Borrow a spaniel, mark a dose.

BSG Finale

2009-03-24T08:45:47Z

I just watched the Battlestar Galactica series finale. Some thoughts:

When they first introduced the idea of going native in our prehistory, it immediately struck me as a cheap trick designed to make the show seem profound. I thought it was a horrible idea, both for the characters and for the show.

As the episode continued, and I accepted that that was what they were doing with the finale, I had a sinking feeling in my chest that everything was going wrong. Not just that they decided to go native, but that they were all abandoning each other. After all their struggles, right when they finally broke free and had a hopeful future, they gave up. They gave up on their own ability to find a way forward, and they gave up on each other.

Going native was based on the idea that, as a people, they were incapable of making social progress. It was a decision that accepted and embraced powerlessness. It was also a leap of faith. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes.

The characters abandoning each other just felt... sad. Maybe they had too much pain to want to continue together, but would they still feel that way in five years, when it's too late to change their minds?

In the end, though, I think I liked the finale. It was profound, though not in the cheesy way I thought they were going for initially. It fit the show.

The show was a chase. Humanity running and fighting for its life, constantly under tremendous stress. When the chase is over, the pressure lifted, humanity is just too exhausted and lays down to die. Not as individuals (though there's some of that, too), but as a society. It reminds me a bit of that fox-swimming-out-to-sea parable from a few episodes ago, actually, though it's not quite the same -- not quite as depressing. The fox never understands that the chase is over. In the finale, it's more that humanity lays down its burdens to finally rest.

My natural desire is to see them keep going. For them to be happy and successful and vigorous. But the ending they chose, while not a happy one (IMO), works. It was powerful for me, and it got me to really think about the feelings it provoked.

I think a lot of what I felt during the second half of the finale was loss. The show really ended. All the characters, the camraderie, the hope for a happy ending. Even though some of the characters looked ready to live happy lives, they were doing it alone, fated to fade away.

The idea that there really was divine guidance, that their faith and struggles were eventually rewarded (through the hope for breaking the cycle), feels like small consolation.

Maybe I should feel happier about the ending -- there are certainly reasons to. Humanity survived, they went on to live the lives they wanted, and they (maybe) broke the cycle and saved humanity for good. But I'm not feeling it. Maybe I will after a while.

kitten pictures

2008-10-07T18:23:09Z

I think it's about that time again. These are all iPhone pictures and are of varying quality, but I think the cuteness comes through.

Kittens exploring the strange worlds of bed-making:

And now, the four-part series "Mirrored Kittens":

Also, debramcp and I hosted tigresa's birthday party this weekend (Happy Birthday tigresa!), which was the first time we've really hosted anything at our place since moving in. We both had a lot of fun, and I think it went pretty well. We'll have to start doing more of that kind of thing...

kitten introductions

2008-08-04T18:52:00Z

Friday evening debramcp and I decided to introduce Roughy and Finnegan to each other. It consisted mostly of hissing, growling, hiding under the coffee table, and ugly-looking (though apparently not damaging) fights. After some hours of this, we separated them again for the night. We were worried that this was not going to go well...

Saturday we let them out together for short periods and got more of the same, though the fights were looking less ugly. By the evening, they had progressed to sitting in the same room glaring at each other between tussles, so we decided to leave them together overnight.

Then, on Sunday:

Of course, they're still spending a lot of time chasing each other around and wrestling, but now it looks like two kittens playing.

kittens!

2008-07-29T16:10:44Z

debramcp and I just got kittens! We started looking around the bay area shelters on Friday and brought the first one home on Sunday (the other had to stay overnight to be fixed). They are, of course, incredibly cute. One is a 2.5-month-old brown tabby with Super Kitten Energy™, and the other is a 5-month-old orange tabby who's much more reserved but very sweet. They're both boys. The orange one is Roughy, and we're still working on a name for the little guy.

This is the little one after he finally slowed down a bit:

Most of the time, he looked more like this:

Python

2008-06-18T09:16:38Z

I played around with programming in Python a while ago, but I haven't used it in years. I decided to try it out again for a project I'm working on, and I made a neat discovery -- I helped change the language.

When I started using Python in 2003, one of the first issues I ran into was the lack of a ternary operator or equivalent. There were some workarounds available, but they were all ugly. I asked about it in comp.lang.python, and that started a good-sized thread. A few days later, Guido van Rossum (creator/maintainer of Python) posted PEP 308, a proposal to add conditional expressions to Python, saying "Given that if-then-else expressions keep being requested, I hereby put forward a proposal."

