Miscellaneous Links for the Miscellaneously Inclined: 2011 Edition!!!

[superaielman]

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-mystery-of-the-tainted-cocaine/Content?oid=4683741 Very good piece about tracking down why coke's being cut with a very specific drug. Also talks about the economics of the drug trade.

[Shale]

http://wetanz.com/a-mermaid-s-tale/

A woman who had both her legs amputated as a teenager approaches Weta Workshop (best known as the prop guys for Lord of the Rings) and asks them to make her a functioning mermaid tail. They do.

[Captain K.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kspPE9E1yGM

[Grefter]

That is pretty good.  Glad to see Slipknot are good musicians that bring something fresh and interesting to the table.

[metroid composite]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/31/zdenek-kalals-object-tracking-algorithm-learns-on-the-fly-like/
More advanced object tracking.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/05/technology/adzookie/index.htm
The next level in advertising.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/wow-players-could-one-day-buy-fair-trade-gold-from-chinese-farms.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29
How to bring up the economy of third world countries?  Apparently MMO gold farming.

http://www.microtask.com/blog/2011/04/lost-in-the-virtual-economy-here%E2%80%99s-a-map/
Even after gold farming is fazed out, there will still be stuff like this....

http://vampire.riotamot.com/readArchive.php?IssueNo=233
"There is a subtle difference between Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf"

[metroid composite]

http://www.achilleseffect.com/2011/03/word-cloud-how-toy-ad-vocabulary-reinforces-gender-stereotypes/
Word clouds for how often various words are used in gendered toy advertising.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/04/commodore-64-is-back-with-hdmi-out-intel-atom-chip-blu-ray.html
Commodore 64 is back!

http://www.callofduty.com/hub?path=hub
(video, trailer) The new call of duty trailer is...amusing.

[Grefter]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/15/3192505.htm

Quantum Teleportation successful!  This is awesome!  Yay for Science!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I can't help but suspect partialcasm.

[Captain K.]

That's one of those stories that I hope is real, but probably isn't.  Remember when a team at Texas A&M University successfully invented cold fusion?

Dumbest ways to die:

http://www.trutv.com/dumb_as_a_blog/gallery/25-dumbest-ways-to-die.html

[Clear Tranquil]

A friend sent me a link. It cheered him up, it cheered me up, it amused us so much I expressed a desire for an infinite loop and well ...

http://nyan.cat/

Yaay for friends =-)

[NotMiki]

http://ctd3.posterous.com/the-mountain-incredible-time-lapse-short-by-t
Awesome time-lapse photography.

[metroid composite]

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/details.aspx#update
http://www.moserware.com/2010/03/computing-your-skill.html
Formulae for the kind of online ranking system used in SC2 etc.

http://gawker.com/#!5792303/google-wants-to-teach-computers-regret
See url.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/33820/Opinion_Dealing_With_Designer_Input_Latency.php
Interesting article on input latency in games.  Everything from hold actions to doubletaps to buffering to cancelling.

[Grefter]

There is a lot more in that input latency article than I have thought of.  This is clearly an area I haven't dwelt upon enough.  Good read.

[Captain K.]

I think most designers are familiar enough with latency nowadays to cover it on the software side.  Hardware side is another thing.  The Xbox 360 has approximately 1 frame of inherent lag, while the PS3 has 2-3.  And then there's lag on some HD televisions as well.  Daigo Umehara didn't want to play on the (recorded on stream) Alienware tvs at last year's EVO because they were lagging by 3 frames.  I guess when you're as good as he is, you can notice something happening in 3/60ths of a second.

[metroid composite]

And then there's lag on some HD televisions as well.  Daigo Umehara didn't want to play on the (recorded on stream) Alienware tvs at last year's EVO because they were lagging by 3 frames.  I guess when you're as good as he is, you can notice something happening in 3/60ths of a second.

