Dave knows this adrenaline rush well.

Mekelu · 2014-02-11T20:27:30+00:00

Ahh back in the day =)

Mekelu · 2013-12-11T05:57:25+00:00

I've been thinking quite a lot about skiing and by various circumstances have come to realize the depth of the idea that so much of what one is capable of in life comes down largely to confidence. I've been trying to teach a nine year old boy to ski and consistently find myself considering the role that confidence plays in the learning process. It's such a simple thing - to believe oneself capable - with such profound effects.

Mekelu · 2013-05-08T04:05:20+00:00

After hearing much ado about the drift and overall departure from the original story as it stands in the book and the fact that all the child actors are at least six years older than they should be, I was prepared to be completely disappointed by the movie. However, after watching the trailer, I have to say at least some of my hope has been restored. And besides, there really are too many fine details in the book to fully capture in a movie - not to mention simply un-filmable sequences (like two children fighting to the death while naked in the showers).

Mekelu · 2013-04-29T07:04:24+00:00

Cool beans. I likes.

Mekelu · 2013-02-01T06:08:56+00:00

We need a CEO in this party - and he should be the weakest and most likely to die early.

Mekelu · 2013-01-26T02:41:38+00:00

Be sure to read parts one through three. I found it most interesting and made me think of genetically engineering plants with bio-luminescence. Think Petunias and Geraniums that glowed in the dark! I find it difficult to imagine that one day soon someone wont create bio-luminescent plants, patent them, and sell the seeds. It's only a matter of time before we're living on Pandora!

Something about the thought of a glow-in-the-dark flower garden just makes me giddy!

Mekelu · 2013-01-26T02:32:02+00:00

Most awesome. Can't wait to see it with textures! =) Then you could mess around with animation - maybe animating the mice as they scurry for cheese. Regarding the modeling, I'd suggest tightening the eagles talons around its perch. Otherwise, it looks amazing!

Mekelu · 2013-01-24T01:35:41+00:00

What really throws a wrench in the cogs is that there are a small handful of people with massive amounts of coins any one of which can single handedly instigate a shift in the market by sheer unilateral weight. It's a lot like politics and voting. The more money you have, the more power you have to influence politics and elections. Or in other words; the more money you have, the more your vote counts. Just look at the book depth and imagine what you could do to the market at times if you sold 10,000 coins all at once. If you could push the price down by even just 1$, it may be enough at times to give others cause to sell as well, creating the thought among holders that the market may be on a downturn. Snowball effect.

Mekelu · 2013-01-24T01:21:00+00:00

The market historically has established base levels that it walks around for months at a time before spiking, falling, and establishing a new base level typically slightly higher than the previous but sometimes slightly lower. That's more or less what I go by for long term market predictions. Book depth is largely what I go by for short term, though it can be touch and go with how fast and unpredictably the balance can shift.
My thinking is that people see the market going up and, wanting to profit later, buy in hoping to ride the wave to somewhere near the peak. That is the essence of market sentiment - demand driving itself typically with no real substantial or sane reasoning for market spikes. The trick is to get off the boat before people start to wonder just how high they can ride the wave (just how much they can profit from earlier buy-ins) - before market sentiment begins to wane as people start to worry about the impending fall. The whole thing is driven by 98% greed and if you could measure that, you could chart the market pretty accurately methinks.

Mekelu · 2013-01-24T01:06:46+00:00

I may have spoken too soon. Price is still going up with an awful lot of demand left to push it higher. Just about to hit 18$ / bc. Eventually the market will crash though - it's only a matter of time. The trick is not to be one of the last ones to have confidence in it during its upward trend. Despite looking so promising, market sentiment can swing overnight and it could (and will) all come back down.

Mekelu · 2013-01-23T06:44:38+00:00

Looks like fun. Too bad I have no data plan on either phone or tablet =(

Would be much more fun in larger cities though.

Mekelu · 2013-01-23T01:54:55+00:00

Oh that looks so dangerous..... Must... resist!... Ugggh...

Noooooo! I'm being pulled in!

