If you love Portal, run Linux, and are Furry, I have a geek moment for you!

Do you love Portal? Are you a Furry? Do you normally run Linux? I have the commands for you:

ffmpeg -i animalking.bik -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 65535 -qmin 3 -qmax 8 -g 600 -sameq -r 25 animalking.mp4 
xwinwrap -ni -o 0.6 -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -- mplayer -wid WID -quiet -loop 0 animalking.mp4

The first command takes the "Aperture Science Animal Kingdom Takeover Service Announcement" and converts it to a form useable by mplayer. The second commands runs the video in a loop in your background window.

Congratulations, you have now figured out how to waste CPU cycles turning your desktop's background into one found in a reception room of the Aperture Science Testing Facility.

Of course, you can convert any video in the Portal 2 media collection you like. I just thought this one was especially entertaining.

Orbiting Brain Lasers!

The Japanese have announced that they're putting an orbital space maser up in the next decade. A maser is a laser that transmits microwaves. The idea is that the orbital station will collect solar energy and convert it to a maser form, which will then be beamed down to a collection station and converted to electricity.

What happens when the ray gets off course? The Japanese will tell you that can't happen; the beam will shut down if it strays, but what if it does? Well, if it's aimed at a city, here's what happens: everyone within the radius of the beam will first feel very hot, and a clicking noise will happen in their ears. The liquid in the ears is highly susceptible to microwaves. The feeling of heat will rise, but there will be little pain. Then they'll go blind as the soft liquids in their eyeballs, a liquid highly exposed to the environment, solidifies like egg yolk. Finally, the pain will reach your brain centers shortly before your knees and elbows explode in blasts of steam and you collapse to the ground, your bone-shielded brain finally registering the damage done before it too ruptures.

Enjoy The Zombie-Free Garden

The Garden Is Made

I have started on the garden. A couple of spots on the grid are still empty; I haven't found anyone selling horseradish, for example, and that's what one of the grids is allocated for. This is only the largest of the garden spots, 8x4. There's still a pair of 4x2's on the western wall that I still need to till & fill.

I planted corn, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, bell peppers, anaheim chilis, carrots, celery, and mayan onions. The pumpkin area is overgrown with weeds, so that'll be fun, and the strawberries will need to be replanted to make room for the tomatoes, which go in two weeks from now.

I also want to get the herb buckets up and planted. Unfortunately, I can't do that until I clean the back porch off, and then clean and paint the deck above it. Lots of work to do. It was a rough, wet, miserable winter.

Oh, and if you look at the full-size image, you can see that my garden is well-defended from zombies, too.

Now, if only I knew how to deal with the damned slugs. The traps were not very effective last year. Then again, last year sucked as a growing season.

"Linux gives us the power we need to crush those who oppose us. It's compatible with our orbiting b

In case anyone's forgotten, orbiting brain lasers run Linux.