Things that happen when I’m suffering Insomnia: I squeeze 5% out of the storage space required to store Eressea’s data.
Who needs databases?
Galleries
Best Of 2014
This has been a crazy year. Since everybody else is making best-of lists, I decided to throw together some personal highlights myself.
Edit: It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I edit them, Tumblr always loses the captions on these images. Sigh.
Edit^2: It appears that 10 images are the limit for a gallery? No room for the best TV show, then (Babylon 5, which I only discovered this year, late as always).
In my parents’ attic, I found the mother lode.
Walking around Tønsberg. They are still building viking ships here.
Programming the IBM 1401, Computer History Museum.
We met the IBM 1401, and Stan gave us an introduction to programming that ended in some very short programs being written, punched, and run. We’re definitely going back for more!
Dr. Konrad Wirth, serious programmer. My first LARP.
With this machine, and the recent addition of an Ouya console, I now have a lucky total 14 general-purpose computing devices in this house, not counting my Smart TV or the HTF loaner laptops: 2 PCs, 3 Laptops, 3 Raspberry Pis, 3 Android phones, 1 Android tablet, 1 Ouya, 1 Apple //gs, with a total of 36 CPU cores.
Some of them are more fun to play with than others.
This may be more than all the computing power in the world of the 1970s combined, as Shamus figures, and a lot of it sits in phones.
MY BRAIN!!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/minimonkey/monkey-light-pro-bicycle-wheel-display-system
Holy shit, I want this so badly.
This is my emergency travel kit.
Some days, you have to leave the house on short notice, and you’re going to stay somewhere overnight, because there is a game jam in the city, or you’re going to the ER, or an earthquake rocks your continental shelf. Other days, you have to take a flight to Europe that ends up taking 3 days, during which all you have is your carry-on luggage. For those days, I have this kit. It’s ready-packed in my bathroom, and I can grab it and just go, or drop it in my carry-on bag, and my worst-case experience just got so much better. An inventory, from left to right, top to bottom::
- Q-Tips (instructions say not to stick them in ears, but I’m a rebel)
- Small hotel bottle of shampoo
- Hand sanitizer, because other people are also at this convention.
- band-aids, especially compeed against blisters.
- medication against sore throats, headaches, allergies and colds.
- hotel-sized bottle of moisturizer, and a stick of lip balm.
- dentist-giftbag versions of toothbrush, toothpaste, floss pick and mouthwash.
- emery board, because I tear nails and the TSA are afraid of clippers.
- an IKEA pencil, for writing things down.
- contact lenses, because I always forget to pack them.
- A deodorant towelette for an emergency cat-wash.
- sleep mask, because I like to take naps at odd hours, especially on intercontinental flights.
- earplugs, because babies fly on planes, too, some people snore, and some co-working spaces are just too damn loud to get anything done.
- shaving kit, complete with tiny re-sealable tube of shaving cream
The key is size. The whole ensemble fits into a pocket of my hoodie, because every item in there is tiny, and is probably only good for one-time use. The idea isn’t to replace my usual toiletry kit, but to tide me over an unexpected day when I can’t get at it, because my luggage got lost, my bags are in the bowels of the plane, or I didn’t actually plan to stay a night. Many of the items are scrounged from hotels, or bought as a result of a specific inconvenience.
Do you have an emergency kit like this? Did I forget something? What are your essential travel items?