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[scrdest]

I went to the library today, and picked up an Anatomy text (a For Dummies edition), put a Neuroscience for Dummies book on hold, and picked up a sewing guide.

... I swear they're not related, guys.

If you were a real dwarf, they would be. You must be some sort of elf. Or a goblin.

Seriously, though, if you make a frankenstein-style monster, tell us.

Well, okay. I'll see if I can tell you between the crazed laughter upon him coming to life, and the dying from fire in the windmill. Busy schedule, you know.

If you are a self-respecting mad scientist, your crazed laughter should last long enough that you could write over here before you stop laughing.

[Descan]

If I was a self-respecting mad scientist, my crazed laughter would take up so much of my attention that even stopping to take a breath would require an inordinate amount of willpower.

[Lagslayer]

If I was a self-respecting mad scientist, my crazed laughter would take up so much of my attention that even stopping to take a breath would require an inordinate amount of willpower.

A real mad scientist wouldn't need to breathe because the would have an experimental membrane fused with their skin to absorb more oxygen. There's always the chance of catastrophic failure, but if there wasn't, you'd just be a boring regular scientist.

[miauw62]

I have fixed the red flickering of death that has caused me quite a few crashes, loss of DF progress, frustration, loss of time and confusion.

\o/

I'm never buying an AMD graphics card ever again.

[RedKing]

THAT'S RACIST

Spoiler: Nobody ever told them it was wrong. (click to show/hide)

Is it wrong that I'm tempted to photoshop Al Jolson's face on those sheep? 

[Owlbread]

I would actively encourage you to do so.

[RedKing]

Spoiler: I'm a baaaaaaaad person. (click to show/hide)

[MagmaMcFry]

So I came across this blog the other day, which generally reviews the usability and such of interfaces in SF material. And got to the bit about the crazy finger-augmentation keyboards from Ghost in the Shell. (you know, this one)
Here's the analysis of it: http://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/the-secret-of-the-tera-keyboard/

The board has around 100 keys in total.

What’s nifty about the keyboard itself is not the number of keys. Modern keyboards have about that many. What’s nifty is that you can see these keyboards are massively chorded, with screen captures from the film showing nine keys being pressed at once.

*snip*
But on the tera-keyboard you’re able to press nine keys at once, and more importantly, it looks like any key can be chorded with any other key. If we’re conservative in the interpretation and presume that 9 keys must be pressed at once—leaving 6 fingerlets free to move into position for the next bit of input—that still adds up to a possible 2,747,472,247,520 possible keypresses (≈2.7 trillion). That’s about nine orders of magnitude more than our measley 1600. At 24 keypresses per second, that’s a data rate of 6.5939334e+13 per second.

*snip*
The only thing that nears this level of data on a human scale is the human brain. With a common estimate of 100 billion neurons, the keyboard could be expressing the state of it’s users brain, 24 times a second, distinguishing between 10 different states of each neuron.

*snip*
Because of the form factor of hands and keyboard, it looks like a manual input device. But looking at the data throughput, the evidence suggests that it’s actually a brain interface, meant to keep the computer up to date with whatever the user is thinking at that exact moment and responding appropriately. For all the futurism seen in this film, this is perhaps the most futuristic, and perhaps the most surprising.

My mind = blown.

Okay, I need to point out some MAJOR calculation errors here: With 2.7 trillion possible key presses you can't convey 2.7 trillion bits of data, but only log2(2.7 trillion) bits of data, or roughly 41 bits. With 24 presses per second, you get around 41*24 bits, or ~1000 bits per second. Now if the human brain has 100 billion neurons, each of which has 10 possible states, then we get 10^100,000,000,000 possible states of data, so it can contain log2(10^(100 billion)) = ~332 gigabits of data. At an input rate of 1000 bytes per second, you would need around 10 years to transfer the entire contents of your brain via tera-keyboard, not just 1/24 second (otherwise you could map the entire state of your brain to a combination of 9 keys on your keyboard, which would make you require 20 friends to remember a single tweet).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I just had the funnest midterm of my life. The subject was American History, which I've taken and passed so many times over the course of my life that I stopped being impressed years ago.

So, I decided to fill my midterm with ridiculous foreshadowing, crossed out things that can't be counted, and sarcasm in between the actual information.

[Owlbread]

Spoiler: I'm a baaaaaaaad person. (click to show/hide)

I love that so much I'm going to keep it.

[Lagslayer]

Spoiler: I'm a baaaaaaaad person. (click to show/hide)

I love that so much I'm going to keep it.

I also laughed.

[Iceblaster]

Yay Hearts of Iron III!

Time to... flail around.

Yeah. WOOHOO BLIND RUNNING INTO A GAME WITHOUT ANY EXPOSURE OTHER THAN A FEW EPISODES OF SOME GUY PLAYING ITALY.

* Iceblaster awaits for download to finish eagerly

[Owlbread]

You should give the Owlbread challenge a go. It involves being Albania and conquering your neighbours, including Greece and Yugoslavia.

[Iceblaster]

You should give the Owlbread challenge a go. It involves being Albania and conquering your neighbours, including Greece and Yugoslavia.

I miiiiiiight once I get good

In all seriousness though, once I get 'good' enough to not flail around like I expect, I might try a few challenges.

[King DZA]

Sometimes, while fixing my morning coffee (or afternoon coffee, or evening coffee, or midnight coffee...), I like to pretend that I am an ancient, pioneering alchemist attempting to create a flawless Potion of Awakening.