Not the least cranky sick person ever.

[mrissa]

So as long as you don't need me to do anything involving eating, drinking, talking, singing, staying awake for more than four hours at a stretch, thinking about anything complex, or regulating my own body temperature--oh, or walking around or driving, obviously--I'm doing just great.

Which is fine, because it's not like there were things I wanted to do this week other than curling up on the sofa and trying to get and keep something in my system that has more substance in it than cloudberry tisane. Nor did anybody else have anything they might want of me.

Oh wait.

At least the new fella finally gave Mikko the C before Bruno and The Grizzled Veteran took him out behind our beautiful palace of hockey for a come to Jesus chat. (Note: if this sentence is incomprehensible to you, repeat to yourself, "hockey blah blah hockey blah blah blah Mris is pleased," and you will have the gist of it.) Particularly good because there isn't a good lot of space behind the Xcel per se, and I would think that kind of thing might alarm opera patrons.

I do wish they'd have stayed NSP or at least spelled it with an e in it. Because Xcel looks stupid, and what does it mean? Who knows? Whereas Northern States Power was very clear: where were they? Northern States. What service did they provide? Power. So there ya go. Possibly I'm misremembering and what they used to be was Minnegasco, but that, too, was fairly transparent. Harumph harumph harumph.

Rather than hugs or virtual cups of tea, if you could link interesting articles, stories, comics, blog/journal entries, etc. in the comments, I would appreciate it muchly.

Comments

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

My favorite toy:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sine waves are our friends.

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

http://www.zudacomics.com/bayou

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

From what I saw of the first few frames, I think I will save this for when I'm feeling slightly more perky.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I got nothin'. I myself am too sick to knit and too braindead to read. So I have been sleeping, crankily. Grrr.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But you have a very fierce sleep, I am sure.

In my sleep last night I stormed Minneapolis Institute of Arts with bedsheets wrapped around me and demanded better variants on Rubix Cubes: cut different funny directions and with art on them. And also smelling better. They were baffled but acquiescent. Unfortunately I do not have the time and energy to see if this would work in real life.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I did have a very hallucinatory dream, inspired by those Carl Sagan songlike thingies. It was very cool, but the exciting plot has evaporated.

Oh! And see my journal for beautiful links.

[pameladean]

I am going to work on sending you That Thing That You Know Of. But I also wanted to say that I am entirely with you about the stupid name changes of both Minnegasco (now Centrepoint Energy! Who cares? Who would pay them?) and Northern States Power (Now, as you say, Xcel, and permanently UNFINDABLE in the phone book when the power and internet are down.

I can't tell them apart without a program, either. I called Xcel to ask why our gas meter was making a squeaky sound. The person I talked to said that we simply had a noisy regulator, but they could send somebody out to make sure it was not planning world domination instead. Then she couldn't find our account, because we don't get natural gas from Xcel, we get it from Centrepoint. She had the number for THEM right there, too, interestingly enough.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for That Thing.

I wish you actually meant that the person you talked to at Xcel had offered to send someone out to make sure your gas meter was not planning world domination, because that would be kind of awesome.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

There are many interesting things to read here. I couldn't pick just one.

http://www.newscientist.com/

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I get it delivered weekly! So that's a happy thought.

[zeborah]

If you don't read Dinosaur Comics already, you have much entertainment ahead of you.

And if you've got a certain kind of warped sense of humour you may like My First Dictionary.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I read Dinosaur Comics when people point me at a specific one. Why did no one point me at the one with Hilbert in it, or the one with mylings? People. Honestly.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

In case you haven't seen this yet, http://www.democracycorps.com/focus/2009/10/the-very-separate-world-of-conservative-republicans/?section=Analysis

It sounds like it might almost be a sincere attempt to understand, though of course the source looks partisan. Anyway the concepts are interesting. And reach no solid conclusions, always a good sign I think.

[aedifica]

If you'd enjoy a comic about a mad scientist and her henchperson and her lackey, there's Narbonic. The page there has a link to the complete archives (the story ran its course and ended) and to the now-ongoing director's cut version, where one strip is reposted each day (in chronological order, of course) with Shaenon's commentary.

tamnonlinear's posts about RHB and FB (I recommend taking them in chronological order, starting with this one, because it's first and is a good introduction, even though it's not my very favorite of them--it had stiff competition, though).

Thanks for saying what you wanted--one sends hugs because one wants to do something and doesn't know what would be helpful, but knowing to send interesting things to read is good!

