I did. Both live outside alternating with the view from NASA Streamed from Griffith Observatory. Quite a show! There'll be 3 more in the coming year - a full tetrad as it's known. 
I posted this on facebook yesterday as the eclipse was reaching totality: 

Quote:The Moon right now looks rather a lot like Mars, actually.
I have to wonder - what would this show look like from out there on the Moon?
You'd be able to see the dark side of the Earth where a few minutes before the Sun would've been blocking it out. And all around the Earth would be the rim of light from the sun refracting through the atmosphere. 
A continuous sunrise/sunset all around the edge of the disc of the Earth, with all the city lights gleaming at you on the night side.
And if you cast your Astronaut eyes through the faceplate of your helmet at the regolith at your feet - would it have that blood red light coloring everything? One of the few times that you'd see any color on the Moon itself other than stark black, white and grey.
And the stars! Normally you'd not be able to make out the stars in the glare of the sunlight off the lunar surface. But then, with the circle of the earth's night-side above and the sunlight only dimly coming through that band of fire at the outer edge of the atmosphere...
Man, what a show that would be!

Goddamnit. FUCK...

http://theorstrahyun.blogspot.com/2014/ ... -2014.html

Quote:AC/DC are ending their 41 year career on a terribly sad note.
Plans were underway for a new studio album, their first since 2008's monumental Black Ice, and a '40th Anniversary' world tour, 40 huge shows across the globe.
More than a month ago, founding member, rhythm guitarist, co-producer and co-songwriter Malcolm Young had a stroke, which left a blood clot on his brain.
When AC/DC reunited at the start of April to begin a month of rehearsals, in the lead-up to new album recording sessions, Malcolm discovered he couldn't play. At least, he couldn't play like he used to play.
Nothing has been officially confirmed, as of this writing, but friends and family members have been discussing what happened to Malcolm for the past couple of weeks. The blood clot, resulting from the stroke, is believed to be why Malcolm couldn't keep working.
Although friends have described Malcolm's condition as serious, it doesn't mean he won't recover. People do get better after strokes, and people do recover lost skills.
But friends and family of band members believe the decision was made last week to call it quits. 
Media in Australia have gone ballistic today on rumours of The End Of AC/DC, and it appears the news got out ahead of a planned official announcement from the band and management.

Quote:UPDATE:
Mark Gable, from The Choirboys, provides another confirmation on the sad news about Malcolm Young: 

Quote:"That is true, Malcolm is sick.
"From what I understand, and it's even been confirmed in part by his son Ross (Young), that it would appear Malcolm is unable to perform anymore. "It's not just that he is unwell, it's that it is quite serious. It will constitute that he definitely won't be able to perform live.
"He will probably not be able to record."

An official comment/announcement from AC/DC management is still expected today.
Fairfax media claims the following is from a "family source":

Quote:It is understood Young returned to Sydney with his family before Christmas and was having in-home care at his house in East Balmain. He is now said to be having difficulty remembering familiar faces and having increasing problems communicating.
"His memory loss is so bad it is consistent with Alzheimers or dementia although we do not know that is what it is. There has been talk about cancer too."

The response online, and on radio, to news of Malcolm's illness has been massive. If AC/DC were in any doubt that millions of people around the world still love and respect their music, and their skills and talent at songwriting, they should wonder no more.

What it says on the tin. Just throw some quotes/lines/snips at the wall and see what sticks.
"Worthless!" The heavyset man dressed on white with a fez bellowed at his scrawny associate. He lifted the black-painted statuette. "This 'Maltese Falcon' is made of gold!" (Fen collector trying to get one of the originals from the movie)
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

I just thought of this little bit over the weekend, and it makes me giggle madly for minutes on end.  Not sure I'll actually use it, more because of the facepalm factor than anything else -- believe it or not, it actually wouldn't be over the top for what's going to be happening in that fight, but it's the kind of thing that will make a reader groan and maybe throw away the fic.

A female voice momentarily rose over the din of the battle:
"...ghostly hauntings I turn loose!  Beetlejuice!  Beetlejuice!
Beetlejuice!"

