It’s been interesting to watch to say the least. For months, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project has received much criticism for their hand in destroying the universe. Many have predicted doomsday scenarios of apocalyptic proportions which were mocked by the internet:

Two nightmare scenarios, two ends of the world. In the first, there is little warning. For maybe a month there would be no sign that life was about to come to an abrupt and nasty end for all living things on Earth.

Then, earthquakes would start unexpectedly, alerting geologists that something terrible, unimaginable, was amiss.

After a few days, these seismic disturbances would reach catastrophic proportions.

Cities would be levelled, the oceans would rise and wash in a series of mega-tsunamis that would attack the world’s coasts, killing millions.

Scientists and skeptics alike, many of which I know, called it “fairy tales” and continued with “let’s just see what happens”. Early this morning, the LHC was powered on to perform tests to send a particle around this massive structure. While many physicists warned that this stage wasn’t “going to do anything” because no collisions were taking place, I began to wonder what kind of effects this type of energy surge would produce.

Something did happen today.

I have no evidence that it’s linked in any way to the LHC, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen this. There were 4 major earthquakes today caused a major shake in the Pacific rings of fire. Here they are:

• ’200 villages destroyed’ as quake hits Iran
• Magnitude 6.0 earthquake rocks northern Chile
• Major quakes hit Japan and Indonesia

This is not a joke. This is not a ploy. This is real. 4 major earthquakes in a single day, and it just so happened to be the day the LHC was powered on. I’m not saying one caused the other because I have no definite proof, but I’m also not saying that it isn’t possible. If you dismissed the fear of what the LHC could possibly bring to the earth, I asked that you take another hard look and consider the possibility that you could be wrong. Consider the possibility that you don’t know everything and also consider the possibility that there are forces out there which are much greater than our understanding, some of which are not meant to be tampered with.

Update 11:38PM Here is a screenshot of all which contains the category 5+ quakes today:

Update: 09/14/2008 11:10AM – Note the category 6+ earthquakes in the above screenshot for 09/10 – 09/11. I apologize for the confusion. Commenter Rob notes the Iran earthquake occurred seconds after a local news broadcasts determined the LHC to be operational. He asks if it’s a coincidence. Some would say yes, but I haven’t come to that conclusion. It’s official, I’m being called a nut for even bringing this up. That’s quite alright, I’ve been called worse

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Today, the blogosphere got a taste of what a lot of us black live streamers experience all too often: anonymous cowards. These individuals choose to hide behind their anonymity, and flood corresponding chat rooms with all kinds of racial slurs. Unfortunately, Louis Gray had to witness such an event:

This afternoon, I caught a video broadcast with Wayne Sutton and Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net, where Corvida had the opportunity to share her story of asking Verizon to drop their relationship with Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, in light of his controversial video parodying African American bloggers. While both carried on a strong conversation around the issues of race, bigotry and getting ahead through hard work, their efforts were dwarfed by some of the most hateful, shameful, racist speech I’ve been exposed to in a very long time.

While I missed the discussion over on Yahoo Live, it is an issue that I’m all too familiar with. It highlights an existing problem of race in the world, but also another problem of, what I call, Internet Bold Stupidity (IBS). A lot of people are entertained by purposely stating the most extreme statements they can think of, and feed off the dark energy of your reaction. This seemingly happens without consequence since they are sitting in the comforts of their own home.

I deal with this issue by doing the following:

1. Moderate the chat room. If you chose to stream live, you must employ mechanisms to silence those whose goal is to interrupt your show. I chose Ustream.TV for this purpose since I believe their chat backend (IRC) has some of the most powerful moderation tools on the net.
2. Realize what they are, and move on. Don’t dwell on their statements. Stay focused on what you need to do, keep a positive energy going.
3. Do not feed the trolls. By acknowledging their statements, you are only fueling the fire. Encourage others in your chat room to do the same. Trolls typically want attention. Don’t give them something to feed off and they will go away. If they don’t go away, see step 1.
4. Don’t give up. If you let these individuals deter you from what you are trying to accomplish, then they have conquered you. Don’t let that happen! Keep at it, and stay positive.

You can sometimes find me streaming on my live stream at live.bwana.tv. Our tight knit community there knows what’s up. There is a low tolerance for this type of behavior. While I’m saddened a lot of people have been abruptly awakened the reality of online abuse (in this case, race), I believe there are workable solutions to deal with these trolls. Will it ultimately address the underlining cause? Of course not. I do believe in the old saying “If you ignore them, they will go away”, only I’ll add, “and if they don’t go away, kick and ban them.” Others chimed in on this topic as well:

I hope that all aspiring black live streamers out there don’t let this deter them from expressing themselves online.

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I saw a hint today on macosxhints.com regarding the ability to put your Mac to sleep using the Apple remote. This little cool feature works with Macs with infrared sensors (with FrontRow preloaded basically) I immediately thought, “That’s a cool feature”, but then I read on:

Note that if you happen to use a remote-equipped Mac in a public place, you may wish to disable the IR remote, lest you find your machine suddenly sleeping thanks to tricksters nearby with their own remotes! You can do this in the Security System Preferences panel.

