YouTube Earth Hour!

Watch this!

Ever heard of the Myst Movie?
mystmovie.com

Honestly, I don't know what this is for, or even why it's here, but honestly, I can't believe this is a thing! And how do I know it's Myst-ish stuff?

Suddenly their 2013 release prediction doesn't seem so crazy. As a "hardcore" Myst fan, I'm excited.

Dragonfly

I came across a picture that I drew last summer today.
I found a recently deceased dragonfly, and it was in such good condition that I took it home, and took all of its measurements, and drew it. As a result, its proportions are very exact. Take a look:

I had to make the image a bit smaller in order for it to be able to upload to blogger, so I'll put up a download of the full image.
UPDATE (25/03/2012): I now have the download up, you can get it here.

New Look For Blog

So I've made the background for this blog a shade of gray, because I thought it would be easier on the eyes, especially at night. What do you think?

The Samsung Galaxy... Thing Is Just A Stone

You may have seen this image before:

As a pro-iPhone person, you can imagine that this might've been a bit irritating. But instead of ranting about how half of these aren't even true, I've decided to make my own (which looks a lot worse, but too bad):




                                               Stone                             iPhone                                 Galaxy S2

Integrated Notification Management	no	yes	no
Retina Display	no	yes	no
Wirelessly Syncs Everything To All Your Devices	no	yes	no
Simple, Minimal Home Screen	no	yes	no
Internal A5 Chip	no	yes	no
Proximity Sensor	no	yes	no
PERSONAL ASSISTANT...	no	yes	no
Two 8MP Cameras	no	yes	no
Twitter Integration	no	yes	no
Automatic Downloads	no	yes	no
Flash Free Means No CPU Devouring	no	yes	no
Access To The World's Largest Music Reseller	no	yes	no
Access To The World's Largest Software Reseller	no	yes	no

So by that logic, the Galaxy S2 is a stone, just because it shares a few characteristics with one. That's like saying that because frogs make noise, and tubas make noise, frogs are tubas. If you do want to see my list of what's wrong and what's right, I have a short, rant free one:

1. True

2. True

3. False

4. False

5. False

6. True

7. False

8. True

9. False

10. True

11. False

12. False

13. True

And yes, I do call it the Galaxy Thing.

OpenOffice, LibreOffice, NeoOffice, etc. Won't Restore Windows

I think many people have had this problem, and I've found a solution (thanks to forum-type people).

A few months ago, OpenOffice, upon opening, would prompt me to restore or not restore windows. However, clicking either of the buttons would just reset the window to its default state without doing anything. And the only way to quit was with force quit.

So I got LibreOffice, a piece of software almost identical to OpenOffice, but, well, Libre.

It worked pretty well for a few months, but at some point it prompted me with the same error message.

At this point, I had a few options: I could get another word processor, I could try to fix it myself, or just not have access to any of my files. I have Pages, it's a great word processor, but it can't open .odt format, so I still wouldn't be able to open any of my files.

The first option was to get NeoOffice (yet another word processor). On its site, the latest version, supposedly "free", has to be paid for. Well, they say that you have to become a "NeoOffice Donor". Basically, they want you to give them money.

The next option was to fix it myself. I fished around for a few options, and I found one. It told me to go to:

Users/Library/Saved Application State

And delete the file:

org.openoffice.script.savedState

Unfortunately, the folder "Library" didn't seem to exist inside "Users", so I kind of gave up on that.

So that took me back to option one. But Pages still doesn't support .odt format. So I searched for a solution again, and found one that works. I've compiled the solution into some easy to follow images, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, and all you're trying to do is make a word document-

Also, I didn't have anything better to do. Anyway, here it is:

In Finder, open the "Go" menu.

Hold down option, and while doing so, click on Library, which just appeared.

Now, go to Library-Saved Application State-org.openoffice.script.savedState (if you're using libreoffice or neooffice, it will say that instead)

Move that entire folder to the trash, then empty it. Do you like my desktop picture?

Yes, it's supposed to say Blue Square - "K". Go away.

What's Up With The Hands?

So you may have noticed that I've been including little hand (and most recently, lightning bolt) images at the bottom of each post. You might be wondering, what are they for? Well, I started with my post about the MO:ULa update, so basically, they're shameless advertising for the Myst series.
But what are they?
They're a set of cursors from Riven, the second game in the Myst series. Here they all are:


        

So, yeah. By the way, speaking of Myst, look at this:

http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=383439#383439

'Tis exciting.