The little corner of my mind not concerned with the fight blinked
at this.  Forget where the hell she'd *heard* that, whichever of
the summoners among my students that was.  Whyinhell did
she even think it would wor--

"It's *showtime*," a deep, gravelly voice said with immense
satisfaction.

Oh.

Fuck.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Finally took an hour to clean the text up and integrate the input from CG about the Neural Induction Helmet tech.

As we discussed in the "virtual pilot" thread I removed the ability to run mindstates on computer hardware or moving them between different bodies. This part became "ongoing research, do not hold your breath".

############

Mind Tech

» The ability to record, share and integrate memories, skills and feelings shaped Catgirl Industries as much as the existence of Handwavium itself. It taught us a new way to form a society. «
-- Excerpt of Cathy's “The logarithmic way through the Singularity”, Jenga 2051

»The technology is very useful, but its abuse potential is creepy as hell. We had some talks about dangerous tech and keeping a few friends informed when we finally discovered what was going on on Jenga.«
-- Captain Shepard of the Normandy, Space Patrol

The Mind Tech of Catgirl Industries is a mostly confidential technology, which is normally not shared with people outside of Catgirl Industries. Most of the applications and research results are directly based on a technology acquired from a Boskonian Mad called Quattro in 2015.

Streams of thoughts sensor (SOTs)

The development of the Streams of thoughts sensor began in 2015, shortly after the first modules of Jenga were finished. With the fresh memory of the horrors Quattro had done to them and the approval of Great Justice, Catgirl Industries began to look for a way to detect manipulations of a living mind.

The starting point of their experiments was a stripped down Machine-Brain interface, simplified enough to become a read only sensor. After some failed attempts to decrypt the memory fragments the detector were displaying on the connected computer, the catgirls discovered that natural memories had a huge number of interconnections, but still were organized in some kind of linear order.

In time comparison of natural and artificial memories showed that natural ones had a different quality of connectivity among each other, which made the artificial ones standing out in the sensor data.

It took years, but in mid 2017 Catgirl Industries had created a prototype detector that was able display parts of a person’s memory as some colored line pattern, with artificial memories recognizable by a skilled operator. It took more years until the prototype became mobile and reliable enough to be used by specially trained investigators of GJ.
Memory Synthesis
Instead of keeping their research to detecting or maybe even preventing the manipulation of memory, Catgirl Industries also tried to look into a different kind of usage of Quattros technology. While storing a complete mind wasn’t possible for the computers on Jenga in the early years, the development of the SOTs allowed the catgirls to see the glimpse of another option.

In late 2018 Catgirl Industries successfully copied the complete memory of a language skill from the mind of a catgirl into a computer. After experimenting with the extracted data for quite some time, Catgirl Industries discovered that it was also possible to add them to the memory of another catgirl, allowing them to add the ability to speak the language within a few weeks instead of months or years.

Soon afterwards many catgirls at Jenga began to record knowledge skills of their own, trading them between each other. The creation and trading of advanced knowledge skills became an alternative currency within Catgirl Industries, authors of new knowledge software updates (also called ‘knowsoft’) could call in all kind of small favors from other catgirls.

Active Memory Syntheses is not about overwriting memories and experience in the brain, but about adding to the existing ones. While modified and extended over the years, it still use a similar hardware than Quattro used in 2015. In 2023 Catgirl Industries is still finetuning the process for non-catgirl brains to offer a 'language quick learning' service in the future.

The Third Eye

The Third Eye has its own page.

Neural Induction Helmets

Catgirl Industries was not the only party that got their hand on Quattros memory manipulation technology.

The Neural Induction Helmets are a Brain-Machine interface developed at Prometheus Forge. Its most common usage was as the interface of the KoFen system.

Following the Quattro Incident, the crew of Prometheus Forge spent a lot of time designing and making countermeasures for Brainhacking. While they focused on cybernetic interfaces, they did have experience with their existing Brain-Machine interface.

