The geeks are taking over!

Every 6 months the london ExCel centre hosts the bi-annual geek fest that is the london expo. Gamers, sci fi and anime fans with more money than sense turn up to buy useless junk and photograph much geekier geeks dressed up as their heroes.
By tradition, me, anna and pete meet at the expo every 6 months. This year i was joined by james and claudio. Here's just a small sample of our pictures from yesterday:



Last year, a small group of people dressed up as team fortress characters. I tried to find them all but only managed to get 3. This year, Team fortress was represented with force, all classes turned up- bar the sniper this time. I still didn't get to photograph most of them. Interestingly there were at least as many girls cosplaying the characters as boys.

Never enough medics!

Lolita was represented. Red eyes even improved the picture!

Rikku: Thief Gear

Rikku: Final Fantasy X gear

Rikku: Lady luck gear. Rikku was represented!

PICK UP THAT CAN

PICK UP THOSE CANS

By far my favourite: Vieras were represented!!

Origami ninja: exactly what the label suggests, a ninja quietly performing origami for people. I didn't notice him at first, so he's good

The nutters carrying these signs with hypnotic flashing red eyes claimed to be recruiting for "Doctor Steel's Army of Toy Soldiers" an army of thousands "who leave a trail of creation in their wake". Sounds like a good idea, actually, i think i will.. OBEEEYYY.....

Longcat has representation.

Jayne (from Firefly)

Alien: one of the most popular cosplayers there. Don't worry, it's on a leash.

Alien vs Predator

Steampunk was well represented, there were several stalls selling clockwork jewellery, faux victorian machines and guns, and even a gorgeous working mechanical sign. Unfortunately none of us managed to get many great pictures, but here is a guy wearing the helmet we saw at the exhibition in oxford back at christmas.

WHODUNNIT? Was probably just the rum, actually

The day was utterly knackering. In addition to the photos, i also got a new model for my collection. She will no doubt recieve her own post in the near future.

As this is a personal blog, and i am (unfortunately for me) a compulsively opinionated person, i have decided to disregard any attempts to appear unbiased. So if you are someone who favours the reinstatement of the british ruling class then you will just have to like it or lump it at this point.

Labour were never very big in the South East, but today they have lost 13 seats to the Conservatives, with only 4 still held. Lib Dem also lost 2, keeping 4.

So I would just like to salute my fellow Sotonites for keeping our fair city red.

My new electric brain!

Well the PC is done. i'll try not to go on and on again because i think it might be boring when i natter loads. SO:


Thanks to all you guys who never mentioned the cpu fan was on the wrong way round. In the end, I did notice, but only after I put up the pictures :s I did briefly think, 'is this right?' at the time, but somehow did it wrong anyway. Embarrassing newbie mistake- i blame it on the lack of fitting diagrams, of course.
Anyway, after attaining some isopropyl alcohol- an experience that led to meeting the world's most terrifyingly efficient shop assistant- and some thermal paste, the problem was fixed most easily. If anything, it added some extra fun to project.


....

It Fucking Works!

(The DVD drive is disconnected here because i was hearing a kind of squeeling, shuffling sound and was trying to work out what it was. In the end i found it was a power saving feature on the motherboard which could be turned off)


This was my favourite moment. When windows and all the drivers had been installed, i was able to see what it thought of the system hardware. It got everything right! So wonderful.. It's self aware.. I nearly cried!

Just because it works, of course, does not mean that in any way it's finished.


Fuckin light sabres! UV ones! Yaaaaay!! Oh man.. What the hell is wrong with me..
The cables are bound in uv reactive pvc. It was actually some feser tube meant for water cooling, but i cut it in a spiral (my finger did get split as well.. it's healing quite well though) and used it for this instead. I've no interest in water cooling before anyone asks.


The side panel has been given a window. I went to my parents this weekend, so me and my dad spent a day cutting into it with a jigsaw, and drilling holes into the plastic. Drilling every one of those holes was most tedious, we had to do it in shifts to make it bearable. It doesn't look like a lot looking at it, but it felt like forever. It probably won't let a lot of air through tbh, but i've found i don't really need to use that side fan anyway. Also, handy hint of the day: Don't bother trying to cut plastic sheets with a jigsaw.. the plastic melted behind the saw and welded itself back together! Amusing, but pretty fucking unhelpful. Anyway the window:



And now with the UV cathodes:




It's still looking quite dull, uninspired (and messy) though. One idea i had was to paint some design onto the window in UV reactive ink. The stuff is surprisingly hard to find though. Also i'd like to arrange the cables better somehow (that IDE cable pisses me the fuck off) and put some more colour/ UV ness inside. This something i like:


off of this guy here.

And then, there's this:

Fuckin bastard! i'm so having this idea!

Wot Saarffampten finks: Round 3

Same place, different poster. Think this one lasted about a week at most.


It says "Youtube common people" which i think refers to the multitude of youtube videos mocking the tories to the soundtrack of the common people:



On the other side it says "We can't afford the toffs" which i think refers to things like the time he claimed over £80,000 for various stuff on his second home in oxfordshire, including things like clearing the wisteria, repairing a leaky washing machine and replacing the outside lights.

Not that all other politicians are any better of course, i've little faith in the system so this is by no means an endorsement for anyone, i would never do that. You're all clever enough for me to not have to do that.

Traveller's Thoughts (Real ones)

On the train today i was listening to a track close to my heart. It's a 45 minute long IDM mix that evokes a sensation the of cold, distant digital communication of satellites venturing into the dark unknown. I first listened to it on a night i spent the whole evening reading about early space exploration, which is probably why, but still i cannot imagine it making sense with anything else. I may load it up and add it on here, if any of you are actually interested in listening to a 56mb track anyway.

