Since I didn’t got inspired by something spectacular, I post here some links to little games thar you can play online. Some requires plugins like Shockwave, which you may have to install or update to make fun of it.
The first one is Bubble Shooter. In classical manner you’ll have to hit colored bubbles with another one you shoot. If there are more than three in the same color, they’ll disappear. The goal is to clean the bubbles off the field. Beware: Danger of habit formation!
One more is Gold Strike. You’ll be a miner who’s diggin‘ to some Banjosounds. The game principle is somewhat like Bubbles, but with a time limit and the bricks disappear, if there are more than two of the same type neighboring. It’s fun, but the game seems somewhat unfinished…
For a limitet time (until you’ve found the best strategy) is Snow Storm. Free the parking area with your snow plug. The graphics are very nicely done.
Have fun with these and let me know which you like most. On http://www.playit.ch you can find tons of games – most are some kind of stupid… you know 😉 . Also, please post in the comments if you know some good sites for a short break.
Today was a beautiful day and I was out by the river the first time this year with my Lapsteel playing. Looking at the water, this old movie «Power of ten» (YouTube video, 9 min.) from 1977 came to my mind. Read the details on wikipedia.
Well, this is now 30 years old, so I did some googling and found some more interesting, newer things. First, there’s a newer version of something similar: the Cosmic Voyage (YouTube, 4 min.) from 1996. This is unfortunately only the part of the journey similar to the former Power of Ten, I couldn’t find the whole movie, which is also described on Wikipedia.
Here’s also a slideshow-version from this idea to show the cosmos. I found even a version from the famous Simpsons animation series 🙂 .
There’s also a very interesting dissertation from astrophysicist Mike Norman on Google video (56 min). He takes you on an unprecedented journey across space and time to witness the formation of galaxies and cosmic structure as well as the formation of one of the first stars to shine in the universe.
His dissertation features also this by far the best animated virtual journey (YouTube, ca. 4 min.), calculated with accurate data from the actual cosmic science. So it’s up to date with data and computer rendering technique. Here are some screenshots (click for bigger versions, threy’re the best resolution I could get):
The journey will start at our solar system and the first impressing step is the Orion Nebula (right), 1000 light-years away, with the Horsehead Nebula (middle) in the background.
We then turn around to see a fictive picture of our own home galaxy, the Milkyway. Fictive because we still cannot shoot a picture of our galaxy… 😉 .
Then we will pass through the galaxy M-33 (right) towards the giant Andromeda galaxy with the blue outskirts (top left). In the middle another star forming Nebula in M-33, like the Orion Nebula, but much larger. We’re about 1 million light-years away from home.
What looks like a couple of stars is actually the Virgo Cluster, about 28 mio light-years away, our local cluster of galaxies. Each white dot is a whole galaxy and the destination of this animated journey.
So, finally, if you look at the sky next time, try to imagine the 28 million light-years distance to our nearest galaxy cluster, which is only one of all them out there…
Just have a look at this picture I’ve found today. Isn’t it great? Although I’m not shure how well the pope is feeling. Anyway, the buddhist monk seems having a great time watching the others find a way to be tolerant… 🙂 !
You can download the original pdf here (link is dead). The campaign «week of the religions» was raised by www.iras-cotis.ch, an interreligious working group of Switzerland.
Gunnar Heinsohns wilde Thesen – und eine Berliner Studie zur Weltbevölkerung (von Reiner Klingholz)
Der amerikanische Geheimdienst CIA publizierte im Jahr 1995 das Papier Demografische Hintergründe für ethnische Konflikte. Darin ging es um die Frage, ob rasches Bevölkerungswachstum zu politischer Instabilität führen kann. Denn dieses erwirkt zwangsläufig einen youth bulge, eine Beule in der demografischen Kurve, einen Überhang an jungen Menschen, die keinen Platz in der Gesellschaft finden. Die Studie kam zu dem Ergebnis, dass Mord und Totschlag drohen, sobald die Altersgruppe der 15- bis 24-Jährigen einen Anteil von 20 Prozent an der Gesamtbevölkerung übersteigt.
Close your eyes (well, after reading) and imagine the following.
Sweet Mullah in chief would state:
We have no nuclear material to build weapons – come and see.
We have no plants to make poison gas – come and see.
We even have no missiles to transport such things – come and see.
We don’t treat our opposition like lifestock – come and see.
We respect human rights – come and see.
Everyone has one vote, everyone can campaign – come and see.
We’d like to be your host – come and test us.
And, finally, we’ll sell you our oil in Euros – come and buy!
(tell me some more ideas…)
This could change so many things. It would probably be good for European economics. Probably, many other countries would jump on the bandwagon. Surely, it would be bad for the American economy.
America would not be able to find a real reason for an attack to prevent this. Maybe it would fudge an excuse, but nobody would believe it. The ruler ruled out by his own rules!
But, hold on, what’s the saying? Kick an old dog long enough and it will turn around and bite. Also, what about power vacuum? How many inferiority-complex addled people will fill buckets with their drivel? If physics are to be trusted, gallons of the stuff will drool into place.
Then only holy metaphysics can repeal the laws, but on this score all the mystics men and women sucked, till today. Damn, I’m glad I don’t have to make the rules…
Well, yeah – open your eyes, a dream comes back to reality.
(English readers please click on continue and scroll down)
Mein erster Post in deutsch. Soeben fand ich einen neuen Helden: Prof. Dr. Dr. Harald Walach! Er bringt meine Gedanken so schön auf den Punkt, dass ich besser den Mund halte 🙂 .
