From Gizmodo:

The ion is trapped in an electromagnetic field within the small cube at the centre and cooled with lasers to just a fraction above absolute zero. The lasers are fired through three of the glass shafts emanating from the cube, but must be carefully directed out of the other side to prevent them scattering within the clock, which is why there are six shafts in total.

Once the ion is cooled, another laser makes it resonate between two energy states with an incredible regularity governed by quantum mechanics. It gives off a regular pulse of optical radiation exactly 444,779,044,095,485 times per second.

Strange how something created with nothing but function in mind has such incredible form.

This recently discovered photo was taken from an elementary school about ten minutes after the Enola Gay delivered Little Boy and ushered in the Atomic Age.

From The Atlantic, where they’ve got more information.

The other night I had this amazing dream:

It was election night, and it was too-close-to-call. But, there was some obscure clause in the Constitution that allowed for too-close-to-call elections to be decided by a literal race between the candidates. And, for some unknown dream-brain reason, the person who was polling last got to pick the method of the race. And, for another unknown dream-brain reason, that person was Newt Gingrich.

Who picked go-karts.

So it was Obama, Biden (I don’t know either), Romney and Gingrich. On go-karts. To decide the fate of the free world.

Obama and Biden screeched out into an early lead, with Romney tepidly following them up and Gingrich’s kart showing a lot of sound and fury, but really signifying nothing.

At this point I’m expecting Obama and Biden to easily take it. But, suddenly, Gingrich starts clawing his way up the field. Apparently he’s like Bowser from Mario Kart: really slow to accelerate, but with an insane top speed. He blows past Romney like a blistering wind. Biden tries to fight him off, but is clearly outmatched. For a minute I think Obama’s going to hold him off, but something’s wrong – the President isn’t using his top gear! He doesn’t even know it is there! Without that extra power, Gingrich-Bowser easily takes the race. And the presidency.

For a few moments, everyone is freaking out. How are they going to tell the American people this is how the election was decided – with a go-kart race that the least liked candidate won!?

It was all ok, though, because I kicked Gingrich in the balls before the Secret Service protection officially transferred over to him.

Oh, brain. What will you think of next?

I’ve got mixed feelings about the move. On the one hand, it is exactly what I wanted. I get to keep doing what I do, but with peers who know more than I do, and at the end of each day I know that what I need helped garner the funds to save a child’s life. I get to put a hash mark in the good karma column. But, the other side of it is that I’m leaving a family that I’ve spent the better part of a decade with. I’ve worked at Combustion off and on since the summer after my freshman year of college, with the last “on” stretch lasting seven years. Nothing in my life has lasted seven years before that. Pretty much every marketable skill I’ve got I learned here, and it feels really quite terrible to walk away from that. But it feels even worse to walk away from those relationships that I’ve built up over that decade. Those people saw me change from a cocksure teenager into a grimaced and unhappy 20-something into the happy adult I am today. And that’s just something that you can’t replace.

Today, it is a achingly beautiful day in Memphis. And for the first time ever, I’ve got the windows open in my office. I’m airing it out for the new guy (or gal), and maybe reminding myself that there is another world out there, too.

Guess I’ll have to get around to editing my sidebar bio, huh?

Make, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a legal form of protesting.

With the advance in internet techonology [sic], comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any “occupy” protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time.

As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediatly [sic] released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their “records”, cleared.

They make a curious argument about their preferred method of attack. DDoS attacks, after all, are the virtual equivalent to a sit-in protest, albeit one that you can’t call the in police to stop. Those kind of attacks don’t do any real damage to a website, and they aren’t violating any laws since they’re just banging away at the public side of a website.

But, an important counterpoint is that for a DDoS attack to be successful against most large websites, the DDoS’ers need to have control of thousands of systems. One lone PC isn’t bringing down PayPal. And, generally, the method of accessing and controlling those systems are completely illegal.

Which brings us to question if a form of protest can be legal if it is dependent on an illegal action to pull off. Sort of like the Mexican drug cartels buying anti-pot legalization ads (which may have happened in this last election cycle).

Personally, I’m fine with DDoS attacks as legal protesting, provided you’ve got an army of real people behind computers furiously mashing away at the F5 key. But, if you’re using malware to bot-out the machines of unwilling participants? Not so much.

Post Script: The guy that submitted this is probably utterly mortified that he misspelled technology, and is probably being hacked to all hell by the FBI and NSA right now.

I hadn’t realized that Live From Memphis had been around for twelve years. Which might mean that I’m officially old, since I can remember using it as a reference to keep track of which punk show I was going to on what night of the week, and I haven’t gone to shows like that in over a decade. But, the great thing about LFM was that it sandwiched those shows between the next Memphis Symphony Orchestra or Ballet Memphis performance. Beyond that, Live From Memphis acted as an early kind of blog aggregator for the area, pulling a lot of the best local bloggers in under one umbrella so they could talk about what was going on out there in the urban wilds.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Life From Memphis was important and, for its time, utterly singular in its mission. As Craig Brewer just put it “You were there for Memphis when Memphis wasn’t there for you.”

…But, then there’s that last paragraph in the farewell note.

To Memphis, demand more from your leadership. Stop celebrating mediocrity. Stop funding crappy advocacy groups and meaningless brand campaigns. The creatives of Memphis need more than just cheerleaders. Filling out the check box is no way to make change.

One hell of a zinger to go out on, and if you understand what’s being said, one hell of a message.

