Penny Hero (dot) Net

U.S. Passports to Receive Electronic Identification Chips (WashingtonPost)

Slashdot linked to this article about the new chips in US passports, which I don’t exactly understand (I haven’t been keeping up on this) and don’t yet have a strong opinion about it one way or another as far as having one in MY passport is concerned. But this section of the article has me very very confused:

In issuing the new rules, the department is matching a requirement it is imposing on visitors from several other countries. Foreigners from countries who do not need visas to enter the United States also must have the chips by next October. Such countries will be responsible for providing their citizens with passports that comply with U.S. entry requirements.

What does this mean? What countries does this refer to? What if THEIR governments decide that having these chips are a breach of their citizens privacy rights? Aren’t we imposing on other countries personal security laws and policies by imposing our legislation on other countries?

Does this mean Canadians (for example) can’t cross the border? Does this mean that alien workers or illegal immigrants will have yet ANOTHER thing they can be busted for if they’re caught trying to make money for themselves/their familiy? Not to mention human trafficking victims…

Also, this basically requires that foreign countries should spend money developing and implimenting something that perhaps they can’t afford. is this being imposed on poorer countries where technologies are not at the same level as ours are?

Basically i want to know more about this part of the legislation. If this was only going to apply to American passports, then I might not have a problem… or at least, not this problem.

Anyway, back to studying.

I just cheated and downloaded the 100% completion ending cut-scenes for metroid prime I and II. I’m a bad person.

But holy shyst. I have a strange and sneaky suspicion that I will be bloody buying the new nintendo console just so I can play the third game. That evil dark bitch of a phazon clone. Ruining my evening… and possibly my life. (at least now I know where she came from.)

So, the first ending had a shot of her face without her helmet on. A nice close-up flyby. The sequel’s ending has a nice sequence of her standing all heroic-like with nothing but a blue jumpsuit on. She flips her hair around and everything. So, what’s the third game’s ending going to be? Plain-clothes? a bikini? Nekkid? hahah. I hope it’s not some stupid stunt like that. Oh my god! Maybe she’ll makeout with dark samus! hot twin lesbian bounty-hunter sex! (oh please kill me now.)

Anyway, I better fucking sleep now. It’s wayyy later than I want it to be.

At least I won’t be tempted to play the games again in the near future. Since I cheated and spoiled it for myself and all. (if you want these files, let me know and I’ll link you)

Quote of the day from robojamie.com

“The current PowerBook reeks of 2002.”

Hahahaha. Quoted from the end of a little blurb about Apple’s switch to Intel chips.

A lot of people misunderstand synaesthesis and think that one sense actually gets imposed on or mixed up with another sense… that we have distracting hallucinations or that we’re completely unable to even see the number 2 if it’s written on paper of the wrong shade of green for example. (hahaha.)

So, while reading about cognition and how we create and compose patterns on the information we recieve in order to process it, I came up with a way to explain my type of synaesthesis to people who don’t have it:

If you look at a picture of a heart (like this: ♥) printed in say, black ink on white paper, what color is most likely to also pop into mind? Many people (especially in western cultures) already have a color associated with that icon and would say pink or red, right? If you look at a black and white photo of a banana, what color or smell might your mind also recall? Yellow and banana smell, right?

While these types of associations are usually culturally or experiencially constructed, having synaesthesis is very similar to this type of perception. When I see a number or letter, my mind also percieves or knows that the character is also a certain color or texture, similarly to how someone looking at a black and white banana might also still percieve or know that it is yellow. It’s not that something is imposed on it, and it’s also not as if the text visually is a color that it’s not on the page (the ink really is still black on white). It’s just another aspect of the text that I’m aware of.

Anyway, this kind of analogy or description might be useful to those of us who has ever wanted to explain it to someone else, or whose been faced with a philosophy or psychology teacher (or in my case, a math teacher) who totally botches their description of it.

Cross-posted in my blog and .

A lot of people misunderstand synaesthesis and think that one sense actually gets imposed on or mixed up with another sense… that we have distracting hallucinations or that we’re completely unable to even see the number 2 if it’s written on paper of the wrong shade of green, for example. (hahaha.)

So, while reading about cognition and how we create and compose patterns on the information we recieve in order to process it, I came up with a way to explain my type of synaesthesis to people who don’t have it:

If you look at a picture of a heart (like this: ♥) printed in say, black ink on white paper, what color is most likely to also pop into mind? Many people (especially in western cultures) already have a color associated with that icon and would say pink or red, right? If you look at a black and white photo of a banana, what color or smell might your mind also recall? Yellow and banana smell, right?

While these types of associations are usually culturally or experiencially constructed, having synaesthesis is very similar to this type of perception. When I see a number or letter, my mind also percieves or knows that the character is also a certain color or texture, similarly to how someone looking at a black and white banana might also still percieve or know that it is yellow. It’s not that something is imposed on it, and it’s also not as if the text visually is a color that it’s not on the page (the ink really is still black on white). It’s just another aspect of the text that I’m aware of.

