Skyehaven’s Cool Thing of the Day

I’m still percolating this Washington Post article about telekinetic toys (free reg) and the possible future applications.

You slip the wireless headset on. It looks like something a telemarketer would wear, except the earpieces are actually sensors, and what looks like a microphone is a brain wave detector. You place its tip against your forehead, above your left eyebrow.

A few feet away is a ping-pong ball in a clear tube called the Force Trainer. The idea is to use your thoughts alone, as recognized by the wand on your forehead, to lift the ball. Your brain’s electrical activity is translated into a signal understood by a little computer that controls a fan that blows the ball up the tube. Levitates it. As if by magic. It’s mind over matter.

All you have to do is concentrate. On anything, it doesn’t matter. The harder you concentrate, the higher the ball goes.

First instinct is “I want one of these for Christmas!!!”
More thoughts to follow after I have some time to ponder the imponderables.

The really cool thing about this is not that the cheezburger factory now has a video blog. The cool thing is that this new tool from them, which is admittedly in beta, makes it just as easy to caption videos as the cb factory made it to caption photos.

Ok, I lied. The new tool is cool, but I just wanted an excuse to link to the kitteh overlord vid.

As money gets tighter and people get more worried, we’re all looking for ways to become more self-sufficient. Here’s a great website offering some supplies that will allow you to do just that. Now, fermentation is not just about wine and beer (though that’s cool in and of itself). It’s also about pickling and canning, too. And all of these are ways to stretch a dollar, if you have a little room to plant a garden.

Ok, I’ll admit it. All of this is just a way to lead into linking to a really cool show that kind of flew under the radar here in the states. It’s a bit dated, but still damned funny.

Ok, so I’m hopelessly behind the times. But I’m 39, darnit, and it takes me a while. I’ve never seen a puzzle game quite like this one. Before you ask me for hints or help, let me warn you that I’m not going to be much assistance. I’m sitting here looking at the level 6 page. I knowhat the alternative is, but haven’t found what it’s an alternative to, so I’m still looking!

If you haven’t seen Susan Boyle yet, do it now.

This is what the sky would look like if both your eyes were telescopes.
Need I say more?

Ok, some folks have been asking why I’m insisting that my doctors practice more and other status tidbits on Facebook indicating that I’ve not a very happy camper. Rather than having to answer piecemeal, I’m going to do this the easy way and blog about it instead.

About two months ago, I hurt myself getting into the car. I was holding my weight up with my right foot to straighten out my shirt and get settled in when I felt something pull/tear/pop on the right side of my low back. It didn’t really hurt at that time and I figured I’d just strained a muscle or something…no big deal.

A few days later, I noticed an ache in my right butt cheek or lower back when I had to bend over. The original injury was so NOT a big deal, I didn’t even know what I’d done to myself. I just chalked it up to getting older and didn’t think about it. A couple of weeks later, it not only hurt to bend over, but now it hurt when I sat down. Nothing huge, just enough to make me grunt when I sat down. About that same time, I was getting in the car and recreated what I’d done to myself the first time and I about hit the roof. OUCH!

After that I went to my dr. He diagnosed “sacroiliitis” and sent me to physical therapy. Just to be safe we did x-rays, which came back completely normal. At PT they poked, they did strain counter strain treatments, they had me do exercises, they pulled on my legs, they tried manipulation and distraction treatments…and the pain continued to get worse.

So, I called my doctor back and explained that the pain is getting worse, and what was originally a slightly grunt provoking discomfort is becoming a 10-15 second ordeal on par with natural childbirth every time I have to change orientation, in which it feels to me like bone is sliding against bone. But still, once whatever is done adjusting in there adjusts, I don’t feel any pain.

Now I get referred to a pain management doctor. He also says it’s sacroiliitis and schedules me for an SI injection of cortisone. That appointment was yesterday. But when I got there and the PM doctor got ready to do the injection, I don’t actually hurt where they thought I hurt. It’s lower. In an area where there really isn’t much that could be sliding around, apparently. The PM doctor jumps to the sciatica conclusion and wants to send me back to PT. I very nearly cried when he said that, and tried again to explain what I’m feeling. I’ve had nerve pain; this is not nerve pain. The doctor seems completely lost until I suggest maybe it’s time to get an MRI. “Oh, that’s a good idea!” he exclaimed. Gee, and I didn’t even have to go through 12 years of college and residency to come up with it. I should make the kind of money he does.

Every one is confused as heck, because the only time it hurts is when I bend over, when I sit down (and sit deeply, like in the car not just perch on the edge of something), and when I stand up. Once I’m sitting and I’ve gritted my teeth through the pain, I can sit comfortably for hours. Once I’ve stood up and gritted my teeth through the pain, I can walk all around Kennedy Space Center with no discomfort….until the next time I have to sit down or bend over, that is. Which is to say, it hurts to put on my shoes and socks and otherwise get dressed. It’s incredibly painful to try to do any housework that involves bending over. I’m planning my day at work around getting the most out of each time I have to get out of my chair, because it hurts to get up and it hurts to sit back down.

So, that’s where I am. I have an MRI scheduled for Thursday and I’m really hoping it will shed some kind of light on what the heck is going on. I’m not looking for drugs to mask the pain. I have some, but they’re really not strong enough to even take the edge off when it hurts, and the trade off of the side effects isn’t worth it. I want to know what’s broken and what can be done to fix it before I go postal on anyone wearing scrubs.

This is also by way of apologizing for not finding more cool things to blog. By the time I get home I’ve used up my resources and I just want to read a bit in a book and go to bed. Which is where I’m headed now.

If the object of the game is to eat as many peeps as possible before the end of the Easter season, then these people are definitely fail. But the food art they’ve created is full of teh win.

This week’s time waster is a series of books called The Dresden Files. Reading them is not a waste of time, by any stretch of the imagination. Time will, however, slip by you very quickly until you’ve finished each book. For instance, Wed/Thurs just slipped right away while I was finishing the most recent installment, Turn Coat.

They’re literary crack…but soooo good. It’s going to kill me to wait another year for my next hit.

For those who are fans of SF (and by that I mean speculative fiction, not just SciFi), this is going to sound like a speed. It is…and then again, it isn’t. The Galaxy Zoo offered a challenge the middle of last week: Try to reach a goal of 1 million clicks in 100 hours as part of the 100 hours of astronomy. They put a nifty counter on the homepage and everything, but it under-reported the number of classifications. The final total was 2,617,570 classifications in 100 hours. Hence the title of this post. It’s just another example of the extreme popularity of citizen science. Many people will go out of their way to feel like they’re really, honestly contributing in a meaningful way to better understanding the universe we live in.

On a related note, I’m close enough to one of the top 10 Zooite locations to feel like I’ve been mentioned specifically, which is cool. Since I went to KSC last weekend, I feel as though I can assure Chris that NASA is keeping on with the business of building and launching space craft. While I’m disappointed that they’ve gone back to a rocket delivery system rather than a new orbiter like what we’re currently using, I’m pretty jazzed by the plans for the Constellation program and Orion. I hear they’re planning test launches of the Aries rockets next year and I, for one, will be right there watching them happen.