While not very public, the tech was used in several other places (fighter pilot helmets, the Mk. IV Patrol watches and comlinks among others) so it was also examined for possible misuse.

In normal use, the neural induction field reads and interdicts the senses of the user. It also tapped into the deep structures of the brain, connecting to what the technology’s creator (Robin Cain of the Supers) termed the ‘Intrinsic Self Image’ (part of what the Cybers called the Ghost line).

While it was possible to modify the tech to be dangerous, the efficiency of the induction field dropped off dramatically if done making it a losing proposition. The fact was the neural induction field was not strong/focused enough to read or overwrite memories.

Still, Prometheus Forge worked out tweaks to the design that improved its usual purpose but blocked most of the risk and gave it to the designer, as well as giving the risk assessment to Great Justice.

Mind Backups

While it was easily possible with Quattros tech to make a full copy of a person as long as there is a second body to upload the copy into, storing the full mindstate of a brain was difficult until mid 2020's. Advancements in the Streams of Thought sensor technology combined with new storage systems finally allowed a scientific breakthrough. At the same time the analysis and comparison of the global thought patterns also lead to a better compression. As soon as Moore’s Law and a new computer substrate made it easier to store multiple mind states in the storage arrays at Jenga, it became quite popular for many catgirls to keep a backup of themselves in a safe system.

Most of these backups have been encrypted with a shared key system, allowing a group of friends to access the backup together and revive a catgirl in case of a fatal accident. Mind states are considered too precious to allow any single person access to them and only Information-theoretic secure algorithms are allowed to be used in the process.

The content of a Mind State can only be run on the brain they have been recorded from, or on a brain of a medical clone of this body. An attempt to upload a Mind State to a different brain leads to data loss and a shallow copy. Catgirl Industries has an ongoing research project to resolve this issue and to run Mind States within simulated brains on a computer.

Trivia:

• There is an agreement of the Great Justice and Catgirl Industries that they do not try to market any Mind Tech related products without getting a clearance for them.
  

Or what happens when Ford Sierra is found on her workshop floor, naked from the waist down, glistening with sweat while surrounded by five prototype firearms, a bunch of dismantled guns in various condition, half an engine block and an empty bottle of 'Rocket Fuel' Klatchian Coffee Liqueur

**Anarchy and Discord.
"Two sides of one tasty apple"

It's an assault rifle, apparently from the FAL family judging by the receiver. It fires 7.62mm bullets, standard NATO size and takes any compatible magazine. It comes with a green laser aiming module. At first, it was thought to be the most basic of the five guns. In tests it seemed to perform no different to the standard FAL, except for an electronic 2x8-segment LED display on the stock that increments as bullets are fired, rather than keeping track of the remainder in the clip. The counter resets to zero each time the weapon is reloaded prematurely

The only other external difference was the fire select. Instead of switching between 'semi' and 'full' automatic, it now only differentiates between 'Anarchy' and 'Discord', delineated by a Circle-A and a golden Apple. It has no 'safe' mode. The weapon is thus, always live when it is loaded.

In Anarchy mode, the counter resets to zero each time a non-empty magazine is ejected. The higher the count goes, the worse the weapon's effective accuracy becomes, but the faster the rounds are expelled from the barrel, and the faster the action cycles. When the counter maxxes at 99, each bullet is travelling at approximately Mach 5 when leaving the barrel, but this is accompanied by a wayward flightpath that would appall a 17th-century pistol owner, and empties the magazine inside a second.

In Discord mode, the weapon can be reloaded at any time, but will only fire semi-automatic single shots. The electronic counter on the stock will begin to tick down on a timer, starting as soon as the weapon mode is switched. The weapon will be perfectly straight-shot accurate, with the fired bullet landing on the green laser spot. This effect lasts until the counter reaches zero, or the weapon is switched back to Anarchy mode. When the counter reaches 00, the rifle will continue to function as a conventional FAL in semi-automatic with no bonuses.

**Gunzerker Twins.
"The chosen weapons of A-team!"

Originally a standard Plasma Pistol and Plasma Carbine.