After some discussion and voting, Guido rejected the proposal on the basis that there was no consensus on what the syntax should be. However, a few years later he changed his mind and approved the proposal with the syntax "X if C else Y", and now it's part of Python. A part I made use of today, in fact.

PEP 308 was motivated by a long line of questions and discussions about conditional expressions in Python, not just by my post and the resulting thread, so my main contribution was being the straw that broke the camel's back. That's still kindof cool, though :).

I just saved $1000

2008-06-11T09:12:44Z

I'm going to be working on some software projects soon, and I'll want to do a lot of that on a linux machine that I would access via ssh and samba from my windows machine. I was thinking I'd build another computer for that, and I had gotten all the way to the point of pricing out the components on newegg.

Then I thought: Maybe I could just run linux in a VM instead. After a little research, it turned out to be the perfect solution. VMware Server is free, and of course so is linux. I went with Ubuntu Server because RPMs have caused me no end of pain, and I'm eager to use apt-get instead.

Now I have a linux box running in the background, and as far as my ssh-and-samba interface is concerned, it's just as good as having dedicated hardware for it. If I had realized how simple and clean this setup would be, I would have done it years ago (though years ago it might not have been so simple or clean). There's even a video on youtube that specifically walks through setting up Ubuntu Server on VMware Server.

Also, I cut down a tree yesterday. It involved standing on my roof with what was basically a chain saw on a stick, which was somewhat exciting. It only took about half an hour to get the tree down to a stump; the cleanup is what took the vast majority of the time (and caused the vast majority of the scratches and scrapes). Amazingly, the entire 20-foot tree fit into just more than one (96-gallon?) yard waste container.

debramcp moving in

2008-01-22T17:28:24Z

This weekend, debramcp is moving in with me (Yay!), which means she's moving. We have enough people to manage the move already, but if anyone is free this Saturday afternoon near Sunnyvale/Mountain View, more help would make the job easier for everyone, and it includes dinner afterwards.

Goodbye PayPal

2008-01-12T02:31:28Z

Today was my last day at PayPal -- I've worked there since August 1999, before the site launched. I decided several months ago that I wanted to leave and spend time working on some of my own projects. I told my boss in September, and since then I've worked part-time, wrapping things up.

I'm still glad I'm doing this, but today was hard. Cleaning out my cube, cleaning out personal files from my work machine, turning in my badge. Saying goodbye to people I've already said goodbye to, but having it be for real. I joined PayPal right out of college, and I've been working there now for over 1/4 of my life. It's a lot to let go of.

I'm sure I'll be happy about this soon, but for today I can be sad about it. In a way, it feels good to feel sad about leaving -- it reinforces what PayPal meant to me.

building a computer

2007-10-27T11:29:38Z

It's been years since I put together a computer, but TF2 finally convinced me to update my system. I ordered parts last weekend, and they arrived Thursday. For the past two nights, I've been happily staying up way too late getting everything running. Figuring out cable management, installing the cpu fan without cracking the motherboard (those things are scary), setting up RAID 5, diagnosing memory failures, adjusting clock speeds. It should be tedious and frustrating, but man, I've missed this stuff :)

Now I should really sleep, so I can play DDM today before the party. Or maybe I should finish installing all the latest drivers...

more apartment stuff

2007-10-17T22:13:43Z

I took walkthrough videos of my new apartment before, during, and after the remodeling, and I'm finally getting around to posting them.

Before:

During:

After:

The remodeling isn't entirely done -- I still need a new front door, some closet doors, etc.

I moved in six weeks ago, and I do intend to have a housewarming party, but it may be a little while yet. I'd like to get mostly unpacked first and have more furniture available to sit on than a single couch.

visual distortion

2007-10-05T00:50:08Z

Last night, as I was reading, I noticed a very odd visual effect. In a jagged, curving shape somewhat below and to the left of my center of vision, there was a rapidly-oscillating distortion. In that area, everything looked stretched out into lines to make the jagged shape, and it was constantly flickering with the underlying colors of what I was seeing. It looked vaguely like this:

I couldn't look right at it, but the distortion was severe enough that I wouldn't have been able to read through it had it been centered. I saw the same distortion with either eye covered. With both eyes covered, I still saw the distortion, but it was filled with orange and blue, geometric, flickering shapes against the blackness.

