Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Brion - if you don't want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning - DON'T post on a forum that she reads.
 
 Busted.
 Grounded."

-- Faydra, mother of Brion, on a World Of Warcraft message board, 2005-08-16 (scroll down to fifth message in thread -- then if you want to see that community's reaction, there are nine hundred more comments after it as of the time I copied this to my QotD queue.)

Thanks to amberfox for pointing it out.

Was jarred out of a dream so suddenly that it felt as though I'd wrenched my back jerking awake. But I'm not sure why that point in the dream would've woken me (I hadn't reached a "this got too confusing to continue" point, nor a "I've rewound and replayed this bit too many times to not realize it's a dream" situation, which seem to be the usual things that wake me mid-dream), and I can't figure out why it was so sudden that my back hurt afterwards.

I fell asleep again after about half an hour, but woke again three hours after that from yet another dream. ( In this one... )

So here I am, awake, feeling like I haven't slept anywhere near enough, with my upper back really tight, wondering what -- if anything -- these dreams mean. And wondering who that woman is who has appeared in two dreams now and looks so much like gelfjenn, and whether she's going to be a recurring character in future dreams.

blackthornglade invites,

Betting is now open on how long it will be before the fundies start placing blame!
Who is at fault for Rita?
When will the accusations start?
Come one, come all! Place those bets now, while the betting's good!

I get worried when I realize I'm reading a discussion in which the line, "! pr00fr33d l33t" crops up. And more so when I notice that I didn't slow down to read that. Eep!

• 40KV static charge nearly leads to spontaneous human combustion, leaves charred carpet in man's wake (Reuters headline, "Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction"). "'I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this.'" ... "for a static electricity charge to ignite a carpet, conditions had to be perfect." As the person from whom I snagged the link observed, it's interesting to see something like this actually documented.
  


• The coolest blackboard in the world, courtesy of ohiblather, 2005-09-19. Really. If ever a blackboard could be called adorable, this is it.
  


• I've got my tinfoil hat on -- song and (Flash) music video. Retro. Cute. Not ROFL funny, but a bit of a giggle and big smiles. And cute. (Link swiped from donnad)
  


• Pink Fluffy Bunny. BIIIIG Pink Fluffy Bunny. Two hundred foot pink fluffy bunny, on a mountain in Italy. "It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can't help but smile." Supposed to stay in place until 2025. Made of wool. (How is that going to do after many seasons?) Link swiped from chipuni.
  


• How to build the Quintessential Sentry Gun: "The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an advertising agency, and I'd only ever seen sentry guns in movies (like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress Classic). I couldn't find any record of anyone building one, even the military, although it seems likely I just didn't look hard enough. [...] If you're here just to see my little brother get shot with it, scroll to the bottom." A lazy susan, some plywood, a few servos, a camera, and a bunch of code. Oh, and a BB gun. This was a student's summer project, and the page includes notes of a bunch of improvements planned for the future. "There are a number of applications for a sentry gun like this that don't involve putting holes in people. For example, I could put a camera on top and use it for wildlife photography. A squirt gun could be attached, and it could be used to discipline your cat when it tries to jump on the couch...simultaneously watering your couch."(Link via tdj.)
  


• E-nose to sniff out hospital superbugs (New Scientist) Faster warning of outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant staph: "Culture tests routinely used to identify MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) take two or three days to complete. This hampers attempts to manage outbreaks as infected patients remain untreated and at risk of infecting others. DNA-based tests are being trialled that promise to reduce test times to 2 hours, but now UK-based researchers have come up with a test using an electronic sniffer that could cut the time further, to just 15 minutes. [...] Each e-nose is about the size of a pair of desktop PCs and costs about £60,000. The food industry uses similar machines to root out rotten ingredients." I'd noticed as a child that sick people sometimes have a particular smell I just thought of as "smelling sick" (though some of the grownups around insisted that one can't smell that so I must have been imagining things -- yah, I know, those grownups were silly). This quote from the article reminded me of that: "I was operating on neck abscesses on two different patients and noticed their infections had slightly different smells, so I wondered if a machine could work out what the bacterial infections were from the smell alone." (Another link snagged from tdj.)
  


• Rare books in the British Library, scanned for viewing over the 'net, but be warned that these are slow to load even over a broadband connection. Shockwave and non-Shockwave versions of a few tomes so far, Shockwave only for the rest. "Grab a corner and watch as you 'turn the page'" interface which I feel guilty for taking any pleasure in (because it adds overhead without adding functionality ... but it does add something to the subjective experience, at least at first). I was able to get the animated version to work in Safari but not Opera under OS X; have not tried it yet on Windows or Linux. (Link snagged from filkerdave.) And thanks to a comment by mscongeniality I can also point out that to celebrate its first birthday, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is making access free from today through Sunday (2005-09-23 to 2005-09-25). Requires registration.
  


• Virtual plague infests virtual world -- an "infection" designed to affect World of Warcraft player characters near a particular entity when it was killed, managed to spread to other characters. Apparently NPCs can act as carriers. (Hmm. A WoW QotD and a WoW item here, and I've never played the game. Link swiped from dianec42.)
  


• Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents from Reporters Without Borders, looks interesting, though I've not yet read it. (I downloaded the PDF and will peek at it tonight. Found via twistedchick.)
  


• Rolling a handful of weapon-related links into one item ... List of weapons that don't exist, but should, from Uncyclopedia: "This list attempts to describe various weapons that don't exist, but should. To meet the criteria for inclusion on this list, a weapon must theoretically be able to kick a minimum of twelve varieties of ass. Any weapons that kick fewer varieties are unworthy of inclusion." Among others, the list includes Armed monkey, Bracer graters, Chocolate-covered black hole, Double-sided folding chair, Incendiary pants, Road rage gun, Swordchucks, and Sharpened hampster. Related entries include Weapons of Mass Distraction (distinct from the WMD mentioned in the 'weapons that don't exist' entry), Weapons that once existed but shouldn't have, and Weapons that exist but shouldn't. And if you get distracted long enough following links to other Uncyclopedia articles, you can find the entry that includes the text, "Breasts have nipples, which are tiny horns used for fighting. This why Men have nipples." (Caveat: the site contains many tasteless and offensive bits. As far as I can tell, the offensiveness is largely intentional. But there's a lot of funny as well.) If the URLs with apostrophes cause trouble here, try starting with the weapons category page and follow links from there. After that, go look at Turn Your Hamster Into A Fighting Machine