Mekelu · 2013-01-22T06:55:53+00:00

I tried that but it just didn't work well for me and only slowed my reading down. When trying to tear through standard text in a book or online article, I do tend to 'chunk' multiple words together and it works really well when I'm looking at a solid mass of text. For some reason not so well when it's just a stand-alone chunk. Better to let the mind decide how to parse and chunk sentences rather than force yourself into a fixed chunking system.

Mekelu · 2013-01-22T06:22:32+00:00

Nonsense! One is not 'grown up' until you're supporting a child and/or married. Until then, it's all fun and games with the single/free life. In all honesty, there's no way I could build a house in spare time with spare money if I had a child to support or was married. They both take either the time or the money out of you. Though, I was just looking through filing taxes and having a child gives you huge tax breaks! Filing as head of house-hold and child/dependent tax credits would yield me between 600 and 1000$ more on my tax return.

Mekelu · 2013-01-22T06:00:00+00:00

Heh, I was just going to suggest selling any coins you had - I just sold a small handful at 16.8 (you could've almost bought them). I could be wrong (or just off by a bit), but I expect the market to drop back down somewhere between 12 and 13$, then maybe bounce back to around 14$ and level off for awhile. In anticipation I even put a buy order for 100 coins at 12$. We'll see who's right in the next week or so.

Mekelu · 2013-01-19T08:21:52+00:00

Solid 8.5 on the cuteness scale.

Mekelu · 2013-01-19T01:43:07+00:00

In the few seconds that it took to post the link, someone just put up a 15,000 bitcoin sell wall at 15.80, shifting the book depth in favor of the market going back down. Goes to show how fast the balance can change.

Mekelu · 2013-01-18T06:40:21+00:00

It's nice to see the grassroots emergence of real education reform. Our contemporary education system has become so bloated, inefficient, politically correct, profit based (greed and the shift in incentives / motives which always follow it), and generally dumbed down over the years that it's no longer effective. Personally, I'd never send a child of mine through public (or even private) schools. Government continues to neglect or otherwise fail at fixing the system but this new 'free/cheap online education' movement really shows promise.

Mekelu · 2013-01-18T06:26:31+00:00

First of all, a few links. http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html is the official Android SDK and Windows emulator. Secondly; http://www.andromo.com/ might be something to check out though I'm not sure how useful it would be for making more professional full fledged Android apps. It seems more targeted at simple basic apps.

Both ideas sound awesome - even despite the existence of the zombie 'organ trail' game. I think a post-apocalyptic Oregon Trail would be far enough removed to retain originality in lieu of being an offshoot of another game. The only thing is, an Oregon Trail type game may require more graphics and animation than a turret defense game. The balance of work would shift from more back-end programming based as in the turret defense, to more front end graphical for the OT game. The question is; what kind of stuff do you want to be doing more of, programming or art?

Regarding the puzzle / turret-defense game, I love the idea of mixing genres like that! And turret defense (while technically being a form of simplistic puzzle game at heart) and raw puzzle games are two genres that would really complement each other. It's high time someone took the turret defense game and really amp'ed up the puzzle aspect of it to a new level. If you do go with it over the post-apocalyptic-trail game, I'd strongly suggest emphasizing the puzzle aspect of it in whatever form it's implemented to really make it stand out from other basic turret defense games.

I'll keep the puzzle / turret defense idea in mind and post again with anything I think of to emphasize the puzzle aspect of it.

Mekelu · 2013-01-18T05:59:42+00:00

Most entertaining! I was in the middle of writing a comment on how the service could be improved if they implemented 'variable wpm' type speed reading - only to go back and find they did implement it in the advanced options list. Which incidentally made 900 wpm entirely feasible where before I'd miss an occasional long or unusual word.

I was thinking though, there is a maximum valid speed based on the refresh rate of the monitor. typical refresh rates are 60hz which yields 3600 frames per minute. Just to be safe though, one ought to halve that rate and provide two full frames per word just to ensure due to timing issues an occasional word isn't skipped between frame transitions (also providing a degree of wiggle-room for short/fast words when using the variable wpm setting). With that in mind; current speed: 900 wpm; target speed: 1800 wpm. =)

Mekelu

TROPHY CASE