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Her new comic Skin Horse (http://www.skin-horse.com/) is also very good.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

I do not have any interesting links, I'm afraid, but I do have a question (an oh so ignorable question, though, of course.) Was it in fact for Mikko that some people were waving a small gnome around? And if so, why? Also, is the Wild's logo a mountain lion, a bear, or some indeterminant wild animal? (I saw nothing about this on their web page, although they do have an anthem. I did not know there were anthems for hockey teams!) Ah,my question has multiplied, as have my parentheses, and my apologies. (Perhaps it's best I didn't try to recommend anything in this state of tired incoherence.)

I hope the range of your greatness expands quickly.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

a) we were confused by this as well.
b) there's much debate between cat and bear, but I'm dead certain it's a wolverine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's an indeterminate thing because making it one of the hounds would make it too obvious where the team owes its allegiance (e.g. to the Wild Hunt). Possibly it is a red wolverine. Sort of like a red herring, only less referential to Icelandic communism.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Well, then at least we're not confused, because we have a fossil, and what's not to like about that? Although there are times when some of the play looks as if it was being carried out by dead things...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, she said glumly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course there is a hockey anthem! I went around singing the hockey anthem for a good month before the season started. I can even paraphrase the hockey anthem for people:

We like hockey.
Oh boy do we ever like hockey.
Hockey-liking is explicitly not limited to a particular age or sex for us.
We are easy to tell from Wisconsin or Iowa or either of the Dakotas due to our having way more hockey.
If Mr. Norm Green is so all-fired keen on Texas, maybe he'd better stay there and never come back, because we are waiting and we are still pretty pissed and some of us are less concerned about the state of our dentistry than the average member of the population.
Yay hockey!

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is an excellent paraphrase of an excellent anthem. (And thank you and Timprov for the information about the animal in the logo. I think I'll have to go ahead and call it the Wild so I can mention it without getting totally sidetracked. "The Wild's Wild is really cool looking." That sort of works.)

[mkille.livejournal.com]

You've probably seen this already, but I enjoyed it:

"The much-delayed and maligned Large Hadron Collider has been hit by its most outlandish claim to date - it is being sabotaged by its own future." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6318034/Could-the-Large-Hadron-Collider-be-held-back-by-its-own-future.html)

And this caused quite a stir in my library this past winter:

"India to launch cow urine as soft drink." (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5707554.ece)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I suppose if you feel that I was likely to not appreciate my cloudberry tisane...but I do appreciate my cloudberry tisane (thanks, papersky).

[ckd]

While looking for details on how my recycling is picked up, I found this video of a TRUCK WITH A GIANT CLAW!!! that empties wheelie bins of paper into the recycling truck. I don't know if Cambridge has one of these or not, though based on the DPW pages about acceptable bin vendors I suspect they do. Maybe I will see for myself in the morning.

We live in a world where recycling gets collected on a TRUCK WITH A GIANT CLAW!!!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Possibly this is a cue to sing the Mr. Claw song, for those who can sing.

[ckd]

Sadly, the Cambridge recycling collection truck does not use the GIANT CLAW, but instead has a much more modest setup where the collector rolls the wheelie bin into position and hooks it on a lifter, which then does the lift-and-dump. Much more prosaic.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Mostly on the physics side of things, so there's a chance it's not new to you:

Bathsheba Grossman (http://www.bathsheba.com/)
Math and physics art, some via 3-D printing. You may already know her, but I didn't encounter her work until recently. A product quote:
"What is the central problem of beer?  That it is contained in a bottle, which is to say a boundaryless compact 2-manifold homeomorphic to the sphere.  Since beer bottles are not (usually) pathological or "wild" spheres, but rather smooth manifolds, they separate all of 3-space into two unconnected regions, viz. the region inside the bottle, containing beer, and the region outside the bottle, containing you. 
What is to be done?  Clearly, the elegant solution is to introduce a non-orientable manifold without distinct sides; indeed with only a single side.  The Klein bottle pictured is an example of this class.  When brought into proximity with the closed manifold described above, it acts at once to disrupt the closure of the bottle, obviating the outdated, dualistic paradigm of distinction between interior and exterior, thus enabling interaction between the beer and the self.
In summary, we have here a Klein bottle that opens beers.  If I do say so, this is fine art."

Tyler Hamilton's blog is called Clean Break (http://www.cleanbreak.ca/)
He's a technology, energy and environment reporter for one of our daily newspapers. A fair bit of it can be exciting stuff. Below are two sample techs that might be interesting.