Over the course of at least several minutes, maybe half an hour (I was reading and not watching the clock), it moved farther away from my center of vision and grew larger, until it was a large, jagged "C" around the left side of my vision. Eventually it moved completely off the left side of my vision and/or faded away, and then my vision was fine again.

I remember this happening at least once in the past, and the same thing happened -- the distortion moved out to the side as it grew larger and then eventually went away.

Because the effect happened with both eyes, I imagine it has to be happening in my brain, rather than in my eyes. I've somewhat given up on modern medicine being able to explain the wacky little things that happen in my body unless they're life-threatening or debilitating, but if anyone has thoughts on where I might be able to find out what this is, I'd be curious to investigate.

TF2

2007-09-23T20:36:05Z

Team Fortress 2 is finally coming out in a few weeks. This is a game that was originally slated for release in 1998, and it's repeatedly made top-10 vaporware lists, but it's in beta now, and people are actually playing it. I spent hundreds of hours on the original Team Fortress from 1997-2001, and I have lots of fond memories from that period. So I'm quite excited about this new release.

Most of you, I imagine, won't be. However, Valve has released some great, funny clips introducing a few of the in-game classes. These clips have been tested and approved by non-gamers for humor content.

Also, there's a quick introduction to all nine classes.

And while I'm posting youtube clips -- I saw a great video for Coin-Operated Boy at the Buffy sing-along Friday night.

new place

2007-08-31T21:49:21Z

For the past few months, I've been spending disturbingly large amounts of time on remodeling the apartment I bought (part of the yet-to-be-named community on Williams Way in Mountain View). I haven't actually been doing any of the work myself (well, very little of it), but it's amazing how much time the research and design can take. I wouldn't be surprised if I've averaged 10+ hours a week on it for the past three months. It's almost done now, though, and I'll be moving in on Sunday. I went through today and took some pre-move-in pictures:

From the living room, looking into the office, hallway, and a bit of the bedroom:

Kitchen:

iPhone

2007-07-08T20:50:38Z

Last weekend, I had the chance to play with KB's iPhone, and I was impressed. My biggest concern had been the usability of the keyboard, and that actually turned out to be fine. I figured that if after 5 minutes I found it tolerable, long-term it would be no problem at all. So I got an iPhone this weekend. I needed a new phone anyway -- I had just been trying to decide which one.

As usual, though, whenever I try a shiny new product that everyone loves, it has problems for me. The issues this time: the iPhone is unsupported on windows 2000, and that took a little while to figure out. There's no error message -- it's just not recognized. I was able to activate on my laptop, but I'll have to install XP on my desktop if I want to sync with iTunes. Thanks to Apple, I may buy a retail Microsoft OS for the first time. Next, the activation couldn't complete normally, and after a couple hours, I got an email saying I had to call AT&T customer service. AT&T's customer service software locked up across all machines during my call, so I had to call back the next morning to complete the activation.

Also as usual, though, everything gets sorted out in the end. I actually kindof appreciate those problems. If I want to replace a motherboard or install a new OS, I know it's going to be about 20 hours of work just due to all the weird complications that come up, but I also feel like I have a lot of experience working through strange software and system configuration problems as a result, and that's a skill I appreciate having.

As for the iPhone itself -- it's both amazing and slightly disappointing. The amazing part is mostly Safari, honestly. The whole thing is very well put-together, and the slick interface is nice and all, but Safari is the thing that makes it stand out for me. Having a full iPod in my phone is pretty handy, too.

The disappointment is that, while the interface is slick, they've made some choices I don't agree with, and there's not much I can do about it. The biggest one is probably the lack of copy & paste, which I did know about ahead of time. A couple others are: no mass storage interface and no bland, unobtrusive ringtones (Sonar is tolerable).

I've thought a little bit about the copy & paste thing. At first, I was thinking that they'd kindof painted themselves into a corner with the touch interface -- they don't have any touch combinations left that can indicate "I want to copy this". After a bit more thought, though, I realized that it wouldn't be that hard at all. They just need to add a "Copy" button to Safari, the keyboard interface, and maybe other applications. After hitting that, you use the little magnififier thing to mark one end of the selection, then use it again to mark the other end of the selection (possibly after scrolling around). Done. And pasting just requires a "Paste" button in the keyboard interface.

perl

2007-06-21T02:11:20Z

I've just started playing around with perl. I'm still a bit ambivalent about the language, but the reference book rocks (Programming Perl, by the guy who created perl). I was inspired to comment on it as I ran across this in the index:

camels
    bloody, 66
    horses vs., 4
    pink and blue, 647

death by keyboard

2007-05-17T20:16:34Z

I just got a new global high score in Crimsonland Typ'o'Shooter. Not that there's a huge playership or anything, but damn, that was a good game.

