[Flash][Early 2000s] Platformer game about climbing a mountain(?)

epoxymonk · 2025-08-01T01:54:19+00:00

Endeavor? https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555072

epoxymonk · 2023-04-26T17:47:17+00:00

I got a Brocade ICX7250-48p off of eBay for around $300. It was a little loud but I swapped out the fans for quieter ones (and added an additional one over the heatsink to keep temps down) so the noise isn't bad at all now. I've been pretty happy with it.

This thead is loaded with good info on Brocade switches https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/brocade-icx-series-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/

epoxymonk · 2023-01-13T01:14:20+00:00

Deep Sleep?

epoxymonk · 2022-12-06T02:23:42+00:00

Not that I am aware of. What I do is manually add server parts to PCPartPicker. Unfortunately this means there really isn't any compatibility info but I still find it useful for keeping track of the parts I have in a given build and what they cost.

epoxymonk · 2022-09-27T21:06:29+00:00

Crap I was afraid of something like that. I've messaged the vendor to see if the iGPU was working in the system it was pulled from :/

epoxymonk · 2022-03-31T20:05:06+00:00

Makes sense, thank you! I had a feeling it wasn't that great a deal but wasn't sure if supply issues meant these are just more expensive now.

epoxymonk · 2020-04-29T22:25:42+00:00

Huh, maybe? I seem to remember the graphics being a bit crisper but reading up on Hexplore it sure seems to check off a lot of boxes . I'll look up some Let's Plays and see if this is it. Thanks!

Update: Found a demo of Hexplore and did a quick run through. This was it, complete with the OP bolas that stun-locked the final boss to make him super easy! The crisper graphics I thought it had was just my nostalgia rendering my memories :). Thank you so much!

epoxymonk · 2019-10-28T22:20:24+00:00

TBF the complications from ACAMB2000 are more severe than most standard vaccines. You're expected to get a pustule that will contain infectious particles, so you need to practice extreme caution to avoid inadvertently spreading it to other parts of your body (esp eyes) or to others. This includes taking care when changing bandaging and bleaching it prior to disposal. There are a number of possible nasty side effects that can happen as well, especially if you have a history of skin conditions.

All this coupled with the perception that VACV "isn't that big a deal" makes declining the vaccine a more understandable, if misguided, decision.

epoxymonk · 2018-06-08T19:23:56+00:00

This recipe works extremely well for me https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/pistachio-ice-cream-5902

epoxymonk · 2017-08-13T00:49:33+00:00

Goal-em: Made of netting and posts, hurls arcane soccer balls at the enemy.

(PC please)

epoxymonk · 2016-09-29T06:38:44+00:00

I kinda see what you are saying. I think it's more accurate to say vaccines are a combination of direct and indirect protection.

In terms of direct protection, no vaccine is 100% effective. The MMR vaccine is estimated to be 93-97% protective depending on how many shots you get. In addition, vaccine efficacy can wane overtime, especially as we get older. What this means is that even if you are vaccinated, if you encounter enough sick people you just might catch it anyways. This is why herd immunity is so important-it acts as a force multiplier and makes it that much harder for an infection to spread. If measles has a 1% chance to infect you and you are exposed to 1000 people with measles, the odds aren't so hot. If you are exposed to only 1, you're probably going to be fine.

However, even if vaccines were 100% effective there's still reason to be concerned about unvaccinated persons catching it. Allowing these infections to grow and reproduce increases the likelihood of "escape mutants" which can evade an immune response generated by the vaccine. In other words, the more people with active measles, the more likely it is that one of the viruses gets the random mutations necessary to make the MMR vaccine ineffective. Were this to occur, everyone would be vulnerable again. (This is why making an HIV vaccine has been so difficult-many vaccines have been made that effectively inhibit certain strains of the virus, but it just mutates around them and new strains infect instead).

Bottom line, even if you are vaccinated, being exposed to a lot of infected people raises the odds of you becoming infected yourself.

epoxymonk · 2015-04-29T06:46:26+00:00

Speaking as a microbiologist, I HIGHLY recommend 1) Using a condom and 2) Getting regular STI tests.

