Caustic Soda

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Puck

Sorry I haven’t been updating the blog much lately (only two posts in the last year!) but the reason for this blog was to keep in touch with friends and let them know what I’m doing and what I’m interested in. Facebook has really taken over that job now and, despite some privacy concerns, is doing a great job. You can see my (public) posts at http://www.facebook.com/joe.fulgham if you’re not someone who knows me but likes what I link(ed) here.

If I don’t know you, I won’t add you in Facebook, by the way.  I only add actual friends there, sorry.

So what’s up with this post?  Well, some friends and I have thrown our hat into the podcasting ring and created Caustic Soda.  We take gross, dangerous, and generally icky subjects and then talk about them.  We’ll discuss the etymology, fears, and background and then follow up with news and popular culture references, all the while cracking wise and generally having fun.  As of this posting we seem to have about 500 regular listeners, mostly subscribed through iTunes.

It’s totally free (we’ll probably sell shirts or something in the near future though) a little bit explicit (we don’t go out of our way to swear, but we don’t censor ourselves either) and a lot of fun!

Please check it out and if you like it, write us a review on iTunes, follow us on Facebook, and tell your friends!  Enjoy!

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I don’t want to believe, I want to know.

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Puck

I’ve loved that quote for years.  It’s the subtitle of this blog, and always has been.  I attribute it to Carl Sagan — and vaguely remember reading it in one of his books and it sticking with me — but can’t for the life of me find out exactly where he said it.  If you know, please email me!

A while back I realized that this quote played well against the UFO poster on Fox Mulder’s wall in the TV show “The X-Files” which read simply “I want to believe.”  Sure, it’d be fun to believe the world was more magical than we know it to be.  It’d be great to think aliens would soon contact us and cure cancer and aging and I’d live forever and explore the Universe and meet other races.  But there’s just no evidence.

So I decided to make a counterpoint poster to Mulder’s.  I did this a few months ago, and for some reason wasn’t quite happy with it.  I saved what I did and promptly forgot about it.

The other day I was going through my documents, found it, loaded it up, and couldn’t figure out what my problem with it was.  So I posted it to Facebook.  Lots of people loved it and wanted a hi-res version to print out.

So here we go.  Here’s the web-viewable size, first:

Yes, that’s the Arecibo Observatory.

If you’d like a hi-res version to print out I have two options for you.  First is the PDF version which is only 135kb.  It’s set to print out at 250 dpi on a single 8.5″ x 11″ page, but the PDF may have lowered the image quality a bit.

I don’t want to believe, I want to know (PDF)

And here’s the full resolution lossless PNG file for those who want to print it bigger.  You’ll need a decent image editor/printer to print it out bigger, but have at it.  This file is 5.4 MB!

I don’t want to believe, I want to know (PNG)
(because of my Lightbox addon you may need to right-click, Save Target As)

As for copyrights and such, I have no idea if I can even use the original art/photos.  Nobody should be charging anybody for use of my work.  I created and share it to the skeptical community.  Don’t use this to make Cafepress shirts, or posters that you sell or any of that nonsense.  If it isn’t free, don’t do it.  Aside from that, please print it out for yourself and your friends and do what you like with it.  If I do some more research into Creative Commons (and figure out just what rights I can claim considering I don’t own the original images!) I’ll update this page.

Posted in Skepticism | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Star Trek Appreciation (space) Station

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Puck

Mel & I caught the first showing of the new Star Trek on Thursday.  I’ve been cautiously optimistic about it.  The trailers look very action oriented and I wasn’t sure how much they’d “mess up” to make a reboot, or if they’d capture the humour or feel of the many Trek series I’ve loved (and not-loved, I’m looking at you Voyager & Enterprise).

We were blown away.  Yes, this is a very action-movie Star Trek, but never without reason.  It totally captures the feeling and humour of “The Original Series” but updates it.  Every single character is back and great.  Some are bang-on copies – Quinto as Spock is uncanny but subtle and Karl Urban as McCoy nails the grumpy “old country doctor” we all love, right down to the accent.  Others breathe new life with their own rendition — Simon Pegg is a more frenetic Scotty, Anton Yelchin is excellent as the very young Chekov while Zoe Saldana is gorgeous, strong and wonderfully useful as Uhura.

I won’t spoil much here, but this is a “reboot”, and with an excellent in-story reason for it.  Things have changed in the Trek universe, but only enough so this new cast can stand on their own and tell their own stories.

This is a must-see for any Star Trek fan.  It’s for you, but also for everyone else.  It works as both an introduction and re-introduction to the universe Gene Roddenberry created so many years ago.  It’s both faithful and new, and that’s a stunning achievement.

It could use less lens flares though, but if that’s how far down I have to dig to find a complaint I know it’s a great movie.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Webhost Changed

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Puck

I host a lot of sites for friends, personal projects, and sometimes clients.  Over the past few month I’ve been moving them over to a new webhosting service that’s cheaper, has a better back-end management and more bandwidth.  I took my time to see how the new host would hold up and it’s been great so far.

Back when I just coded HTML pages moving a web site was easy.  You just back up the files and upload them to the new host.  But now with everything being run with server-side PHP scripting and data held in mySQL databases it can be a real pain to move.  Not only did I have to back up the databases, but I also had to edit those backups where they had data for old directory structures.