Both weapons appear corroded and battered, with the Carbine missing parts of the foregrip, and the Plasma-Pistol's magazine and igniter workings being opened and exposed. Both are quite capable of taking any compatible ammunition for the type.

When fired on full-auto, neither weapon will run out of ammunition until the trigger is released. Remaining rounds fire and do damage as normal. Rounds fired beyond the amount actually left in the magazine will not harm whoever they hit - though they will feel like they've been shot, at least up until they realise they haven't. An otherwise 'lethal' hit to head or heart will temporarily knock someone unconscious. When using blank gel ammunition, all expended cartridges function like this.

They must be carried as a pair by one person. When separated, they will refuse to fire in full-auto. Both may always fire in semi-automatic mode as normal. Dual-wielding is especially cool.

Attempts have been made to replicate both for Survival Shot training use.

**Bad Touch.
"I can't help it, I'm just built that way".

Unknown 9mm sub-machine gun. Uses a unique rotary magazine type. May have been partly build out of a CGI Eezo prototype. It's heavy, being made mostly from machined metal with an unusual side-loading rotary magazine and combined power cell. Padding on the stock is a firm foam that is warm to the touch. Internally, it is somewhat similar to a boosted railgun, with the initial pyrotechnic charge of the ammunition being used to cycle the weapon's action and power coming from a cell in the magazine. Painted in a bright, shocking pink.

It has an extremely high rate of for for a handheld weapon, emptying a 60-round magazine in under a second.

Vibrates. Vibrates a lot. It is truly a very enjoyable gun to use for some. Shooting a magazine is definitely an arousing thing to do... only one compatible magazine exists. Attempts to replicate it and its powersupply have failed. Reloads are, therefore, a slow, tedious and frustrating affair.

Also. Bullets exit the barrel aflame with burning passion. They continue to burn until they strike their target. There is a 10% chance that the target will be set on fire if they are made of a flammable material and are in an atmosphere that supports combustion. Elemental effects are fun, aren't they?

**Shock and Awesome
"Affecting will, perception and Understanding"

Driver-Coil-Compensated semi-automatic Sniper Rifle, similar to the Long-Lance custom order types. Fires 20x100mm Vulcan practice rounds that release an electromagnetic pulse on impact with the target, capable of damaging systems vulnerable to EMP such as sensors and computers. It appears that this is some sort of static electricity effect between the barrel and the bullet.

The weapon is capable of firing all 20x100mm rounds, but the electroshock effect will only work with the otherwise inert blue-tip practice rounds. Otherwise, it functions exactly the same as the base rifle, with the same compensation effects, accuracy rates and quirks.

It's painted a deep, electric blue and makes a sound that has been described as 'Liquid Blue Electric Death' when being fired, a long blue streak joining the shooter to the target momentarily.

Accompanying the weapon is a broken smartgun system built into the optics with a Delta-level intelligence named Exkay Seedy. Exkay teases the user in a high-pitched voice when they miss, miss repeatedly, when they reload, and when they hit by reminding them that the person they just shot had loved ones and a family. It uses interwave access and facial recognition tools to pull up details from the target's social networking profiles. It cannot be turned off.

---------------

2 of them are straight ripoffs. As for who finally ends up owning them... well.... that depends.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

Hi, our Fenspace wiki has trouble rendering correctly in Chrome, most likely because of some ancient KHTML bug workaround (see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... ?id=346638 ).

Are there still people using KHTML anymore? Maybe we could fix the KHTMLfixes.css file?

Interesting little PSA from our friends at Slate Magazine.  I am curious though if the numbers really do check out.
  //www.youtube.com/v/vAcaeLmybCY?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/04/09/wr ... dies-at-54
Just after he ended his feud with WWE management and was inducted into the Hall of Fame, too . . .!

Yeah, it seems I got a few.  Trouble is, some do not have that nifty little automatic gift link for when you already own a copy of the game.  So how do I go about gifting a Steam Key without a gift link?
And for the curious, I got an extra copy each of FEZ, Hotline Miami, and I think two for Little Inferno.