This is really only a few thoughts (fleshed out since with links and videos) about the prospect of human life on other planets. Like most people space exploration really interests me. At least thinking about it does. Imagine the awesomely surreal things we might find, and imagine personally being amongst the first to see it- how far you would be from old human civillisation at that point, both in body and mind.
Inevitably though, any practical colonisation destroys that very beauty of those worlds. Any planet that we settle on will have to be similar to earth for us to exist comfortably on it, and if it isn't, we will have to make it so. On Earth, gravity is 1G, days take 24 hours, water covers 71% of the planet, humans are at the top of the food chain. Our civillisation- and the technology that sustains it- rely on these kinds of fundamental facts and profound changes will have to happen in any culture that settles where it is different. Colonising other worlds are not events that will happen overnight, they may take generations to happen.

Take Mars for example. Mars is actually pretty similar to us in some fundamental ways- the days are only slightly longer than ours, and its tilt (which defines variations in daylight hours) is only 2° more extreme than ours. However.. it's gravity is only 0.38G, air pressure a fraction of ours- and much, much thinner than humans can handle without suits. Mean temperature is -63°C, meaning even if you managed to raise the temperature by 60 degrees, water still freezes. Also, the years (and seasons) are twice as long, though that's probably more a novelty than a problem. Maybe taller buildings could be built on Mars, on account of lower gravity, but fuel would be in higher demand because of the lower average surface temperature.

More fundamental though is the impact on our biology. If astronauts struggle to stand or sit up when they return from only a week in space, I wonder if children born on Mars could ever visit Earth, with the dramatic increase in gravity that they have never been exposed to? Perhaps after a few generations the ability to gain enough muscle would have been lost? And what about height, would martian children grow taller? If the weight of the head on the shoulders is a limiting factor to its size, would martian offspring be able to develop bigger brains?


Then there is interplanetary communication. Empires must be well connected to stay strong. Radio messages, sent at the speed of light, take between 3 minutes (when mars is next to earth) and 22 minutes (when it's on the other side of the sun) to transfer. Double that time if you're waiting for a reply (maybe more if they're crap at getting back back to you right away). That really renders everyday communications like telephone conversations, internet connections, live broadcasts etc between planets impractical, though it's still enough time for more general information to transfer and stay relevant. If we are fortunate enough to find a habitable planet around Alpha Centauri, the next closest star (a binary system in fact), a one-way radio transmission takes 4 over years- a goverments' turn in office could be completed in that time. That planet would pretty much be on it's own.. 8 years is too long a lag for any kind of interplanetary consultation, let alone to call for back up in a crisis. And that is the next closest star to us. Our methods of travelling and sending information through space seriously needs to be reformed if we're going to make any realistic stab at this. Maybe even to involve portals and wormholes.


Anyway back to Mars. As this rocket scientist explains, the toughest part of Martian (and any space) colonisation is actually getting stuff there, especially living things.
Aside from travel to Mars taking months, the actual landing of heavy equipment is a problem, as descent parachutes wouldn't do enough in such a thin atmosphere. But don't panic.. A solution to this is the very sexy space elevator:



So what to do with Mars if we do get there? It's cold, dry, the atmosphere is thin and unbreathable. Apparently, you can terraform it. The process will take several generations, so it's quite a selfless futuristic investment. Some ideas on how this insane process might work is discussed here, on this otherwise awful documentary:



(Really? I mean "humanity in 7 billion years time"? Really? Isn't the earth only supposed to be 3-4 billion years old? We're talking a timescale twice as long as life could have even existed for.. If there is any single species that can in someway be identifiable as 'humans' in 7 billion years time, something has gone horridly wrong)

Other planets like Venus have also been discussed. Given Venus has an atmosphere 90 times denser than ours, full of sulphur and carbon dioxide and gets as hot as 500°C, you can see how laughable that suggestion is.. though, only by our current capabilities. The easy answer is 'terraform it!' to get this result:


..you kinda see how every planet in our wake is just going to be turned into another earth. I think thats a bit sad, yknow? 'Colonisation of alien worlds' my arse, it's just turn any bit of rock into an earth look alike.

Well, some nutter called Geoffrey Landis came up with a solution to both problems: instead of trying to live where it's 500°C and 90 Atmospheres down on the surface, just live where it's 1 Atmospheres and 0-50°C instead: in the Venusian cloud tops. Breathable air (for humans) is bouyant on venus, like how helium is on earth. If our cities were enclosed, they would float with the clouds, above the acidic ocean. We could sail about and drop an anchor, like a ship in the sea, only without any land i guess. but still that's cool, amirite?

Even so, the year and days are very different on venus. Years are 8 months long, and a Venusian year has.. wait for it.. less than two days a year. Thats over two months of daylight, followed by over two months of night. Sunset and sunrise probably last a whole earth day or something.. and given its coloured, hazey atmosphere, theyre probably very ambient and pretty.

Something i often wonder about is how our sense of time will be changed on other planets. Our current units of days, months and years are based on Earth cycles. What will we do on other planets? carry on counting out minutes as if nothing had changed, or start working to new systems? Remember there's some real weird ones out there. Uranus spins on its side, like a wheel, so while the day/night cycle is rapid at the equator, at the poles it is the same as a year, and by that we're talking 84 years. What will these new timescales to our heads? I'm not aware of any experiments that reveal how well humans adapt to longer (or shorter) sleep/ wake periods, though having said that, i seem to end up doing it to a certain extent quite naturally.

I get this feeling it's time to shut the fuck up now. At this point i wanted a picture of Spider Jeruselum on Mars talking about the terraforming program to finish off the post, but i'm lending that book out to a friend at the moment so i can't scan it right now. As a substitute, i tried finding a picture of Invader Zim on Mars, but google images was fruitless on this. So instead, have summa this: