Steve

This 14' shark was caught "smiling" for the camera in the waters off of Mexico last Autumn.

-- Steve just thought he'd share.

Photo cribbed from the Daily Mail website.

Again thanks to Wikipedia, I am reminded that today is the 48th anniversary of the largest human-generated explosion in history over Novaya Zemlya. The fireball was 8km across, and the resulting ground shock wave was the equivalent of a 5-5.2 (Richter scale) earthquake.

-- Steve's glad we don't monkey with our atmosphere so badly now, but man that would've been a sight to see.

In a discussion on james_nicoll's blog the subject of radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) came up, and a little Wikipediaing caused me to stumble upon an absolute marvel: the Stirling radioisotope generator.

Think of it as a closed-loop steam engine, but instead of using boiling water heated by burning coal it's using compressed helium heated by radioactive decay. Apparently that model generates 55-60W initially from it's 1.4kg (3lb) fuel bundle, though that'll drop off over time; plutonium-238's half-life is 87 years. NASA wants it to power deep space probes.

-- Steve just wants it.

Desire Munyaneza got twenty-five to life in Montreal today for his role as mastermind behind the Rwanda genocide of '94. Munyaneza attempted to immigrate to Canada in 2004 as, ironically, a refugee claimant and was arrested under Canada's new war crimes statute. He is the first of hopefully many to be sentenced under the statute.

-- Steve doesn't think that Canada should be the world's policeman, but certainly thinks we should bust the crooks we do find.

There's a miniature figure out for Sergeant Schlock of the Schlock Mercenaries webcomic. The linked figure comes painted, but you can also get it unpainted or in an antiqued pewter finish.

-- Steve's brain is still pondering what game system would support fielding the good Sergeant.

... but in this case I'll make an exception. Canada's National Film Board has released a free iPhone app to stream the NFB film library of documentaries, dramas, and its famous animation collection. If you are already a slave to the Turtlenecked One, then you really should take a look.

-- Steve'll stick to the desktop version, himself. He's just not a smartphone type.

Today's London Free Press has an interview with the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union local here, Pat Hunniford, who claimed that ATU members "plan to come to work every day." They might decline to work overtime, which may reduce service in some cases, but according to the ATU they do not want to shut down bus service in London during the dispute.

-- Steve's hoping they honour this pledge, and that LTC doesn't resort to a lock-out.

You already know that I have not had the healthiest month this month, having burned 3 days of sick leave (unpaid) and lost five days of vacation (paid) to iterations of the 'flu already and still not feeling healthy.

Now the local news informs me that as early as this Thursday our transit system could be going on strike.

Gimme a frickin' break.

-- Steve wants a do-over. (Can you take a month as a Mulligan?)

The Heene family, late of the balloon chase scare, face three felony counts and one misdemeanor for their antics. Apparently the Sherriff has found sufficient grounds to consider the whole thing a deliberate hoax. The charges are one count of conspiracy, one of contributing to the deliquency of a minor, and one of attempting to influence (bribe?) a public servant. The lesser charge is one count of filing a false report.

Apparently this was part of a pitch to get their own reality TV show. Let us all hope that their last publicity hurrah is a set of mug shots on thesmokinggun.com.

-- Steve hates it when people do these incredibly dangerous and costly stunts just to get on the tube.

NASA bombs a crater on the Moon, Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize from Norway.

Coincidence? Or evidence that the hidden Nazi base on the Moon has finally been discovered and destroyed? You decide, dear readers.

-- Steve's waiting for the tickertape parade in Times Square, just to be certain.

Dean Takahashi's article goes into the creation of the "Sadie's Story" radio play embedded into Halo 3: ODST. Well worth the read; I think Dean is One Of Us, given the depth of the article.

-- Steve loves this sort of stuff.

Scientists develop lightweight nuclear "battery". The storage capacity is vaguely described as being "millions" of times greater than Li-ion or Li-polymer batteries of the same size.

-- Steve'd love to plug that one into his Origami UMPC... but wonders if it could support a 20W or so power draw.

Rich, evil son of a bitch closes library, makes child cry, gloats.

-- Steve's not in a particularly good mood today; this didn't help.

Spotted via numerous sources on the web.

Bungie Publications is an online archive of papers written by Bungie staff and delivered in games industry conferences. With sections on Art, Audio, Design, Engineering, and Production, there are *counts rapidly* 19 articles up for public view on the "Bungie Way" of making games.

Though most are written for audiences within the industry, if you're interested in "inside baseball" perspectives on the game industry they make for fascinating reading.

-- Steve's downloaded a few of these over the years, and is glad to see they're collected all in one place for easy reference.