General Fusion (http://www.generalfusion.com/t5_general_fusion.php) is developing a different path to fusion power.
Clean Break article (http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2009/04/20/fusion-power-on-the-cheap-not-so-outlandish/), an article in the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/Business/SmallBusiness/article/621041), an article in Technology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23102/?nlid=2235).

Morgan Solar (http://www.morgansolar.com/blog/) Concentrating solar photovoltaic.
recent Clean Break article (http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2009/10/12/renewables-powerhouse-iberdrola-makes-strategic-investment-in-torontos-morgan-solar/), Technology Review article (http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22204/?a=f).

Lighting is evolving in interesting ways. Ceravision (http://www.ceravision.com/technology.php) has an electrodeless plasma lamp that is getting lab efficiencies of 50%. Luminus (http://www.luminus.com/content1454) has LEDs that integrate photonic lattices to increase extraction efficiency. They've got on chips delivering 4500 lumens (a bit over the equivalent visible light emission of seven 60 watt incandescent bulbs) from 36 mm^2. AVnet (http://www.em.avnet.com/lightspeed), an electronics supplier, has a number of short short articles on various lighting developments. LM21 is on Luminus.

I've been reading, but been lax on commenting. I've been filing thoughts to be expressed in e-mail without actually getting them to you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We got markgritter a Bathsheba Grossman sculpture when he defended his thesis. It has much nift.

E-mail is good, too.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Some blogs I like:

Jenny Crusie, romance writer, talks a lot about process (http://www.arghink.com/) and there are a couple of revisions of a first chapter there. I don't know if you like her books -- I do, because they're sharp and funny and don't make love about surrender -- but it's worth reading her blog anyway.

The Green Room is a college student talking about books (http://tartanwallpaper.blogspot.com/).

Advertising for Love is a blog about American Victorian matrimonial ads (http://www.advertisingforlove.com/).

Missed Connections is a series of drawings (http://missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com/) from modern "missed connections" ads.

And I wonder if you've seen Andrew Rilstone's C.S. Lewis posts (http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/search/label/C.S%20Lewis) which are remarkably interesting.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What a lot of good stuff, thank you. No, I hadn't seen the Rilstone stuff. I hadn't seen any of it.

[careswen.livejournal.com]

I have Dragon on my work computer! And I'll soon have it on my home computer! And I'll be able to write again! And the University paid for it! And it's fun to say "exclamation point" repeatedly!!!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is actual very concrete good news exclamation point!

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Actually, I couldn't get it to work at home. It claims my home computer's processor is not good enough, though the specs match. I hope that we will still get it working.

[ckd]

Does it have a Victor Borge phonetic punctuation mode?

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Not that I have found so far, but it should!

[thomasbull.livejournal.com]

Some webcomics are recommended here (http://continuum5.blogspot.com/2009/07/webcomics.html).

[thomasbull.livejournal.com]

Also recommended was Lovelace and Babbage Vs The Economy (http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-and-babbage-vs-the-economy/).

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Here, have a wombat:


(If you prefer wallabies or koalas - or scenery - I am in a position to oblige.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, we are quite happy with wombats, thank you.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I confess they bring out in me a tendency to want to say "Oh, look at the widdle paws and the claws and the fat bellies!", to the point where I bought a small stuffed one to keep on my desk.

Those claws are no joke, though (the ones in my pictures are docile because they're still young'uns) and they can run at 40 km/hr despite the stubby legs.

The ranger driving a park shuttle told us about picking up a couple visiting from Mexico who were running down the road, convinced a wombat was chasing them. But according to the ranger, "I've known that wombat all his life - that was Reginald! He'd have walked when they walked, run when they ran, and if they'd gotten to their car he'd have climbed in and gone home with them."

Come to think of it, I think I will christen my stuffed wombat Reginald.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is a good name for a wombat.

You do read Digger, right?

Belated attempt at cheer

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I see in the comments you already read Digger, so I can only second the recommendations for Girl Genius, Gunnerkrigg Court, and Lovelace and Babbage.

Another web comic I like is Freefall, which is science fiction about Florence Ambrose, a spaceship engineer who gets embezzled by pirates. It starts a little bit too wacky hi-jinks with lovable rogues, but it gets into some interesting things about robots and AI while staying silly in more original ways.

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00001.htm

A popular science thing that is pretty to look at:

http://www.techdo.com/images/largest-know-star.htm

A random weird cute thing:

http://www.petoffice.co.jp/catprin/english/

Re: Belated attempt at cheer

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Any cats can disguise themselves as a rabbit!" Thank you, you're very cheering. To me. If you'd sent this to Ista, she would be quite concerned indeed.