Crimsonland is a great top-down shooter (screenshots, download). Typ'o'Shooter is one of the game types it includes -- you type the words over the bad guys' heads to shoot them. It's a really good typing skills challenge. With shotguns and zombies. What's not to like?

Fusion to Mars

2007-03-23T22:58:04Z

I'm not sure exactly how I got onto the subject, but sometime last week I started thinking about intra-solar-system travel. Sticking to reaction-mass thrusters and not breaking any laws of physics, how fast would we be able to move around if we could improve the efficiency of various systems up to their theoretical limits?

The quick answer: An Earth-Mars trip could be made comfortably in 2-5 days (depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars at the time). That's faster than current trans-oceanic shipping.

Travel Time at 1 g

I started out not worrying about how to generate the thrust and just looking at how long the trip would take at a constant 1 g of acceleration, which would make for a nice, comfortable trip for any human passengers. The distance between Earth and Mars can be anywhere from 56M to 400M km. Assuming a straight shot, accelerating at 1 g half way there, turning over at the midpoint, and decelerating at 1 g for the other half of the trip, how long does it take to cover those distances?

x = ¹/₂ a t²
(56e9m / 2) = ¹/₂ 9.81m/s² t²
t = 75554s

That's just for accelerating to the midpoint -- the other half of the trip would take equally long. So the whole trip at 1 g when Earth and Mars are closest to each other would take 151109s, or 1.75 days. For the max distance, we get

x = ¹/₂ a t²
(400e9m / 2) = ¹/₂ 9.81m/s² t²
t = 201928s

So, when Earth and Mars are farthest apart, the trip would take 403855s, or 4.67 days. For the rest of the calculations, looking at how the thrust could be generated, I assumed a trip time of 4 days, which would be enough to get to Mars or back nearly all the time. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to fly straight through the sun to get to Mars anyway...

One more note: The maximum speed achieved during those flights (at the midpoint) would be 741km/s for the 1.75-day trip, or 1981km/s for the 4.67-day trip.

Required Reaction Mass

Now, is it possible to maintain 1 g of acceleration constantly for 4 days straight? My initial guess was that it would take so much reaction mass as to be completely infeasible, but I ran the math anyway.

The best possible case is that you're ejecting your reaction mass at the speed of light, so I started there. For each kg of the mass of the ship, how much reaction mass needs to be ejected to accelerate it by 9.81m/s? Based on conservation of momentum:

mc = 1kg 9.81m/s
m = 3.27e-8kg

So it takes 32.7 micrograms of speed-of-light reaction mass to accelerate 1kg by 9.81m/s. If we use that much reaction mass every second, it will maintain a constant 1 g of acceleration.

32.7mcg/s * 4 days = 11.3g

If we can generate speed-of-light thrust, we'd only need 11.3g of reaction mass per kg of the ship for the entire 4-day trip to Mars. In other words, only about 1% of the weight of the ship would have to be devoted to reaction mass.

Of course, ejecting that mass at the speed of light would take infinite energy, so we'll have to slow it down a little bit. To keep away from any significant relativistic effects, I decided to set the thrust velocity at 0.1c. Since that's 1/10th the speed, we'd need 10x as much reaction mass to maintain the same thrust. That puts the required reaction mass at 113g per kg to be pushed -- about 11% of the ship's weight would have to be devoted to reaction mass.

Required Energy

Now, how much energy would it take to eject all that reaction mass, over the course of the entire trip, at 0.1c?

E = ¹/₂mv²
E = ¹/₂ 113g (0.1c)²
E = 5.08e13J

The most efficient energy storage possible would be as matter + antimatter, so I decided to see how much antimatter it would take to generate that much energy.

E = mc²
5.08e13J = mc²
m = 0.565g

About half a gram per kg of ship weight. And only half of that has to be antimatter -- the other half is matter. Antimatter does indeed store a fuckload of energy.

The required antimatter mass is completely insignificant. So if we had a 100% efficient engine that could take antimatter as fuel and use it to accelerate reaction mass to 0.1c, a ship would only have to devote about 11% of its weight to fuel + reaction mass for that 4-day trip to Mars.