Anyway, this kind of analogy or description might be useful to those of us who has ever wanted to explain it to someone else, or whose been faced with a philosophy or psychology teacher (or in my case, a math teacher) who totally botches their description of it.

Cross-posted in my journal and my blog.

To do:

• Yoga: Lab 3
• Eng495:
  • Read Manguel to p161
  • Journal
  • draft of essay
• Wr411:
  • Read Lindemann p86-108 + journal
  • Take notes on TESOL Quarterly, email April
• Wr324:
  • Read/write letters for 2 student stories
  • read stories in O’Henry (4?) + analysis [dropped 324. :( :( :(]
  • decide on workshop story idea + draft
• Dinner between 7:30 and 8:30
• quitplayingwithubuntuyoualreadyfixedyouropenglproblems
• no alcohol

I had dreams about spiders again last night. Only this time, they weren’t attacking me. I was killing them. I distinctly remember two spiders. One that looked like a smaller, more translucent hobo-spider, and a second one that was rounded and furry like a tarantula, but was gray and soft sort of like a kitten. The brown-hobo was on a wall somewhere, and I don’t remember killing it, but I know I did because when I killed the gray fuzzy one, I knew that this was the “second” spider I’d killed in this manner.

In my dream, I was trimming the green bushes that were growing in an alternating green-yellow-green-yellow hedge in the back of someone’s yard. The green hedges were dying, and the yellow ones were still growing, so the hedge looked a little like the edges of castle walls. There were cobwebs and sticky materials that I had to clean out before I could trim the green bushes. And at one point, I reached in with my shovel/broom and scouped out a bunch of sticky webs, and the gray spider crawled out slowly from under my shovel. I pressed down on him and felt his body give way. I saw liquids and skin smashed together, and saw his legs curl up until he looked like he was made of paper.

His texture and softness is what I remember most. I don’t know why. It was like I was killing an animal until he was dead. and then he was just another frightening spider.

I’m so fricken awesome.

I just got internet today at home, so I’ve been busy upgrading ubuntu and stuff. I just solved two rather scary problems with my system without any help from anyone!

I read the error messages, looked at the logs it told me to, searched the forums, and FIXED BOTH MY PROBLEMS.

The first problem was a firefox-update error that made my installation of firefox completely unresponsive and also unable to be updated. (fixed that by removing and reinstalling from scratch)

The second was much more frightening. I rebooted my machine after a large series of updates, and X wouldn’t start. it gave me all kinds of frightening errors and finally dropped me into a scary blue and gray error and log menu interface and told me glx would be disabled until I correctly configured something.

Scary.

But luckily I have my trusty ibook with an internet connection and with the Power of Google, I learned how to reinstall nvidia drivers from the terminal and that lots of other people had this same problem.

Ok. Shut up, all you people who are thinking to yourselves “well duh, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. Why does she think this is so amazing?” Because I’m a fricken noob! And usually it takes me hours and hours to figure anything out in ubuntu and I usually end up asking Gavin, Graham or Arya (sometimes all three… at once) for help.

Maybe I’m graduating away from noob status finally. :) I just feel special and fuzzy. Someone give me a high-five.

In Other News: If you can’t tell, I totally don’t want to read for history right now.

I had an idea this morning when I woke up.

the digital music industry people should develop a product that lets people easily rip cd tracks to a digital format and transfer them to a portable player without the use of a computer. If they were smart, they’d try to bypass the computer entirely and create a “legitimate” (*cringe*) way to transfer purchased cds to an mp3 player. “Legitimate” because obviously since playing cds on a computer is a “privilege” and not a right (one of many stories), there’s a need for a “real” way to get legally owned cd music onto a digital player.

I imagine this product to look like a cd player (and maybe even double as one). It would have either a memory stick or a cable that would allow for the easy transfer of tracks directly into a digital music player. The two toys might even be sold together.

Better yet, a new standard in digital music players should be that they’d each come with their own unique ripping device.

They could give the device a limited wireless connection and let it connect to a database of track names and disc names (but probably not an open public one). Or, cd manufacturers could add a little extra data to their cds and digitally write all the tracks in.

You could give the device direct access to digital music stores too. Do everything possible to prevent it being connected to a computer.

The idea needs work, and maybe someone has already tried it. I think it would solve the stupid music industry’s hatred for people ripping and sharing music.

Personally, I hate the idea of this device, and I’d never ever ever buy one. But it would make the transfer of legally owned cds to a portable player a lot easier. I get really annoyed that I have to connect my player to the network in order to transfer files to it. I’d love to be able to just plug it into a cd player.

It would be a little like mini-disc recorders that would let you plug into a cd player’s headphone plug and record whatever was playing.

Someone let me know if someone’s already tried this.

Ok, back to my essay.

I’ve just been called “a bastard child of a CS major”.

I think that’s good, no? Yes?