Gay
A short while back was the big anual Gay Pride event in Amsterdam. Lots of people, most of them straight, come outside, get on a boat sailing through Amsterdam’s canals, and celebrate how open-minded we are and how much gay people are accepted in our society.
But really, are they accepted?
‘Gay’ is still widely used as a swear word, as an insult, to indicate that something is bad in some way or to add emphasis to a negative remark. Most straight people, when asked about the subject, explain that they are totally okay with it if someone is gay, followed by very strongly emphasizing how they are not gay themselves. And there is the Gay Pride.
In my view, the Gay Pride is not so much a celebration of homosexuality being accepted, as it is an opportunity for straight people to go to the zoo and laugh at the apes. Except that the zoo is Amsterdam and the apes are the people on the boats. The whole problem is that we, as a society, are still making a clear distinction between straight people and gay people. And if you’re not in our group, you’re with the others, and that makes you more an object of curiosity (or ridicule) than anything else. Events like the Gay Pride that serve no purpose but to keep that separation intact.
And at the end of the day, what the hell are we busying ourselves with anyway? Unless you are actually romantically attracted to someone, does it really make any sort of difference to your life at all whether that person were to prefer penises, or vaginas, or both, or none, or any combination thereof?
We should just stop worrying so much about what other people do in their (generally private) bedroom (or living room, or kitchen, or bathroom, or car, or garden, or local park, or shopping mall, or…) all the time and instead worry about things that actually matter. Like what’s for dinner. Also, we should stop making any distinctions or judge people based on it. It’s great for you that you are whatever you are. You are straight, you are not. Also, I wore socks today, my car has tires, oranges that are less suitable as food than orange ones and the Earth is, by approximation, round.
But if it really adds something to your life to know this, I am straight, and like many men I have on occassion had curiosities but never enough to actually do anything with them. (Are you enlightened yet?) I know a great many people who prefer penises (as men), vaginas (as women), or both, or combinations thereof. Also, I know a great many people about whom I am not exactly sure what their sexual orientation is. Nor do I really care to. And does it have an effect on my life in any way?
Nope. Not a bit.
Deleted
MSN was displaying annoying ads lately for a dating site, telling that you should sign up. So, I clicked the ad, and sign up.
I made a profile for myself. Or well, sort of. On the site I was Albertus the Astronaut, a just-in-his-thirties male. A happy guy, friendly, atletic, nice, funny, warm, good listener, honest, good-looking, fond of children, and all those other things that people seem to consider good.
I was even about to add a picture from the Apollo moon landing.
And now they decided that the information was inaccurate, and this morning I received an e-mail that they are deleting my profile.
Apparantly, they’re never satisfied.
Long
So, even with the fastest quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU that can reasonably be bought and quite possibly the most insane amount of RAM I’ve ever stuck on any single motherboard, Windows Setup still takes forever.
Yep, you guessed it. I am (finally) upgrading my PC 
Insensitive
It is official. I am completely insensitive to caffeine.
I had a can of Monster Energy. This is one of those drinks that you’re not really supposed to have more than one of per day, because the amount of caffeine you’d get at that point would be plain unhealthy.
But alas, an hour later I was sound asleep 
Unending
So, it is finally over. With the last episode of Stargate Universe having aired a little while ago, and the movies that were planned, cancelled, the Stargate franchise is no more. It is a sad day in television history.
I have to admit though, that the backstory of Universe sounded more interesting than (most of) the series turned out to be. But in the last half of the second season, it finally started to become really good. And now the show is cancelled, on a cliffhanger no less, with no hope of resolving it in the foreseeable future. Back when Atlantis was cancelled in favor of Universe – the producers basically could choose between continuing Atlantis or starting Universe – I thought it was a shame but Universe sounded like it had potential. Even though Universe had it’s good parts, now I mostly think they shouldn’t have cancelled Atlantis.
But still, SG-1 was the best. Apophis remains one of my all-time favourite villains (though Farscape’s Scorpius has more than a little brilliance to him as well).
Goodbye, Stargate. You will be missed.
Slaapliedje
Een variatie op het bekende liedje, nu in heerlijke foute versie speciaal voor kleine meisjes.
Slaap, kindje, slaap
Daar buiten loopt een knaap
Een knaap die laat zijn piemel zien!
Lust jij ook nog wat lekkers misschien?
Slaap, kindje, slaap
Daar buiten loopt een knaap
Freelancing
Why are there so few good space-based games around?