In summary, moving a WordPress site to a new site can be quite a bit of work.

But it’s done.

I did lose a few things on my site that I wasn’t using any more.  I stopped using my Gallery ages ago and keeping track of the spam comments building up on it was a pain, so I’ve just let it go.  I still have the images from it, so I may find a new place for them some time. The forum I was running had been used only for organizing our weekly road hockey games, but Facebook is going to be a lot better for that (if we want to start doing it again — anyone?)

Everything other than that should be working fine.  If it’s not, let me know!

Posted in Web | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Dead Rising 2

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Puck

Though flawed, the original Dead Rising was a lot of fun. How could it not be? It was a game where you were trapped in a mall with zombies and had dozens of ways to kill them.

I’ve read that the designers recognized their errors in Dead Rising and have fixed them for Dead Rising 2. There’s not much note of that in this trailer (because the fixes would be subtle) but it’s chock-full of AWESOME.

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Bruno!

Posted on April 2, 2009 by Puck

Loved Borat?  I did.  Here’s the trailer for the “sequel” from Sacha Baron Cohen, featuring another of his great characters.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Doctor Who Planet of the Dead Trailer!

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Puck

Looks like Doctor Who meets Pitch Black to me, but that’s just fine.  Pitch Black is a great little sci-fi movie, if you haven’t seen it.

Posted in Cool | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

JREF Youtube Account Suspended

Posted on March 30, 2009 by Puck

We haven’t heard an official explanation as to *why*, of course, but I can guess — a fake DMCA takedown request from the religious right or some practitioner of “woo” offended by Randi’s straight talk and overwhelming correctness compared to their vapid and ridiculous beliefs.

Copyright laws are out of control and here’s more proof.  I’m sure he hasn’t even broken any, but with the MPAA and RIAA freaking out because the Internet is taking away their stranglehold on content publication they’re getting political pressure to make companies like Youtube respond to each and every takedown notice immediately and seriously.  

Their actions to protect their bottom line are hurting our free speech.  To hell with them.  LET THEM DIE.  Music and movies will survive.  Differently, but they’ll survive.

It’s evolution, baby.

Posted in Rant, Tech | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Vancouver Skepticamp 2009

Posted on March 30, 2009 by Puck

Saturday was the second ever Vancouver Skepticamp – an “unconference” where the content is provided by the attendees themselves.

Mel & I not only attended Vancouver Skepticamp on Saturday, but presented!  Mel started everything off with an icebreaker game using M&Ms that got everyone to introduce themselves.

I wasn’t sure what to expect and was skeptical (of course) of what it could accomplish but the presentations were almost all excellent!

A few that stuck out to me were

  1. Wynde’s presentations about materialism and consciousness.  Her talk was a pretty straightforward introction to  the subject but the discussion afterwards was very interesting.  We got into determinism and free-will and a Doctoral physics candidate summed up my thoughts on it much better than I could.
  2. Glowing electrocuted pickle!
  3. Rick first gave a short talk about the upcoming BC-STV referendum, and to me this is a no-brainer.  It’s obvious that our current voting methods aren’t as good as they can be, and the STV method, while not perfect, seems far better at representing the population in government.  Everyone please go vote Yes to Single Transferrable Voting on May 12th!
  4. After that, Rick talked about the obesity epidemnic in North America.  This is the one that blew my mind.  As you all know, I lost a lot of weight a few years ago, and have been trying to keep it off by eating healthy.  It hasn’t been working, and I’ve been craving carbs and it’s been difficult.

    The overall point of Rick’s presentation was that the obesity epidemic started at the exact time everyone started selling “low-fat diets”.  The more food was offered in “low-fat” formats, the more and more people in the population were obese.  He then explained an experiment where the people in it were fed traditional native diets, high in fat and low in carbs, and they lost an average of 15 pounds each!

    He also described that low-fat and high-carb diets can trick your body into thinking you’re starving and make you desire more carbs to feed that!

    This all makes tremendous sense to me, explains a lot of my problems with weight lately, and I’m switching off of all my low-fat food.  Bacon, here I come! 

  5. Gary did a presentation on the Shroud of Turin from an artist’s perspective.  It was a brilliant angle to debunk the subject and I encouraged him to get it online, possibly as a youtube video!

There were others, but those were the ones that resonated the most with me.

I did my presentation last and it was about my area of expertise — the Internet and blogging.  I’ve posted my presentation about blogging skeptically online, along with more information on specifically how to set up a blog of your own.  I’ve decided I’m going to expand that information with more posts on the same site.

After Skepticamp most of us went out to All India for some excellent vegetarian Indian food and then I offered to host the afterparty at our place.  We had about a dozen people show up for that, played some Scene-It on the 360 (which Blogosaurus and her hubby won!) and then simply talked and drank until the wee hours.  Thanks to everyone who came, it was really fun and we should do it again some time!

Posted in Skepticism | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Ghostbusters HD Trailer (in, uh… Spanish?)

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Puck

Not sure if the gameplay is all that great, but the world creation, destructible environments and gorgeous and creative monsters (I love the ones made from books and the “graveyard” one) look amazing.

Posted in Cool, Play | Tagged , , | 2 Comments