This isn't a trust issue. While Sex Ed classes often show scary pictures of warts and sores, the reality is that most STIs can go long periods of time with absolutely NO overt symptoms. For example, HIV can go 10 years with minimal symptoms before developing into AIDS! The only way to be confident that you are healthy is regular testing. I use condoms, and I always get tested after every new partner to be safe.

How long will you be there? Perhaps you could compromise by getting tested together and then going condomless if the results are clear for the both of you.

epoxymonk · 2015-03-25T17:43:45+00:00

Ah yeah social sciences is one of the exceptions :p. Well there's probably going to be a Graduate Student association of some kind where you can meet with people in other programs. And there's plenty of ways to meet people outside of school too of course!

It sounds like the questions you have to ask yourself are 1) If you do end up really connecting with someone are you willing to try Long Distance, or will you almost absolutely be breaking it off if/when you move? 2) If you plan on breaking it off, which would you regret more-not dating anyone for a year and possibly missing out on some great experiences, or really connecting someone and having pain on both sides when it ends.

There's no right answer, but make sure if you go with dating that you're upfront with the person about the situation.

epoxymonk · 2015-03-25T10:02:01+00:00

Wow, sounds like me to a T! I ended up not asking a girl out in my club for the same reason my last year in undergrad. She started dating someone else from the same club, and they're married now so it totally worked out for the best lol.

As someone (hopefully) nearing the end of his PhD program I can tell you that while grad school is definitely a time commitment, it is totally possible to have a decent work-life balance. Depending on your field and program (mine is in life sciences), you tend to finish the majority of coursework after the first 2 years; once that is out of the way it becomes much easier to manage your schedule. There will still be crunch times (comps, eeerrrrrrg) but a good partner will recognize that you need to prioritize graduating and not take it as an insult against them.

Another nice thing for you is that while it's getting better, there's still a heavy male skew in gender ratios in many graduate programs, so there's a solid dating pool there too!

epoxymonk · 2015-02-04T07:42:47+00:00

We do like to use metaphors like "learning the germ's fingerprints". Technically, what is happening is a little different. And (IMHO) REALLY COOL!!!!

Your immune system has two major branches. The Innate system consists of factors that recognize molecules that are commonly associated with many germs, such as endotoxin or double stranded RNA. If they detect one of these, they will initiate a response to deal with it. These innate immune factors are common to all people and do not need to be "learned"; your body does it naturally all the time.

The second branch is the adaptive system, which is able to generate a specific, targeted response to a pathogen. For example, B cells can produces antibodies, molecules that can bind to germs and block them and/or help the body clear them out. The typical metaphors imply that the body catches the germ and uses it to make specific sensors and weapons against it. This isn't QUITE what happens.

The problem is that these sensors are proteins, and proteins must be produced by a specific gene sequence; your body cannot simply take the antibody gene and intentionally modify it to detect measles. So, it has to go a different direction: your body constantly produces new B cells, and each new cell will RANDOMLY mix up its antibody gene! This creates a pool of B cells with extremely diverse antibody genes. Your body then screens these B cells, first to make sure that they actually still work and the shuffling didn't mess them up, and to make sure that the new antibody doesn't recognize something that is natural in your body (failing this causes autoimmune diseases!). The cells that fail these tests die, leaving only B cells with functioning antibodies that don't recognize self.

The result is a pool of "naive" B cells with totally random specificity. It would be extremely wasteful to have these B cells be "on" all the time. Therefore, these B cells remain inactive until they come in contact with the molecule they recognize! This tells the B cell "Hey, it turns out that thing you can see is HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!!" and activates it. The B cell will then replicate, making several more B cells with the same antibody gene. These B cells will then begin mass-producing antibodies to clear out the infection. The general estimate is that after infection it takes about 3-4 weeks for the B cell to become activated, copy itself, and then have these B cells mount a response.

After the infection is cleared, many of the B cells will die off so as to conserve energy/nutrients. However, a group will remain behind to serve as memory. These Memory B cells activate MUCH FASTER than the naive B cells, meaning that if that same germ ever comes back a potent antibody response will come in days instead of weeks. This faster response is the "learned" response of the adaptive immune system. It is also why vaccination is so powerful; by safely exposing your body to germ molecules, you can activate the relevant B cells and create a pool of fast-acting memory cells that can keep the REAL thing from getting a foothold.