This is a question I’ve asked myself over and over. A couple weeks back, I did a playthrough of Freelancer for the third time. Freelancer is kind of dated, but it’s still one of the few really good space games there are (plus flying inside a Dyson sphere near the end is just awesome). It has many flaws (they actually referred to slowing down a spacehip (whilst in space) as braking. Ugh!), but there’s nothing quite like it.
Then we have Sins of a Solar Empire. A really awesome real-time strategy game. Unlike most RTS’es, which take place on relatively tiny pieces of land commanding a few hundred units on the battlefield at best (which, compared to any real war, is absolutely nothing), SoaSE takes place in space. We’re not conquering a village, we’re conquering planets. Or solar systems, if you’re playing on a large map (and you are very patient). You get to build pretty big fleets of starships and send them out to level out an entire enemy planet. And then do it again a couple more times. It too, has its flaws (for starters, I always tend to make really really big games with huge maps and lots of players and end up never finishing the game because it takes at least a couple of days to do so) but damn it is awesome.
But that doesn’t take away the fact that there are so few of these awesome space games. For once, I’d love to see a really good game, without the flaws that the current ones have. A few thoughts:
- Please, please, please, bother to read up on some basic physics. There is no such thing as ‘braking’ in space. Or a speed limit (except for the speed of light, of course) – there’s just a maximum rate of acceleration/deceleration.
- Continuing on the first point, planets kind of tend to move around a star. It is incredible how often this is forgotten. In Freelancer, there are ‘trade lanes’ between planets – ring-like structures that facilitate reasonably fast travel. In reality, these are completely unfeasible due to planets rotating around their star at different relative speeds. The same goes for whatever the mechanism in SoaSE is called.
Also, distance between the planet and star vs. the planet being habitable. The distance is a really big factor in the surface temperature of the planet, and thus, its habitability. Planets with acceptable temperatures don’t generally occur close to, or far away from, a star. - Likewise, it is astonishing how often it is forgotten that space is just really really big. In Freelancer, you can fly a circle around a planet in about a minute or so. And planets, for some reason, are only one or two kilometers in diameter. In the real world, a two kilometer rock in space is hardly more than a pebble. Not to mention the distance between planets being no more than about 20 or 30 kilometers.
When I’m looking at a planet from the bridge of a ship, I want to go ‘oh crap, that’s a big rock’. When I look at the distance to the next closest planent, I want to go ‘oh crap, that’s a long way’. - Also, being a little bit reasonable when it comes to building and landing ships wouldn’t hurt. Building huge ships on the ground and launching them into space (or landing them on a planet) is just not feasible; their mass would require enormous amounts of energy to propel into orbit. Instead, space elevators to transport people and material into orbit are the way to go, with shipbuilding/maintenance/docking facilitiets on orbit. Elevators provide a cheap and efficient way of transporting stuff back and forth; launching something into space by other means is (or landing) is really difficult. Likewise, launching or landing is a difficult manouver that takes time. In Freelancer, I’m pretty sure I heard the phrase “see you in space in a few minutes”. Make that at least an hour (even assuming launching right then and there is possible).
- Randomly generated non-player controlled traffic is fine. But when I encounter a trade convoy that claims to be hauling oxygen from a space station to a terrestial planet…
- And finally, a spaceship (especially one that never lands) really has no practical use for wings. Sure, they can be used as weapon mount points or something like that, but generally speaking, aerodynamic surfaces will not do you much good in a (near) vacuum.
We could go on like this for a while, but yeah. You get the idea
500th
I am just posting the fact that I am now officially in the top 500 of WhatPulse users!
On to first place, then! (A)
Sleep at Night
Really, Notch?
Someone clearly doesn’t understand how software development works.
Earth Hour
This is just fucking hilarious. Earth Hour. Come on, what the hell?
Here we are, on the planet Earth. A rare and precious jewel in the infinite void of the Universe. The only place we know of capable of sustaining human life, and the only place we know for certain to have life in any capacity in the first place. If Earth wasn’t here, or it was just a little bit warmer or colder or the whole balance of it was just off a little bit, we would never have evolved the way we are now.
And in return, we turn off a few lights for an hour.
It is so absurd and ridiculous that it’s just really funny.
Not to mention this quote from YouTube: “Earth Hour – One person has the power to make change.”
Havn’t had a laugh that good in some time.