Switching to Fusion

Antimatter can be... a bit awkward to work with. So I decided to see how well the next-best energy source would work. Each fusion reaction of ²H + ³H -> ⁴He + n releases 17.6MeV. One deuterium atom plus one tritium atom weigh a total of 5.03amu. That means that one kg of ²H + ³H fusion fuel could provide

1kg / 5.03amu * 17.6MeV = 3.38e14J

From above, we needed 5.08e13J per kg of ship weight for the 4-day trip. With a 100% efficient fusion engine, that means we'd a mass of fuel per kg of the ship equal to

5.08e13J / 3.38e14J/kg = 151g

So, in addition to the 113g of reaction mass, we'd need 151g of fusion fuel. Now the ship is devoting 264g per kg to fuel + reaction mass, or about 23% of its total weight (not 26%, since the fuel and reaction mass will be used up over the course of the flight). Still not bad at all.

Then I realized that the spent fusion fuel (⁴He + neutrons) could be used as the reaction mass, rather than carrying separate reaction mass. If we had a 100% efficient fusion engine that could take ²H + ³H as fuel and spit out the spent fuel as reaction mass, the velocity of that thrust would be

E = ¹/₂mv²
17.6MeV = ¹/₂ 5.03amu v²
v = 0.0867c

At that thrust velocity, the required mass/second to maintain 1 g of acceleration for one second would be

m * 0.0867c = 1kg 9.81m/s
m = 338mcg

Over the entire 4-day trip, that adds up to 130g of combination fuel/reaction mass. So with that 100% efficient fusion engine, you could take a 4-day trip to Mars, even when it's mostly on the other side of the sun from the Earth, and your ship would only have to devote about 12% of its mass to fuel.

That leaves a lot of room for less-than-perfect components. For example, say that the fusion engine is only 20% efficient at turning fuel into thrust. Instead of having a thrust velocity of 0.0867c, it would be 0.0388c, which would require devoting 25% of the ship's mass to fuel.

Also, a continuous burn for the entire trip is not that efficient. A lot of fuel could be saved by burning at the start and end of the trip and coasting in the middle (like modern spacecraft), though of course the trip would take longer that way.

Some Perspective

Mars is pretty far away. For comparison, with the same 100% efficient fusion drive technology, you could take your 10-ton space car to the moon in 6.6 minutes, using only 1.49kg of fuel -- about the weight of half a gallon of gas.

SpaceX launch at 5:05pm Pacific

2007-03-20T23:17:11Z

SpaceX is going to make a launch attempt just under an hour from now. They're a private company that's attempting to get into the satellite launch business, with the plan of dramatically cutting the cost/weight of launches. This is their second launch attempt (the first one failed about a year ago), and, if successful, it will put a test satellite into orbit. They're launching from Omelek Island on a US military base in the Pacific.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, there's a live webcast of the launch available right now. T-50:00 as I write this.

Launch Status

SpaceX home page
SpaceX Wikipedia article

Update 17:10 PDT: Launch was aborted a few seconds after igniting the main engine. The rocket is still on the pad. Heard on the webcast audio channel shortly afterwards: "Look at all the water down there. Motherfucker." They may try again today, but I'm guessing not.]

Update 17:30 PDT: They are, in fact, planning to try again today -- no time set yet, but I heard something about restarting from T-11:00.

Update 17:45 PDT: Launch has been rescheduled for 6:10pm PDT (25 mins from now).

Update 18:20 PDT: It made it up to at least 161km before the webcast cut out -- far enough to see the curvature of the earth and black space. It looked like it was starting to wobble a bit there at the end, though, and the engine nozzle was glowing bright red. A spokeswoman said telemetry was lost at T+5:05 -- no word yet on what exactly happened. At minimum, it made it a lot farther than their first attempt.

Update 23:45 PDT: The rocket made it up to 300km but failed to achieve the desired orbit, and it probably fell back to earth. They're calling the test a success, though, and they're planning to go straight to real launches next, without further dedicated test flights. So, not ideal, but not all bad, either.

the fountain

2006-12-12T08:40:59Z

I've been meaning to write some new posts for a while now. About my trip to Italy, my magical birthday adventure, all kinds of good stuff. And I will. Honest.

But for now, I just wanted to say that I saw The Fountain, and I liked it. A lot.