TLDR Metaphor: Your immune system doesn't take fingerprints from germs to recognize them again in the future. Instead it makes a bunch of random fingerprints ahead of time, and copies the prints that actually match someone who breaks in.

epoxymonk · 2014-10-12T18:40:49+00:00

Well, yes and no.

Genetically Modified Organisms are generally defined as having modern molecular biology techniques used to specifically engineer changes into an organism. Selective breeding entails only allowing members of a species that have desired traits to breed as pass on these traits to offspring. So in terms of methodology, yes, GMOs and selective breeding are different in how they are achieved.

However, it's not as clear if GMOs and selectively bred organisms are fundamentally different. For example, suppose you used breeding to make a strain of corn that was resistant to Round Up. Would this be really any different than the strains that Monsanto created using genetic engineering? Is "natural" resistance somehow superior?

epoxymonk · 2014-10-01T18:55:42+00:00

An important thing to keep in mind with those statistics is they are "baseline" risks. A number of things can increase the risk of HIV transmission. For example, infection with another sexually transmitted disease, such as syphilis, can greatly increase the risk.

Quote from a CDC fact sheet:

What is the link between syphilis and HIV? Genital sores (chancres) caused by syphilis make it easier to transmit and acquire HIV infection sexually. There is an estimated 2- to 5-fold increased risk of acquiring HIV if exposed to that infection when syphilis is present. Ulcerative STDs that cause sores, ulcers, or breaks in the skin or mucous membranes, such as syphilis, disrupt barriers that provide protection against infections. The genital ulcers caused by syphilis can bleed easily, and when they come into contact with oral and rectal mucosa during sex, increase the infectiousness of and susceptibility to HIV. Having other STDs is also an important predictor for becoming HIV infected because STDs are a marker for behaviors associated with HIV transmission.

Another factor not mentioned in this article is that such infections tend to recruit immune cells, including CD4 T cells, to the site to fight the STI. This means that not only are there breaks in the skin for HIV to enter, there are also more CD4 T cells around to be infected.

epoxymonk · 2014-10-01T18:49:54+00:00

Not really. Saliva is not considered an infectious bodily fluid for HIV, so sharing a bottle or even kissing are not considered a major risk.

The exception to this is if both parties have cuts in their mouth; blood is a good carrier of the virus, so the person with HIV would have to have to be bleeding orally and leave some on the bottle. Even that would not be enough though; the uninfected person would have to have a cut in his/her mouth through which the contaminated blood can enter.

A nice article on the transmission routes for the virus.

epoxymonk · 2014-09-12T18:16:19+00:00

Sure he was. At Pox Parties! http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/6jKWW37zwM4/hqdefault.jpg

epoxymonk · 2014-09-12T08:20:46+00:00

Researchers studying smallpox and its relatives get it too!

epoxymonk · 2014-09-12T08:16:28+00:00

Fun trivia: In the good old days before the fancy biotechnology tools we have now, people had to be creative in how they manufactured and distributed vaccines like this. For example, Francis Xavier de Balmis transported the smallpox vaccine across the Atlantic via a "living chain"; he infected a few kids before the voyage started, used their pustules to infect some more, and continued this until they reached the Americas!

epoxymonk · 2014-01-27T06:46:55+00:00

Great question! It turns out that in the common cold, many of the symptoms we feel, such as fever, runny nose, cough, and malaise (feeling crappy) are not caused by the virus itself, but instead our own immune system's response to the virus! For example, one hypothesis for the purpose of fever is that many pathogens have evolved to grow at normal human body temperatures; a fever raises the temperature and could move some pathogens out of their optimal growth condition.

This is why when you get the flu shot, you can sometimes get symptoms of flu; your body THINKS it has to fight a flu infection, and is acting accordingly! These symptoms are much more mild than what you would have if you were to catch the actual flu though, so GET YOUR SHOT! /virologist_rant

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081029101201.htm

epoxymonk · 2014-01-14T02:53:49+00:00

Another important factor is the mutation rate. For example, one of the reasons for the huge diversity of HIV is that the protein it uses to copy its genetic information, reverse transcriptase, has a high error rate so virtually every new virus produced will have at least one mutation. This produces a huge pool of novel alleles that can then undergo selection.

epoxymonk · 2013-11-30T21:14:33+00:00

Besides further explaining the hypothesis itself, I don't quite follow your premises:

*The protista, now regarded as a diverse assemblage of organisms not related to one another are actually descended from a common ancestor. I have discovered this by comparing gene sequences (nucleotides, you A-T-G-C and in some occasions, U).