Two Things

The first thing I'd like to show you is something I've been meaning to post, but have never gotten around to. A lot of the stuff I post is actually pretty old, and I just kept it in reserve in case I run out of things to talk about. This being one of my "slow" periods, I thought I'd show it to you.

I don't think she understood my joke...

And, secondly:

Ooh, yeah, an angry husband coming home from the bar with a
baseball bat in hand! That's my idea of a great relationship!

Did I say two things? Well, I meant three:

People are absolutely brilliant. Especially on Youtube.

Oh, and

No Sound On Mac OSX

Recently, I was using my computer, when I realized that there was no sound, input or output. I restarted it, and everything was fine.

If you're having this problem, I hope this helps. In case you were too dumb to try restarting it first.


Oh, and

How Much Does The Atmosphere Weigh?

I wrote a program a little while back that calculates how much the atmosphere weighs. I never posted it here because first, I forgot, and second, it wasn't terribly accurate. But here it is:


#calculator for the total weight of earth's atmosphere
kmair=1.225*1000
print "Weight of one square kilometer of air (kilograms):", kmair
kmonground=kmair*510072000
kmongroundtons=kmonground/1000
print "Weight of Earth's atmosphere up to one kilometer in height (metric tons):", kmongroundtons
thermo=kmongroundtons*690
thousands=thermo/1000
print "Weight of Earth's atmosphere, excluding the exosphere (thousands/metric tons):", thousands
print "Written by Alexander MacTavish on 31/01/2012"
#and there you have it!


Anyway, as you can probably guess, I just did omse simple calculations, without taking into account particle distribution, and such stuff. And I'd love to add things like arced multiplications and stuff, but instead, I'm going to let anyone keep developing it to make it more accurate. Anyway, the current version of the program looks like this:

Oh, and

Stupid Stuff, Part III Of III

Before you read this, read my last two posts, to make this make a bit more sense.

Anyway, so trying to look like everyone else even if you don't like it isn't a good way to be, because it's just supporting the things you don't like. So if you decide not to wear lipstick, or earrings, or have hair that's two feet long, I would approve because it indicates that you think like me. Plus, I think it looks better anyway, but then again that's just my opinion. But even if you do want to do all the stuff I just told you not to do, just please.

Please.

Please.

Don't go around telling me about how I'm wrong, because I'm not.

So I just made a post in multiple parts. It's not something I've ever really done before, and it's not something I've seen anyone else do before, but I think it's a good method, because it makes people want to come back to read the conclusion, and also it allows me to say everything that I want to say, but in short sections, so that casual readers aren't detracted by long sections of text. I know I don't get a lot of views, but if you're reading this (which you probably are), I'd love to know; what you think? Is it a good format? Should I do lots of this, or just use the usual kind? Just shoot me an email at mactavish.alex@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.


Oh, and

Stupid Stuff, Part II of III

As you saw in Part I, people are really starting to get insane about their vanity and fashion.

I mean, I have no idea where these weird customs of wearing earrings and hairbands and lipstick and all this stuff arose! Honestly, you don't have to put on so much crap that your face is barely visible! If anything, you look worse. Honestly, I get really grossed out whenever I see someone wearing nail polish or lip guck. Do you really think that people will like you more if you put thirty-seven tons of string in your hair? Hah.

Anyway, people have said that girls as children are less pressured to be "girl-ish" than boys are to be "boy-ish". I think this is true to some degree, but you see things like, if your hair is any shorter than five inches, you're completely alienated. Literally, some sources which wish to remain anonymous have said that if you have short hair and you're a girl, everyone will think you're weird and a lesbian. That's ridiculous! First of all, do you think that if someone was a lesbian, they'd adhere to stereotypes and have their hair short? ...probably not. And second: What's wrong with being a lesbian, anyway? I think our culture is ridiculously homophobic, and I think the fact that we even have to debate about whether gay marriage is "right" or not is absolutely absurd. Anyway, people are only supporting these stereotypes when they grow their hair long, or wear lipstick or whatever. Because the first step to liberation is resistance.


Oh, and