Because, in this space that comes after, I don’t hear a clarion voice. I hear a cacophony of voices trying to shout over each other, and I can’t make out what any of them are saying.

It starts with cheap, easily assembled parts – ideally from an open-source 3D printer template – that form a basic, quad-rotor drone. Then, you source old cameras from cellphones. Stuff in the 640×480 pixel range, that’s pretty shit for quality but can get basic shapes in high contrast. Finally, you tack in a cheap cellular GPS unit. Not even one that talks to satellites – I’m talking about one that gets all of its location information from cellular data towers. Hopefully, a decent power supply will give the thing at least a 15 mile round-trip radius, which will can cover most major cities with just a few “base-nodes” for the drones to work out of.

This is your courier. It is cheap, highly mobile, and can transport small packages. Things like left behind cellphones or jackets, legal documents, hard drives, or lunch orders. Things, that for a few bucks a pop, it would probably be more convenient for some one else to move for you.

Requesting a courier could be done through a simple web or device-based app. Give a pick up location, a drop off location and specify if it’s a rush or not. Then, you leave your package in a special pick-up grid somewhere that the drone can get to it – say in your backyard or on a balcony. The drone recognizes the patterning on the grid thanks to the camera, and it knows where to make the pick up. For drop off, it just finds the grid at the end location in the same manner. Clients can be notified of estimated arrival time by email, text message or phone call. And if a client puts out a package that’s too heavy, they can be notified in the exact same manner.

With this drone-based system, you’re cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions from car-base couriers and delivery drivers while opening up a whole new market for personalized delivery and convenience. Plus, as the economy of scale kicks in, the drones will become less and less expensive to manufacture and maintain.

Expect the urban spaces of the future to have a constant thrum of drone engines.

Of course, all of this brings up a whole other set of problems.

(Hello, Google Search results!)

I am truly amazed Launch Memphis still let me do these things. And thankful, as well.

But, more importantly than anything else, it was the year that I got married to the love of my life.

And, for that alone, I’ll always look back on it favorably.

Before we go, here are some leftover bits of recommended consumption from the end of the year.

Three Comics You Should Read

Saga - Brian K. Vaughn + Fiona Staples - This is BKV’s first large scope book since the end of Y: The Last Man, and Staples’ first book to get her the attention she’s been deserving for years. It is a space-opera about star-crossed lovers that is charming, frightening, exhilarating, small and huge all at the same time.

Fatale - Ed Brubaker + Sean Phillips - The team that brought us Sleeper, Criminal, and Incognito is doing an “ongoing with an end” that’s pretty much Lovecraft meets noir gangster fiction. So, simply put, peanut butter and chocolate in horror comic form.

The Manhattan Projects - Jonathan Hickman + Nick Pitarra -Hickman is taking apart 20th century’s super scientists and sticking them back together into something that it too complicated to explain, but completely approachable and completely him. It doesn’t hurt that Nick Pitarra’s art is utterly gorgeous and reminds me of a less restrained Frank Quitely.

Sidenote: Three books, all on-goings, all with top-level talent, all creator-owned, and all published at Image and not the Big Two. Expect more of this as time wears on.

Three Video Games You Should Play

Dishonored - The third outing from France’s Arkane Studios, and their first internally created IP. Dishonored is what happens when Deus Ex: Human Revolution, BioShock, anything Steampunk and the Combine from Half-Life 2 are put in a blender. What comes out is absolutely delicious, if just a little flat on the back-end.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Firaxis’s re-do of the classic PC strategy game is an awkward masterpiece. Masterpiece because the unflinching brutality of the original hold firm to the new sleek, modern bones of the update, but awkward because you can tell that somewhere along the line this got upgraded from being a direct-to-download title to a AAA holiday contender. Some of the edges could use a bit more time to be smoothed off.

Borderlands 2 - The sequel to Gearbox’s smash-hit that no one saw coming is honestly a little less fun than the original, but an absolute improvement on the formula. The game manages to hit emotional highs and lows that should’ve been impossible, but pulls them off with aplomb. And Handsome Jack may go down in history as one of my most hated villains ever, which might also make him one of the most successful.

Three Albums You Should Listen To

Murder by Death – Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon - This year’s release from one my favorite bands is their most polished entry yet, which is both good and bad. On songs like Lost River and I Came Around it lets them tell more affecting stories, but when they double track the main vocal on certain other tracks, the result is less compelling.

The Protomen – Present: A Night of Queen - The Protomen took a break from making records about video game people to show the world just how good they are by covering Queen better than anyone ever has.

Make-Up and Vanity Set – 88:88 - An album written for an experimental film that MAVS also did the score for. Wonderful and simplistic yet deeply atmospheric, provided you are into that kind of thing.

And for this year? The Twenty Thirteen? What of it?

No resolutions, because as my wife pointed out on New Year’s Eve, they are simply set-ups for failure. Or, they are limp-wristed, inconsequential things that you probably didn’t need to make in the first place.

Instead, we have goals. Things to achieve and do that will result in objects of substance. For I declare this year to be the Year of the Concrete, the Year of the Tangible, the Year of the Existent.

I have four goals. All simple, yet still tricky.

• Cook a meal that I’ll never forget.
• Write a story I am proud to share.
• Take a picture that came out exactly as I wanted.
• Then do all of them better.

Oh, and I’ve got one hell of an announcement about where I’ll be spending most of my time, but you’ll have to stay tuned for that one.