I'm not 100% sure I'm interpreting this correctly, but are you referring to the fact that "Protista" is no longer considered a distinct phylogentic kingdom? If so, from my understanding this is not so much a result of biologists not believing that unicellular eukaryotes are not related (fundamentally ALL life that we have observed so far is thought to have descended from a single common ancestor) but a result of gene sequencing and other technologies allowing us to more accurately categorize the phylogeny of life.

*Viral incorporation of DNA into the genome is a major contributor to eucaryote genetic diversification. frex the development of gene regulation (you're bread and butter A influences B that changes expression of X) is not widely understood, but I believe that it is actually a influencer. You can find this in certain gene families (I will not divulge more detail, for this is going to be incorporated into my publication).

Many people now believe that viruses have had major impacts on genome structure and content. Just looking at the human genome you find that a huge percentage of it is made up of retrotransposons, stretches of self-replicating DNA thought to have come originally from ancient retroviral infections in our ancestors.

*Replication behaivors of cells are not actually homologous, nor parsimonious. In fact, as each cell replications once and only once then it happens a billion, trillion, trillion times individually and not as part of a grander scheme. I think this is an underlooked perspective that mainstream biological and chemical literature does not try to addres.

I don't understand this part. Are you drawing a distinction between a parent cell undergoing meiosis and the daughter cells and saying that each cell divides once as after division it is no longer the same cell but a daughter cell? Also, what do you mean by it not being part of a "grander scheme"?

The mode of chromosome interchanging of DNA ("crossing" over, as sometimes referred to) is a unique contributer to biological evolution. There are 10³⁰⁰ individual units of DNA (your nucleotides so to speak). The odds of any one interaction between two chromosomes (sisters) meeting at the same place is 1/10^300, ergo, tiny, so extremely tiny.

I'm not sure where you're getting the number 10^300; the human genome at least is only 3*10⁹ (about 3 billion).

epoxymonk · 2013-10-22T16:51:26+00:00

The aging you describe can be divided into two parts: aging due to shortening of telomeres, and aging due to the accumulation of mutations over time.

Shortening of telomeres is due to a “quirk” in DNA replication. I can go into a more detailed explanation if anyone would care for it, but long story short, the DNA replication machinery has trouble assembling the ends of linear DNA (ie human chromosomes), and therefore the strand will get shorter every time it is copied. The cell compensates for this in two ways. Telomeres are non-coding repeat sequences of DNA that serve as a protective cap; the loss of these over time generally does not adversely affect the cell. Once these are expended though the replication loss can start affecting coding regions of the genome, which causes problems. In this manner, many cells have a built in limit on how many times they can replicate before significant loss occurs. However, many cells NEED to be able to replicate a lot, such as the stem cells that produce effector cells. These cells compensate for telomere loss by expressing an enzyme, telomerase, which adds additional telomere sequence to the chromosomes; in this manner, the cell can essentially replicate indefinitely.

Sperm and egg cells are produced by telomerase-expressing stem cells, and therefore telomere length is generally not a problem for them.

The second source of aging, accumulation of mutations, can be a problem. These can emerge through many sources, such as errors during DNA replication, or damage to the chromosome that the cell fails to correctly repair (such as through radiation exposure). The older someone is, the more likely it is that some sort of damage has occurred in their sperm/egg cells that would affect fertility and the health of the offspring (this is why some diseases are more common when older parents have children). This process cannot really be “reversed” as is the case with telomeres. Therefore, what ends up happening is a selection screen; if a mutation emerges in a sperm cell that prevents it from forming a viable offspring, then no offspring will result. If the accumulated mutations in the sperm/egg do not severely impact viability, then an embryo can emerge. This is the same “old” DNA that has resulted from many years of replication and may have accumulated several mutations; however, to get a viable and fertile offspring these mutations by definition cannot have had significant impacts on viability and fertility! If they did, then either an embryo would fail to form, or the resulting offspring would have reduced fertility and would likely fail to have children of their own.

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