You actually don't need to be that good in the abstract.  People of no massive skill notice lag when playing Super Mario Bros on an HDTV.  People of moderate to decent skill at Guitar Hero/Rock Band easily notice the switch from a no-lag television to a some-lag television.

So...it's easy to notice on very simple games where reactions to button presses are immediate.  (Harder with a fighting game where moves often have windup time...but obviously doable if you're really familiar with the moves in the game).

The Xbox 360 has approximately 1 frame of inherent lag, while the PS3 has 2-3.

Man, wish I'd known that before buying a PS3 over a 360.

[Captain K.]

Well, like you said, you wouldn't even notice that unless you're used to one system and switch to the other.  Most fighting game tournaments are played on PS3 despite that.  Something to do with easier controller swapping on PS3.

[Grefter]

That makes sense.  PS3 controllers you can just sync up plugging them into it with a USB port.  X-Box controllers you need to push a button on the controller and a button on the X-Box around the same time while they sync wirelessly.  If you are at a tournament with more than one console in a close vicinity you will have to sync them up at different times.

That has to be really shitty for X-Box gamers at tournies going to PS3 though.

[Hunter Sopko]

http://thehayride.com/2011/04/westboro-baptist-church-goes-to-mississippi-and-loses/

I've vaguely impressed. The important bits:

A couple of days before, one of them (Westboro protestors) ran his mouth at a Brandon gas station and got his arse waxed. Police were called and the beaten man could not give much of a description of who beat him. When they canvassed the station and spoke to the large crowd that had gathered around, no one seemed to remember anything about what had happened.

Rankin County handled this thing perfectly. There were many things that were put into place that most will never know about and at great expense to the county.

Most of the morons never made it out of their hotel parking lot. It seems that certain Rankin county pickup trucks were parked directly behind any car that had Kansas plates in the hotel parking lot and the drivers mysteriously disappeared until after the funeral was over. Police were called but their wrecker service was running behind and it was going to be a few hours before they could tow the trucks so the Kansas plated cars could get out.

A few made it to the funeral but were ushered away to be questioned about a crime they might have possibly been involved in. Turns out, after a few hours of questioning, that they were not involved and they were allowed to go on about their business.

[NotMiki]

One of the kind of dirty secrets of public servants is that, for the most part, citizens don't have any legal right to complain about how police allocate their resources.  As a practical matter, citizens can do jack and shit regarding foot-dragging by the police.

This reminds me somewhat of an old story from New York.  NYC houses the UN, and diplomats from certain countries like to flout their diplomatic immunity by illegally parking and refusing to pay tickets.  Nothing the courts can do to force diplomats to pay up.  The Russians are the worst offenders: they currently owe NYC something in the vicinity of $20m in unpaid tickets.  The Russians got taken down a peg, though, when NY cops started parking in the Russian delegation's assigned spots at the UN, then refusing to move the cars when the Russians complained about it.

(Hillary Clinton had to intervene on behalf of the Russian delegation to get the police to stop.  Still not sure whether they've paid up yet.)

[metroid composite]

That's a comparatively harmless abuse of diplomatic immunity.  The Russians in Ottawa are known for driving drunk, and have killed some people that way.  Diplomatic immunity protects them.

[Grefter]

Russian diplomats and politicians are known for all these things in Russia as well.  So yeah.

[Shale]

In case you visit no other websites on the Internet: Lis Sladen is dead.

[Grefter]

That makes me sad because although I haven't seen episodes of it (just the ones that touch on regular Who series), Sarah Jane Adventures was conceptually a really awesome show for kids.

[Shale]

It basically was (or is, there's still six unaired episodes) Doctor Who as a pure kids' show instead of a family program, and really really good at it.

[Shale]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/this-just-in-first-new-art-from-calvin-and-hobbes-creator-in-16-years-syndicate-says/2011/04/22/AF7l7NQE_blog.html

Like it says. Bill Watterson's first for-publication work since 1995.