matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

On my daily commute to work I encounter three intersections (four if you include that weird three way, round the corner thing). Of these intersections, two have lights. One of these is at the cross roads of a highway, with light poles hanging out over the streets on all four corners. The other one... well, it's messed up.

This intersection, being comprised of two smaller roads, has two lights dangling over a singular wire running diagonally across the streets.

This is all well and good, but if you happen to be stopped heading east/westbound (as denoted here by the green lights - illogical on two counts now that I think about it), you find yourself an annoying predicament.

The yellow cone represents one's field of vision. As you can see, the driver of this fancy white car is completely unable to see the light. He would have to hunch down and angle his neck upward at an uncomfortable angle to correct this problem. This can be made doubly worse if the driver is A) tall or B) driving in a tall vehicle. I myself have met both conditions in the past.

You might be looking at that diagram and be thinking to yourself "Okay, there are two lights. Just use the one farther away." Which would be great, except it's positioned just so that it is obstructed by the upper left corner of the car.

There is a solution that could not only solve our issue but come with another small perk as well:

By placing a single light over the center of the road, all drivers now have an equally decent view and there's the added bonus that you are now drawing half the amount of power than before.

So, City of Bartlesville street planners, take my logically thought out rant to heart and save my poor neck from this treacherous evil I must face every morning. And if I find out you all have shares in local chiropractors and this was all on purpose, then may you forever sit at a red light in the westbound lane of Price and Silver Lake down in Hell!

As some of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed, I recently crafted a small bit for inclusion in the write in portion of Anime News Network's Hey, Answerman! column. Unfortunately, I was snubbed there and didn't have my writings brought to a larger than usual mass, but as I was planning on ranting about that topic on my blog anyways, I shall put it here regardless. (Damn you, Answerman!!!)

The question put forth was thus:

How open are you about your anime love with friends, family, and colleagues? Do you wear anime cloting, or read manga on your break? Be honest, damn it!

His incorrect spelling of "dammit" notwithstanding, here was my response:

When it comes to sharing my feelings of the various Japanese related media that I ingest on a day-to-day basis, I'm really very open. After all, why is it that just because a person likes media from a different country, they should be ashamed? For that matter, why are they persecuted? People who really enjoy sports or cars or anything "normal" don't have to face this problem, but they're doing the exact same thing we "otaku" do; follow, enjoy and obsess over their particular subject of interest. I suppose it's the "die hards" that taint the perception of the anime crowd, but aren't we all annoyed by that one person who won't shut up about his obsession (whatever it may be)? But, now I'm delving into another topic all together.

I enjoy my anime, my manga, and Japanese culture in general and I'm not afraid to share that enjoyment with those I'm with. But, at the same time, I try to keep in mind that they may not enjoy the subject as much as I do and adjust my level of enthusiasm accordingly.

One thing I did not mention, but was actually a driving force for me writing something in the first place, is a nerd's treatment of another type of nerd. To rant about somebody else's fanboyish obsessions while you yourself are guilty of the same crime, though it may be in a different field, should be punishable by damnation. Granted, I myself am guilty of this, but there it is.

/rant

I've managed to land myself on a project that combines my two loves: games and web. Tryblithe, owner of CT Square web hosting, has signed me on to help him with a brand new type of online game... it's all done within the browser (i.e. no flash, java, etc.). That in itself may not seem much of a feat, but it's much more complex than previous browser games including some real-time elements. So that's pretty cool :-)

Nothing new on the house front. Somebody is coming to look at it tomorrow evening, but that's about all there is to report there.

Something interesting for when google indexes this page again: GreenZap is a scam. That's right. GreenZap, a supposed PayPal wannabe, is indeed a scam. I was reffered to it by somebody I know (not even that well :-P) and I thought "Hey, this looks kind of cool". But I've been more and more wary recently because all I get from them is "We're coming soon!", "Almost there...", "blah blah blah...". One of their so called "storez" was Amazon.com (one of the things that got me ineterested in the first place), but here's is Amazon's reply to my inquiry about GreenZap:

"At this time, we do not accept GreenZap as a payment method on our

web site.

Also, we have no plans to accept GreenZap as a payment method in the

future. We have asked GreenZap to remove the Amazon.com logo from

their site."

Yeah, real legit :-P.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now (wait, this is a blog....). Until next time :-)

P.S. You can now get DxBlog RSS feeds at http://feeds.feedburner.com/dxprog