«Man geht mit theoretischen Konstrukten – „Geister“, „Energien“, „Engel“, „Dämonen“, „previous lives“, „transpersonaler Raum“, „absoluter Geist“ – im transpersonalen Kontext am besten sparsam um. … Damit ist gemeint, dass man den damit gemeinten Sachverhalten eine Art Eigenexistenz zuzubilligen geneigt ist, wenn sie erst einmal genannt ist, …»
«Das heisst aber nun nicht, dass man die Erfahrung deswegen verleugnen muss. Letzteres ist ein Trugschluss, der von der konventionellen Wissenschaft häufig gemacht wird, indem sie Ockhams Rasiermesser radikal anwendet und sich gewissermassen nicht nur rasiert, sondern dem entsprechenden Phänomen gleich den Hals abschneidet und es damit für irrelevant erklärt. Nein, Ockhams Rasiermesser hat ein komplementäres Gegengewicht: Platons Rettungsboot. Dieses von mir so titulierte Prinzip leitet sich aus dem platonischen Wort von der „Rettung der Phänomene“ ab (Walach & Schmidt, 2002). Dieses methodische Prinzip stammt aus der platonisch-astronomischen Schule und meint, eine astronomische Theorie müsste die Himmelsphänomene erklären können und nicht umgekehrt, dass Phänomene einer Theorie untergeordnet werden.»
European heads of government agreed to get onward with climate protection. The ambition is to reduce one fifth of greenhouse gases from 1990 by 2020. (!)
In fact, this is not ambitious enough by far. But I see the fact that they are in consent about the need of such steps, even if very tardily. It seems they started to think about our future.
But about which ways to take there are the old inconsistencies. Is nuclear power renewable? Brave Angela Merkel (German President of the European Council at this time) stood tall and argued against this viewpoint. Big applause, please!
France and others won’t be happy with this. And in question is how earnest this statement will be realised. If I take a look at how far we are with the Kyoto-protocol. Still, the insight is here, and if it’s only for popularity. But the end justifies the means, when it results in clear decisions.
Hear I someone say «dream on» 🙂 ? As John Lennon said: I’m not the only one.
Maybe we should put some stuff in Brussels drinking water – it might teach the politicians to dream even further. If they sense life in the next tree they see; it could be inspiring.
Back to realism again I suggest you make sure with your vote, that some realistic and idealistic dreamers take place in the houses of governments – this is how dreams come true, isn’t it?
This I just asked myself. All they run after each other, no one knows who is leader and where the trip is going. Just because someone in Shanghai made a wrong deal they loose somewhat 3 % worldwide at the stock market. Together they bloat a big balloon and everyone fears, it could burst – but nobody stops pumping. Nobody wants to be stupid and loose a chance to betray money without work.
If you look at it globally, in a wide range, stock market is somehow social: Either all win or all will loose. What an insight – all neo-liberal market operators are in fact damned communists! The Sowjet Union ain’t dead yet.
I mean, seriously, it seems money can be a turn on, but it has no biological life and cannot increase itself. If you made win on a stock, someone must have sweat for it.
It’s easy to make wrong deals with stolen money, besides of an impending heart attack. But it’s the dog biting in its own tail. Maybe it should bite the balloon. The big bang could be a chance for a new, better start.
The last few days I learned many things. First of all: Screen media ARE NOT print media. After I did all my script sizes with points (as any layouter does) I changed all to em (a relative mesurement like percent, as any webdesigner does). Well, my mistake… But now letters should look more the same in different browsers.
Then, I added the gallery, with two sets of … but look for yourself 🙂 . Then, I added the forum, as a place for a guestbook and for site problem reports, for deeper discussions (me don’t like big discussions in a blog comment area) and as a support place for any computer related questions, since I’m kind of a geek and know some help, maybe.
And yes, now there’s a German part on the welcome site. But French, Italian, Arabic, Hindi and Chinese is still missing. Hm, when I think about it – Chinese I’ll boycott eventually…
Yay, this search form will search through everything, if desired. The css data of this plug in is extremly well done and was a lot easyer to adapt for my design than that from the contact form yesterday.
I also managed to exclude the search page from the page menu on the left side. I will try to link the original wordpress search field (which only searches blog entries) with the advanced search. Hope I can manage that.
The right sidebar becomes more and more intelligent – now realizes what content is shown and brings up matching content. Without having different template files with different sidebars, so maintaining is a lot easyer. This is very imprtant for lazy men like me, although it means more work at the beginning… That’s the price to pay.
…hacked away. Formating is mostly finished, for the right sidebar I wrote a script which should display link-categories matching the pages one is viewing and implemented a contact form that should be secure against spam bots. Working with .css is great, but a complex thing, particularly if it’s not the own one.
Next will be the forum and galery to set up – and hopefully some inspiring content. Time to attract some visitors…
Just a short note: I adapted the templates to my needs and set up the first structure. Soon I need some content. If I don’t need to hack away the nights anymore, I’ll get some time to write. And to sleep…
Tweaking again. Hacking some php-file. Testing. Move a pixel up, a pixel left – damn, back again. Testing…
I’m getting closer. I still need a nice logo. In the content area it cuts off about 10 pixels on the right side, and I can’t find a reason. For now I left this out.
But I’m very happy with the look. And tired – I’ll go and listen to my pillow what it has to tell. Good night.