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Migränesengel

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Migränesengel

Migränesengel (The Angel of Migraines, Angelus hemicrania)

Like other Angels, A. hemicrania has no cerebrum of its own, so to perform non-instinctive mental tasks it must appropriate a host brain. This species eschews anæsthesia for brute force, but may nevertheless take some time to penetrate the host’s defences, a process known as the prodromal phase. Following host absorption, an individual Migränesengel may spend from two to seventy-two hours in thought. Subsequently, the host is frequently left too weak to offer any resistance to a second Angel, and absorptions may repeat indefinitely, or until the host becomes comatose.

Unlike those of other known species, the supplementary cranial vault of the Migränesengel is bilobial, and only one lobe at a time encloses the host brain. The alternate lobe then acts as a form of mirror chamber in which sound, smells, tastes, light, darkness, emotions and memories are accelerated and fed back to the exposed hemisphere of the brain, at energy levels exceeding the processing capacity of animal nervous systems. (This has been described as the original denial-of-service attack.) Whether the Angel derives any benefit from this is unknown.


When the Ink Moves Again (the future of squidgy)

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Cory Doctorow suggested recently that Digital Rights Management and its shoring-up exercises may be only the start of a War on General Computing to come — in which various interests, probably more powerful than the entertainments industry, will attempt to control people’s use of computers by requiring that they only operate with built-in spyware to monitor and control our activities — no matter how impossible that is to actually achieve in any comprehensive sense. (And I might add, no matter the problems prohibition and wars always create.)

This sets me thinking: As others have observed, one area this might happen is 3D printing. Right now, we’re in much the same place microcomputing was in the mid-to-late 1970s, with build-it-yourself kits (like the original Apple) being about the most popular way of obtaining them. We have yet to see the 3D printer equivalent of the Vic-20, ZX81, or BBC Micro. That’s not to say that there will inevitably be such a thing. (If history really did repeat itself it would be easier to learn from.) It’s questionable whether there will ever be the kind of demand for 3D printing at home that there has been for computing and 2D printing. But it can be expected that something like the IBM PC will emerge and dominate the market anyway, because that’s what mass-production markets do. And going by present trends, it will have DRM; instead of USB it will connect with something like HDMI, a cable (or at least an interface) which restricts the actions of a computer, owned by anyone, to those permitted by a Luddite industry association. There is no particular reason to think that industry associations in this case will be any less inane than the entertainments outfits, so there will probably be something like DVD region encoding too. Which is one reason why I plan to get in early and get the equivalent of an Apple I (in memory of the days when Apple did not seem like part of the problem).

But that’s not what I came here to blog about.

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Paintbrush

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Paintbrush-37
Paintbrush-41

But what for do you need paintbrush cleaners, Madam — do you not have the Sea?

Today I notice that some of the fawn specks I thought were sand were really young barnacles trying to live on the paint. I wish I had known, and had a macro lens.


Don’t Dig Them

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don’t dig them

you people are strange digging deep the ground for glittering stones to put on you
(Rana temporaria temporaria)


Frog Eye

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Frog Eye

there are stones called tiger eye . . . but really I think they’re frog eye
(Rana temporaria temporaria I believe)


Bee with Passengers

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bee with passengers

and bees have smaller fleas that bite ’em?

it is hard to escape the impression that these mites are parasitical; but proportionally, if I had a dozen rats nestled into my fur I might do something about it unless they were paying their way somehow; but I am not a bee (in case you wonder)


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