TF2

2006-07-21T05:40:30Z

This makes me very happy. It's a teaser video for Team Fortress 2, and it's beautiful. Of course, I may be a little biased :)

The original Team Fortress (TF) was a mod for quakeworld, and I started playing it in '97, in college. I joined a clan and played with them for years (later playing Quake 3 Fortress, which was TF for Q3). After moving to California, I played clan matches at work, back when PayPal was a startup. When the culture at work was no longer so accepting of gaming, I drove home a couple nights a week to play and then drove back to finish the late nights at work. I eventually stopped playing in 2002 (I think), but I still keep in touch with some former clan members online.

TF2 was originally supposed to be released in '98, but then the TF team was absorbed/hired by Valve, and TF2 was supposed to be Valve's next Big Thing™. They released some gameplay videos in '99 (which were a huge deviation from TF), and it's been vaporware ever since.

Now it's back, and it's also back to its roots. It looks just like the original TF, but with style. The teaser video is even set on the iconic TF map -- 2forts. I love what they've done with the look, and the cell-shaded graphics look great. It's supposedly going to be released as part of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in December.

If you don't feel like watching a video, there's also a screenshot of the 9 classes.

social engineering

2006-06-09T00:25:45Z

Now that's a cool social engineering attack. It's simple and very clever -- load up USB drives with a virus or trojan and leave them lying around on the ground outside the company you want to attack. Employees pick them up, take them back to their desks, and plug them into corporate machines.

Also, a couple worthwhile videos that you may or may not have already seen:
Bellagio fountains reproduced with Diet Coke and Mentos
Amazing octopus camouflage -- it looks almost like CG, but I've seen enough other videos of octopus camouflage that I'm fairly convinced this is real

plasma stick

2005-12-15T08:19:16Z

(warning: gamer geek content)

I was just reading an article about a Halo character being in Dead or Alive 4. Kinda cool, but not exactly a major news event. But there was one item that made me seriously laugh out loud. If you've played enough Halo (and some fighting games), this is just an exquisite image:

The big money move for Nicole however, is the plasma stick.

warhammer 40k minis

2005-11-01T09:59:02Z

By request from loyale, I'm posting some pics of my latest work on converting and painting miniatures.

I was going to have some fancy Ipix-style image display (plus regular links for the javascript-challenged), but lj doesn't allow javascript. Which is probably a good thing, but it's mildly frustrating at the moment. Or it was for a few minutes there at least :)

So I'll just have to settle for thumbnails and stuff:

I had a lot of fun converting and assembling these models (e.g. the dreadnought -- big robot guy in the center -- contains parts from six different models). I'm pretty happy with how the painting is turning out, but it takes a *long* time, and it's harder to keep up my motivation. These were my test models, and now I'm supposed to go into assembly-line mode. Three down, 18 to go -- mostly the little guys. Hopefully things will go significantly faster now that I have all the color scheme details worked out and such.

One of these years, I may even play a game of Warhammer 40k with these miniatures. When I'm done, they'll be a legal (and perhaps even effective) 1000-point army. For some reason, even though I don't especially care about playing the game, it makes a big difference to me that I *could* play the game with them. I'm not just painting a bunch of miniatures for display, I'm building an army for a tabletop wargame. I don't think I'd be interested if the miniatures were just miniatures.

lunch

2005-10-01T02:00:05Z

I've found a new lunch option that I like a lot, and it works quite well with my quest for protein -- it has far more protein per calorie than I ever expected to find in fast food. From Baja Fresh: Baja Ensalada with chicken and salsa verde, plus a side order of chicken (added to the salad). 560 calories, 94g protein.

I'm undecided on whether it's a good or a bad thing, but I tend to be just fine with very repetitive meals. I wouldn't want to have the exact same thing every day, but I'm fine with only two or three different lunch options for weeks at a time. Sometimes I look for variety just because I feel guilty about the repetition.

Now, off to Serenity!

how to destroy the earth

2005-09-20T23:59:10Z

Great article just mentioned in a comment by joe_tofu:

How to Destroy the Earth

The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity.

A few of the methods described:

Blown up by matter/antimatter reaction
You will need: 1,300,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter
Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument
You will need: a big heavy rock, something with a bit of a swing to it... perhaps Mars
Eaten by von Neumann machines
You will need: a single von Neumann machine, which subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminium and silicon, the major elements found in Earth's mantle and core.
Swallowed up as the Sun enters red giant stage
You will need: patience
Destroyed by God
You will need: God