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The 'big news' has come down from The Company: effective immediately, casual Friday is now the dress code for everyday! No more dress pants, I get to wear jeans everyday! No more tie, either (might kinda miss that.) As much as I do enjoy dressing up all fancy and nice, it can get to be a bit if a pain and cost (those pants don't last as long as jeans) so it'll be a nice change of pace. Hrm... my nice winter coat is going to look a bit awkward now...

So I was playing around on a terrible coding game and was talking to it with my friend (We're both learning computer science together, and both enjoy it outside of class as well. We're not geniuses by any means.) and he mentioned he used this other site to learn. I looked it up on a whim and it's tutorial was dealing in HTML. I thought "Why not?" and did the intro. Then I did the next lesson which got into more things. Then something happened during that lesson. I started learning. And being interested. I took NOTES. For the first time in my life of my own volition, with complete intention to use them, I took notes on how things work. I organized the notes. I plan on making more notes. I am currently, notesexual. Granted, the file I ended up making was a joke (because I made it to be a joke of what it was telling me to make, content wise.) but all the little parts were there. Linebreaks, paragraphs, heading, title, lists, images, links, etc. For the first time in months I've genuinely pursued something over a period of time and came off not only knowing more, but feeling better. I actually enjoyed this, without any nay-saying voice in the back of my head saying anything.

Personally, I'm tired of the constant hype around developing driverless technologies. With outlandish timetables, unrealistic expectations, and corny designs my jaded self can't help but see it all as little more than a grab for investors that's setting up the public for a let down. That is why it was refreshing to see a news article that shared my views of the expectations being set up. But, this article also raises a fair point I'd not considered before. Through analysis of surveys, they concluded that the hype helps drive public acceptance of the technologies whereas a more pragmatic assessment may be less accepting. It's a classic trick to get people to go along with something, but one that makes sense in this scenario. As much as I'd like to see a greater focus on more realistic technology, I can accept that the money's not there; people spend on things that excite their imaginations. Similarly, people are less willing to take a chance on something without expecting a sufficiently significant change.

I was surprised this Wednesday to learn that my project has Veteran's Day off. Technically the company doesn't take it but our client does and since we can't really do anything with out them, we get it off to. Probably. Nobody actually bothered to ask the Bureaucrat but this is what we've always done under the circumstances so we should be good. So, I woke up nice and late at about 8:30 and decided to do some shopping for some new towels and stuff. I stopped off at a Sports Clip to get my haircut, but the wait was 20-30 min so I moved on to the mall area and the store. When I went to the checkout, one of the store attendants dropped a coupon in my basket and said 'here have 20% because I can' and walked off. I think they might have been doing it because the cashier was having trouble with the machine but that was quickly resolved anyhow. Next, I went to the international market and bought some Russian soda pop. I saw the had Belgium waffle mix and grabbed that as well. On the way out, I noticed a Sports Clips and decided to try my luck with the wait. There was no wait and because I'd never been to their location before, I got a free upgrade to their MVP. The trim was a bit too short, but the extras more than made up for it. A warm towel around my face, leaned back in a massaging-machine chair while a pretty blue-hair lady ran her fingers through my hair :3 After the rinse-and-shampoo, we moved back to the clipping chair and had a spine-tingling shoulder massage with a handheld massaging-machine. All for the regular haircut price. So, pretty nice Veteran's Day all around!

Wooo!

Just recently acquired the art book for the beautiful (but brutally unfair) game Alien: Isolation. The art is absolutely sublime and so detailed. You can really see how much work the artists put into it and the text provides some insights into their creative process. I love a good art book and videogame art books can be especially beautiful, like this one or Mass Effect, or The Order: 1886. What art books (videogame or otherwise) do you treasure?

*Waiting in line to buy chicken lunches at the deli* *Ticket number says "54"* *Now Serving: 16* *Finally my turn* *Hate wings; always sub legs* *Many server miscounts have taught me to be specific* Me: I'd like the 8-piece fried chicken, but can I substitute two more legs place of the wings for 4 *shows 4 fingers* legs? Server: "We're short on legs right now." Me: Ok, how about 1 thigh for each of the sets of legs and wings *confused finger gestures*. Server: Whu- Me: I mean, 1 thigh for both the legs and another thigh for both the wings. Server: Yeah, Ok. *Server starts putting chicken in a box* *Starts by putting a leg in. Le Sigh* *Server starts packing in thighs. Gets through two* Server: Wait a minute... There are 4 legs and thighs you should be getting 4 extra thighs, not two* *Server takes back out the leg to cram in even more thighs* *6 thighs, 2 breasts, barely enough room for it all in the box. Same price* *Chicken lunches for days* BONUS: *I make my escape through the checkout with my prize*

Lunchtime meetings suck, yes its true. Many times they accomplish little and your mind wanders off to thoughts like "I wonder if my necktie can support my fullbody weight." But, for once I managed to make a useful contribution to one of these! A valid, possibly superior, technical solution to a fundamental design issue. While it's hardly my first such solution, it's very rare to have them on-the-fly| especially in a meeting like this. Almost makes the meeting feel useful :V What are some examples of spur-of-the-moment contributions that you made under adverse conditions that you are proud of?

My supervisors and I have been batting correspondence with the local children's hospitals with methods that 3D printers can be utilized in the field beyond making hobby gadgets and DIY dildos are prosthetics. For the most part, there are a few of the doctors talking about going abroad and making these for kids who lost their limbs due to being a casualty of war, disease, and other inhumane acts. Since we have 2 active printers available to the public, my coworkers and I have been tasked to creating a prototype using the Standard PLA until we can perhaps try again with ABS for a more solid version. The brilliance is that it is also available to the public who cannot afford a prosthetic. Since we charge about a dollar per meter of filament, the actual cost to print it here (as long as the files are resized accordingly) is about 15-30 dollars. The patron can also select different colors. Want a hot pink hand? What about glow-in-the-dark? Or a rainbow mess of colors? We can do it! What makes me very happy is that we get a lot of questions about this from the general public as well with children who need one, and I am excited to show them the end product.

I filed through a huge pile of my old things. Sketchbooks and drawings and the like. I have a looooot of things that I've hoarded drawingwise because of the fact I once threw away notebooks filled with comics I drew as a young child because the art sucked. I wish I had it now because it was the idea I loved, and I'd look back at the awful 8 year old scribbles fondly. So yeah, surprisingly this stuff is only...what...three/four years old? Back when I was in high school. I thought I was a good artist back then. Dang...what the heck was I thinking? I got quite a couple good laughs from perusing my old archives. Some of whichI'd really want to redo sometime because I'm such a clever bastard Even my younger sister, who's twelve years younger than me and a total brat, apparently copies my love of drawing. I found a couple of old scribbles from when she takes my sketchbooks and draws little scribble dogs in them (which did and still does irritate me to no end), and surprisingly, she's eight now and I can say those fuzzy dog-shaped scribbles have actually improved. So yeah, tl;dr improvement is possible no matter the age. It helps if you delude yourself into being proud of shit art that you will later be ashamed of and snicker at.

LOOK AT IT: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-cute-as-a-button-marsupials-roam-free-success.html

My favorite .gif recording software! GifCam has been absolutely amazing for recording all kinds of high def .gifs. It's very easy to use but has lots of useful options. It's very good at creating efficient files, too. My only real complaint is that it can't create .gifs from collections of static images like a real maker. Still, its not trying to be and it does an excellent job of what it does try to be. Anybody else use this thing?