[caption id=“attachment_7110” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V game against Dave - 4000 BC[/caption]

Civilization V (31 hrs) - I’ve been playing with Dan and Dave via Giant Multiplayer Robot. You can follow posts about the game with Dave here. You can follow the posts about the game with Dan and Dave here. There will be a long overlap between those two, however, the one with Dave started a few weeks earlier and should finish earlier.

[caption id=“attachment_7175” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Atmel Webserver[/caption]

It’s pretty neat how much technology has changed in the past 8 years. Eight years ago Rich West and I coded up a web server on a microcontroller ( code here) and part of my justification was that, for only $50, someone would be able to have a web server on a microcontroller. Wouldn’t that be so awesome for people without a lot of money for technology? Yet, less than a decade later, the Raspberry Pi can be had for around $50 (give or take depending on the features) and implements an entire computer, not just a web server. You can install a full Linux distro on it and do everything that a Linux disto can do (including serve web pages). I hope we can continue to grow technology like this for years to come.

[caption id=“attachment_7198” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] The Childrens Place T-Shirt - Girls are Good at Shopping, Not Math[/caption]

Not cool guys. Haven’t we been having this argument for years now? You’d think you wouldn’t be so gosh-darned clueless.

Co-worker1: You know that Snickers commercial? Co-worker2: Is that the one where you eat snickers if you are hungry?

[caption id=“attachment_7159” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization 5 against Dave - 3460 BC - Ancient Ruins[/caption]

The first group of warriors we went out have reported back to me that they have found some ancient ruins. I have instructed them to search these ruins in the hopes that they will find the secrets of an ancient civilization or perhaps the remnants of some ancient civilization that may wish to join the Glorious Chinese Empire. These ruins are within a dense forest so it is no wonder they have been lost to time. The timber should prove useful as the empire grows. We have begun preparations for expanding the empire to a second city, but with how amazing our Empire is, it will take a while to have all the supplies ready. In the meanwhile we continue to explore this land.

This is a good first step, but the City has vowed to fight, so it’s not over yet.

Miley’s twerking has been way over-exposed. I didn’t write a post about it because I couldn’t give a crap. She just seemed like she was either pulling an Andy Kaufman on us by looking absolutely ridiculous or she was doing a Bieber and losing her marbles.

However, I came across this p retty awesome post written by an African American woman sociologist on how the performance looked to her. These are the types of posts that make me happy that blogs exist. I learned about an experience I couldn’t begin to fathom since I’m neither racially black nor a woman. I didn’t read all the comments on the post, but there were some disagreements from other black women. I’d say you should probably give her more weight than the average blog, considering her PhD, but also remember that not everyone has the same experience - even people of the same race/sex.

A cosplay photo:

[caption id=“attachment_7151” align=“aligncenter” width=“670”] Baltimore Comic-Con - Black Cat and Spider-Man[/caption]

See more photos from last year’s Baltimore Comic-Con here. Sadly I won’t be able to attend this year due to a family commitment.

Steganography is the process of hiding a message within another message. The difference between steganography and encryption is that encryption seems to make a message indistinguishable from noise. Encryption will turn “my cat is black” into “df cok eropz” while steganography could involve you sending a picture of a car and the receiver would run that image through some software to get the message “my cat is black”. Why use steganography over encryption? Because it’s less interesting to those who want to know what you’re saying. Imagine we’re in the world of Game of Thrones during Seaons 2 of the HBO show and Rob Stark needs to send a message about troop movements. He has to assume that the man carrying his message might be captured or bribed to give up the messages. If it looks encrypted, then King Joffrey will put his best minds on trying to figure out the encryption. If the message looks like a condolences to a lord for his son’s death, then they might let the message pass.

It’s too bad the whole plastic instruments genre died out so quickly. I would have loved to have played Salsa Band.