Another lousy night's sleep, dammit. However, this morning the coughing's subsided to the occasional dull rumble and the sinus congestion's nowhere near as bad as it was yesterday so I think I'm over the hump. I plan on going out today for groceries, and also to make a trip to the mall to a) make sacrifice to the VISA gods and take away their anger (especially given that "DK" is on this bill) and b) make a run to El-Booze-o's, as I haven't had a glass of wine in over a month and given that I want to do a roast tomorrow a dollop of the red would be nice. It'll also serve to head off an incipient case of cabin fever.

I forgot to mention, but last week my freezer tried to kill me. I came home sick on Wednesday night and opened the freezer door to put my gel pack in (handy for keeping frozen food frozen in the lunch bucket) and one of my pork dinners fell out on me, narrowly missing my toes before literally smashing onto the kitchen floor. The plastic container shattered, leaving the frozen food (and not-quite frozen BBQ sauce) on the floor. *sigh* Just another thing to make last Humpday even more awesome.

On the ODST front, this morning Hedgemony on HBO pointed out an Official Xbox Magazine (Aus) interview with Joe Staten, writing lead. In it he gave a very light taste of what the glyphs mean; the inverted "Y"s are silhouettes of Forerunner ships. *D'oh!* It's so obvious now that it's pointed out... but the full meaning is still elusive.

-- Steve'll break for now and go off sniffling for breakfast and More Coffee.

Since I've forgotten to mention this all week, I'd better post now...

Every now and then (twice a year, I think) the coffee-and-donut chain Tim Hortons offers a special cookie for sale, with proceeds going to local charity. In London, for instance, the $1 price goes to Children's Hospital here at London Health Sciences Centre.

One reason to welcome their arrival is that it's for a good cause. The other is that the cookie is amazingly delicious... it's a chocolate chip cookie, but the cookie element is almost cake-like in consistancy and mouth-feel and the icing they use for the smiley face on it is superb. Om-nom-nom.

-- Steve's reminded of this because he's eating one now for dessert; it's the first one he's had all week, as every other time he's been in a Timmy's the cookies have been sold out. Alas, tomorrow's the last day of sale...

The following post contains atomic-level plot spoilers for Halo 3: ODST and the "Sadie's Story" parallel.

( SpoilerGuarded for Your Protection )

-- Steve really loves how Bungie and crew can sew hidden messages into the liner of a shoot-em-up.

I'm overjoyed with the performance I've seen on "Dark Knight" at home, whose Core i7 processor seems to take everything I throw at it and ask for seconds. It's easily the most powerful computer I've ever owned^*, and I'm glad I bought it.

News out today boggles my mind, though, in that Intel just announced they've released a mobile version of the i7 that Dell (through its Alienware marquee) and others will build into desktop-replacement and gaming laptops. This 8-core CPU is a vast leap up in mobile processing power... though I suspect that the batteries on these devices will be mostly for show, as even the mobile version of the i7 will draw 55 watts under load. (My CPU peaks at 150W.)

-- Steve thinks there'll be a lot of waste heat coming off of these things too. Maybe "laptop" is the wrong term...

edited to add the following footnote:
^*This phrase annoys me now that I've had some time to reflect. The only computer I've ever bought that wasn't a step up from its predecessor is my Origami UMPC... which I bought for reasons other than horsepower. What I should have said is that "Dark Knight" is the most powerful computer I've owned with respect to its generation of hardware and in relation to the software available; I tend to buy second-rung to avoid the price premium at the top, but this system performs like top-rung hardware for a lower dollar cost than my previous second-rung systems. That's what leaves me breathless.

Gold-level (ie: paid) members of Xbox Live can, for a limited time, (how limited is unknown) download a "Prepare to Drop!" premium theme pack for their NXE Xbox 360 dashboards. For free. Grab 'em while their hot!

-- Steve'll be grabbing this when he gets home tonight.

Spotted via the Halo.Bungie.Org news page... your premier source of Halo news.

http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/east_king/kir/news/59493472.html

Bungie Studios made the police blotter.

Back on Sept. 2, one of the Bungie staff was carrying a Halo prop made by WETA back to the studio after showing it at a local event. Well, a citizen looked out his/her window and saw the prop, and since it was a replica of the game's sniper rifle took a certain amount of alarm and called the police that someone was roaming the streets Kirkland WA with an "assault rifle".

Hilarity ensues.

It all ends well, though; Kirkland Police rather quickly figured out what was going on and simply cautioned the studio to transport props in containers instead of in the open in the future.

-- Steve can't really blame the anonymous citizen for calling the cops; that's a mighty big prop gun, and WETA went to town on it to make certain it looked real.

PS: It amuses me to see Harold Ryan referred to as the "President of Halo" in the blotter report.