I started to laugh.

This would be hilarious to watch like in say, an airport. Some guy is typing away, sending an email to his loved one and *BAM*, his computer goes to sleep. Rinse and repeat. I don’t know why I would be cracking up if this happened. Maybe I had a long day. So, if you have an infrared port on your Mac, be sure to disable it in public places. You might experience a prankster putting your Mac to sleep from afar.

Technorati Tags: apple, funny, macbookpro, osxhints

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the referees made some bad calls on key plays. not a seahawk nor steelers fan, but bad calls are bad calls. here’s a comment i put on a newsvine discussion that sums up my feelings:

I thought I was the only one who noticed bad calls on key plays. Good to know I’m not. No, I’m not a Seattle fan, but I know a bad call when I see it:

1. Pushing off in the endzone? Questionable. But how about being consistent? Hines Ward blantantly did it on about 2 or 3 catches. Watch the game again, It’s sad. Touchdown called back. That’s 7 points.
2. Steelers QB touchdown. It didn’t cross the plane. You could tell the referee was unsure because he initially signaled it as down and then put up his other hand to say Touchdown. The review was enough to overturn it. That’s a 7 point gift to the Steelers.
3. Holding? Nope. Not even close. Ball was on the 1 yard line. Let’s be conservative and say they only got a field goal. That’s 3 points.
4. Low block foul on a tackle? Impossible. Gave them 15 yards and momentum.

10 points and a 7 point gift is a lot when you lose by 11.

I’ll agree that the Seahawks pretty much played like garbage for the most part, but it’s tough to win the biggest game of the year when the referees make these kind of mistakes. Oh well, congrats to the Steelers, they’re the champs no matter what we say.

a lot of seahawks will never make it to the superbowl again. it really must hurt to leave wondering what could have been if the referees didn’t make those mistakes.

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have you all noticed the upsurge in pc vs mac debates on the web? usually around macworld, the debates are refueled since apple usually announces something new, but this year it’s a bit abnormal. i think i know why:

the line between macs and pcs is not so discrete anymore.

with the introduction of intel macintoshes, both pcs and macs have a more common architecture under the hood. what does this do? it causes the the pc (most pc and windows users) supporters to compare the new apple hardware to cheaper so-called “equivalent” hardware. on the other side, it causes active mac supporters (commonly referred to as “zealots”) to actively defend apple’s “quality package” which is usually the reason for investment. some have used the reasoning that a “computer is a computer” which means that both tools accomplish the same thing. basically along the lines of saying “a tool is just a tool”. from my experience, the more complex tools become, the greater the probability that they will NOT behave similarly.

i refuse to turn this into a pc vs mac debate but i will say this. people will use what they prefer and they will rationalize their choice until the cows come home. humans get accustomed to certain ways and usually changing these ways is not preferred. if you ever get into a pc vs mac argument, please consider that it’s possible that no matter what you say, it will not convince the other party that your computer is better for them. and that’s the truth.

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here are braytek.com’s predictions for 2006:

1. Apple ditches Firewire and co-invents new proprietary high speed transfer technology found in new Intel machines
2. Intel version of OS X spreads like wildfire through the internet. OS X dubbed “unstable” due to problems on unsupported hardware. Hilarity ensues.
3. Sony PS3 is released Summer 2006 due to “manufacturing and production issues” and crashes with 50% of games. Sony blames Blu Ray.
4. Sony found liable for new Rootkit in PS3 which steals your fingerprints from controllers. Criminals rejoice as identity theft is made simpler.
5. XBox 360 re-released with high definition dvd and dubbed “XBox 360 Plus”. 3 packages are sold: XBox 360 Plus Core, XBox 360 Plus Premium, and XBox 360 Plus Premium ++ High Def Extreme Edition
6. Nintendo Revolution released in Q4 2006 and outsells XBox 360 globally. Numchuck controllers double as self defense weapon for little old ladies.
7. Microsoft unleashes Window Vista ahead of schedule but supplies are limited. Copies sell on Ebay for $1000.
8. Cartoon Network buys Japanese anime company for Anime spinoff network in the United States. DirecTV refuses to air, but Comcast embraces.
9. Apple releases new iPod with Sirius satellite radio integration. .Mac account holders get free Sirius accounts.
10. Adam Curry’s podcast company develops radio station on XM radio. Premium podcasts broadcasted only. Hilarity ensues at NPR stations worldwide.
11. Microsoft supporters and employees launch nationwide campaign to denounce the term “podcast” and claim Apple is limiting our choice of words.
12. USENET crumbles.
13. Linux kernel hackers get a hold of OS X for x86 and replace existing kernel with modified linux kernel. New OS dubbed “LinuX”
14. Movabletype is bought out by Microsoft and replaces architecture with .NET.
15. WordPress core developers get into internal fued and split. WordPress forked into two products: “Word up” and “Press these”.
16. Braytek podcast becomes wildly popular and Bwana sells out to the man. (woo woo!)
17. Bwana and his wife move to Canada and start a blog complaining about cold weather

You heard it here first folks!

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