Captain Shanty's Weekly Daily

Have you ever wondered how exactly you listened to a song hosted...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:24:47 -0500

Have you ever wondered how exactly you listened to a song hosted on a random website in India, or got news from a server in the UK? Well these Death Star-esquely vulnerable cables are what makes that possible.

I mean the point is to give more daylight, but its funny worth a...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:29:00 -0500

I mean the point is to give more daylight, but its ~~funny~~ worth a chuckle nonetheless.

HIPPIES REBORN As the new movement in America spreads around,...

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:08:00 -0400

HIPPIES REBORN

As the new movement in America spreads around, and people begin to wonder if a “regime change” is near, allow me to direct your attention, yet again, to what stands in their way.

Its that, but thousands and thousands of them. And, of course, if it does become a full-scale rebellion (unlikely with the obvious lack of initiative and the apparent sense of diluted nationality, so to speak) then what stands in their way becomes a thousand times worse; a 500,000$ to train soldier, equipped with any dollar amount you can name of lethal equipment.

I go over the top with the explanations and visuals to displace any idea of believing a bunch of reborn hippies can do anything, but it is very funny, and I get to post pictures of riot police :D

Is that not what I’ve been saying this entire time?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:57:42 -0400

Is that not what I’ve been saying this entire time?

I’m posting this for hippie day. :D

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:24:27 -0400

I’m posting this for hippie day. :D

Your argument is invalid. That’s a crying plant.

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:03:18 -0400

Your argument is invalid. That’s a crying plant.

Magíík Réal

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:46:16 -0400

Write down any number:

886328712442992

Count up the number of even and odd digits, and the total number of digits:

10 5 15

String those together to make a new number, and perform the same operation on that:

10515

1 4 5

And keep iterating:

145

1 2 3

You’ll always arrive at 123.

I don’t know why, but its probably got something to do with something obvious (but still requires a bit of thinking to realize). Oh and it works only if you aren’t a smartalek, so using a single digit or the same number over and over is quite scurrilous (yes I realize that word doesn’t EXACTLY fit here, but oh well, I wanted to use it).

Foosball, its serious.

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:07:33 -0400

Foosball, its serious.

I want one; actually, I want to make my own.

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:20:20 -0400

I want one; actually, I want to make my own.

Lawlz

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:38:44 -0400

Lawlz

Instruments

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:43:28 -0400

I now want both a Sitar and a Didgeridoo. Would a song “composed” with both of those not be radical?

On a lighter note (watch the video, you'll get the pun)

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:46:38 -0400

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcmMW772slI

Adam Savage from Mythbusters

Magnetar Doomsday, Hurray

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:43:06 -0400

If you already intend to tl;dr out of this, let me nutshell it for you:

There are Neutron Stars composed entirely of Neutronium (a thimble of it would weigh approximately 100 million tons) called Magnetars. These horrendous stars are the machinations of the devil I suspect, as when something happens to them (such as they distabalize; and if you’re physical qualities are like theirs, its a wonder you last at all), they send out omnidirectional gamma radiation bursts large enough to evaporate everything on our planet. In fact, we’ve been hit with three (But Yale, you said it would kill us all like Darth Vader vs. Ewoks!); but thankfully they came from so far away, only one of them did “anything”; it displaced our ionosphere. If something 50,000 light years away can noticeably— and at least temporarily damagingly— disrupt our atmosphere, imagine what it would do if it were close.

Granted that wasn’t exactly as short as I intended it to be, but whatever. I had a lot I wanted to say on the subject. Its a cool idea anyways, I think when I write Sanctuary 3: Nightfall, I’ll include some sort of ship (not from the Phratry or Humans, that’s far too advanced of a weapon for them) that has the capability of firing gamma radiation in bursts from controlled magnatars.

If you would, answer the following question:

Is that too out there?

This is rather long

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:34:00 -0400

This article is a translated French soldier’s opinion of American forces. I add my own bit of commentary below it.

BEGIN

“We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing “ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events”. Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day ? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company.

They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever state they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other.

Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine (Heh. More like Waffle House and McDonalds) - they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.

Here we discover America as it is often depicted : their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley. Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that : the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location : books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions : the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.

And they are impressive warriors ! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.

And combat ? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks : they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting : they just charge ! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.

[this is the French soldier, not me, to avoid confusion] This is the main area where I’d like to comment. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: ‘If your officer’s dead and the sergeants look white/remember it’s ruin to run from a fight./So take open order, lie down, sit tight/And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. ‘In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.’ Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other ‘incident’, the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.

This is one of the great strengths of the American force in combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly surprising. No wonder it surprises the hell out of our enemies.)

We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.

To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America’s army’s deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers”.

END

[This next bit is going to be mostly filled with gloating about our Army being better than everyone else]

Interestingly enough, as he talks about American fitness, even the most regular unit in our Army’s PT scores are ahead of those of the special forces of all other nations and even our own as close as the Vietnam war.

They exceed both the PT scores as well as IQ and educational levels of the: Waffen SS, WWII Rangers, WWII Airborne and British ‘Commando’ units during WWII.

It is my opinion that the per-unit combat functionality of the modern American army is essentially unmeasurable, because in order for a quality to be measured, there must be comparison; and there is no comparison in the industrial period’s combat history (going father back we obviously outdo them).

If nothing else, this demonstrates an evolution of Humanity; it shows that we’ve continued to progress physically and mentally. Why that is is due to a number of factors (naturally :P), but its just an interesting thought.

On another note, of course the soldiers are always happy and well mannered; there’s an officer with a stick somewhere nearby to make sure of that.

<_<

>_>

I hope it was of some interest to you. Ayez une belle journée, mes amis!

Google+

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 02:05:00 -0400

“I’m never getting that!”

Two days later

https://plus.google.com/

Look me up.

Sardines

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 22:12:06 -0400

If pierce hadn’t seen me before my 2 minutes were up, I never would have been found… :P

I’m not sure who I was talking to about this, but I found...

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:41:15 -0400

I’m not sure who I was talking to about this, but I found the picture on my computer again.

Connections

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:22:57 -0400

My sister sent me a package an it had in it a stock broker’s pad from the next batman movie, Dharma Initiative water (Lost), and a blank that someone shot at her on-set for a movie.

ePiC

XD

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:29:39 -0400

Something to ponder

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:55:27 -0400

I realized this a few minutes ago, let me organize my thoughts in a tumblr post (where else, right?):

As the diameter of a circle increases, the curvature of a given length of its circumference decreases.

From that it follows that a circle as large as Saturn would seem to have no curvature; it would seem to be a straight line.

And a circle of infinite size would have no curvature at all, it would in fact be a straight line!

In essence:

(d —> ∞, Cu(Ci) —> -∞)

d= diameter

Cu(CI)= curvature of a given length of the circumference

Everything is weird once you get into infinites…