because I want to have sex with you, wow. You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m probably just admiring your beauty. Believe me. It does happen. Some men can look at another woman without the idea of sex ever popping into their minds.

I think these five are a good start. I’ll probably add more later.

March 8, 2021 by Life Lessons

Re-formatting a Flash Drive

I recently bought a 2TB flash drive. You read that correctly. 2TB.

I have been playing around with it and basically, I hosed this thing up. Every time I would insert the drive into my Mac, it would display 3 drives. It was driving me insane.

Today, I decided tom play around some more and discovered that those extra drives were actually called volumes. I discovered an easy way to get rid of them. Well, sort of.

There are actually volume controls on the main window highlighted below.

CleanShot 2021 03 06 at 13 34 01 2x

All you have to do is figure out which volume you need to get rid of and hit the minus button.

…and hope that it works the first time. I’ll tell you that it probably won’t. I have had to hit that button a couple of times but eventually, the volume got deleted.

Once I got everything down to one volume, the next thing I wanted to do was to re-format the drive as ExFat which is the Microsoft version. The advantage on a drive like this is that you can use the drive on almost any computer. I love APFS but not everyone else does.

I found a great video about how to take care of the problem of APFS being your only obvious choice. If you expand what you can see, you just have to go a level up to have the option of reformatting in ExFat.

MacMost article is here.

March 6, 2021 by Computer Blues

How to Destroy an Industry

Follow Oakland’s example.

OAKLAND, Calif. (KRON) – Oakland has banned the use of leaf blowers, trimmers and other lawn equipment that rely on combustion engines, citing health and climate change concerns.

The city says that the “significant health hazards” to users and residents from the discharge of particle matter and carbon monoxide lead to the decision, as well as unwanted noise pollution.

The city recommends using electric or non-motorized options.

The ban is included for commercial landscaping or gardening services as well as private usage.

Homeowners and businesses have until April to switch over to more silent and sustainable options.

In a grid down situation, electric anything will actually be non-sustainable.

You can’t rely on one type of power. That is asking for disaster.

March 5, 2021 by Idiots in Motion

Fake People

Let’s face the reality. People are shit.

With that being said, it is little wonder why this story is relevant.

Researchers at Netease Fuxi AI Lab and University of Michigan have recently created MeInGame, a deep learning technique that can automatically generate character faces by analyzing a single portrait of a person’s face. This technique, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can be easily integrated into most existing 3D videogames.

Pretty soon. We won’t even need the “real” input photo and computers will just generate characters for us. I am also going to assume that computers will also generate fake voices to go along with it.

What does that mean?

It means big movie studios will be able to make a movie without all of the overhead of the actors. I’m sure there will be labor rattling in the beginning but actors are expensive. They also can say bad things in public, hurt your brand, etc.

A computer that you control, will probably not do that.

March 5, 2021 by Blah Blah Blah

HDWGH – Story 22 – Fun in the Sun

–From The How Did We Get Here Series–

Now: Leslie Thompson woke up from a perfectly good nap that she had begun on her beach chair in her back yard next to her pool. Her eyes grew wide as she realized that she wasn’t wearing any clothes and she wasn’t in her backyard. She was in her front yard where a passing car filled with teenage boys with their cellphones out yelled and beeped the horn. She heard pool water splashing behind her. Leslie screamed.

Before: One day before…Larry Thompson couldn’t be more pissed off. Both he and his best friend Seth had planned an afternoon swim in the family’s backyard pool. Larry always had to check before he took his friend back to the pool and sure enough, his fucking sister was back there with her top off sun bathing and effectively shutting down Larry’s afternoon of pool time fun with his friend. It was always a good thing that he checked first.

Today…Larry tried not to be overly nice to his sister so she wouldn’t suspect anything as he brought her a full glass of their mother’s famous iced tea. “Hope you fucking choke on it,” he said as he left. His sister reaching out and sticking up her middle finger at him as he left. She liked to sunbathe nude but that wasn’t why she always took her top off. She knew that Larry wouldn’t bring Seth to the pool if she was nude. Larry was many things but he could be a proper gentleman when he wanted to be.

After taking a big gulp of iced tea, Leslie slid her bikini bottoms off just to be extra sure Larry wouldn’t be bothering her any time soon.

It only took about 15 minutes before Leslie fell fast asleep. The sedative Larry slipped into the tea working much faster than he had anticipated.

Larry and Seth causally entered the backyard and grabbed either end of the lawn chair. They carried both the chair and Leslie out of the gate and towards the front of the house, careful to make sure no one was watching and no cars were driving by at that particular moment.

Proud of their achievement, they both turned around and headed back into the pool area for a peaceful hour of rest and relaxation…sister free.

March 4, 2021 by How Did We Get Here?

Only 1 Billion Years

Interesting article this morning about a simulation that shows how long the Earth has before we are no longer able to breath on it.

To find that tipping point, the researchers created a simulation of Earth that factored in variables that described the climate as well as geological and biological processes, and most importantly, the activity of the sun. The researchers then ran their simulation to see how the Earth fared far into the future.

The most important take away here is that they are pointing to the sun as being the cause of the loss of oxygen and less towards global warming.

The simulation showed that as the sun grew hotter, 1 billion years from now, releasing more energy, carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere will begin to drop due to the gas absorbing the heat and breaking down. The ozone layer would also be burned away. Then, as carbon dioxide levels fall, plant life will begin to suffer, resulting in reduced production of oxygen. Over a period of just 10,000, years, CO2 levels will drop so much that plant life would go extinct. Without plant life, land- and sea-dwelling creatures would soon go extinct, as well, due to the lack of a breathable atmosphere. Meanwhile, the simulation also showed increasing levels of methane entering the atmosphere, speeding the demise of creatures needing oxygen to breathe. The result, according to the simulation, would be a planet without life, save for tiny anaerobic creatures such as bacteria—conditions very similar to Earth prior to the evolution of plants and animals.

100% agree with this. This is one of the rare times that you’ll see scientists factor in the sun to determine environmental issues. Something we have absolutely no control over.

March 3, 2021 by Science

Garfield

I grew up on this comic. An old friend and I used to look at these together growing up.

CleanShot 2021 03 02 at 04 05 11 2x

March 2, 2021 by Comics
Mike Williams
My name is Mike or in some cases Mick depending who you ask. I love programming, science fiction, audiobooks, cats, dogs, and writing. I do not filter on this website so you may see nudity, cursing, or other profanity as required. I apologize for none of it.

CaptainNukko on X

Post Calendar