Sorry

My current setup is a Retina Macbook Pro with 27" Thunderbolt display. While I love the extra headspace the Thrunderbolt display offers, the available ports on the back are kind of pathetic. There's one FireWire 800 port and zero USB3 ports.

That's why I jumped at the $300 Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock when it was introduced. I've now lived with mine for about 3 weeks so I feel comfortable writing a review.

The dock is smaller than I imagined and very light. It is easily portable as long as you are willing to heft along the power converter. I mounted mine on a Twelve South Backpack.

The real advantage of the Express Dock is the plethora of connections it offers. Here's what's it available:

• 2 Thunderbolt connections
• 1 Gigabit Ethernet
• 1 FireWire 800
• 1 1/8" Audio Out (speaker)
• 1 1/8" Audio In (microphone)
• 3 USB3 connections

This is better than the current Thunderbolt Display. USB3 and audio connectors are not offered on the display.

I was pleasantly surprised by the audio connectors on the Express Dock. One of my annoyances with the rMBP and Thunderbolt Display was that the audio connector for my external speakers still needed to be plugged into the Macbook. I thought it was silly since that the Thunderbolt connection didn't just take care of the audio. Belkin gets it right.

The audio is presented as a USB PnP interface and works as expected. Audio is clear without any artifacts or distortion.

The Express Dock delivers exactly what I expected. I've connected mine into the Thunderbolt connector on the display. I'm using it to provide additional connectivity to the Thunderbolt Display but I'd recommend this to anyone that just wanted some extra connections for their MBP.

If you need more connections than the Macbook Pro provides but don't need a Thunderbolt display (or just want USB3 on your display), then it's hard to beat the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock.

The best parting shot I can provide is the one showing how few cables are connected to my rMBP to connect to Ethernet, 1 FireWire 800 drive, 1 USB3 drive, external speakers, a ScanSnap and a UPS Monitor:

The Citadel Town of Erbil, Iraq via Amusing Planet

At the heart of the city of Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, lies an ancient mound of earth some 25 to 30 meters tall from the surrounding plains. On top of this mound lies one of the oldest town in the world. Known as the Citadel of Erbil, this fortified town, measuring a meager 430 by 340 meters and occupying 102,000 square meters in area has been incontinuous occupation since at least the 5th millennium BC, and possibly earlier. The imposing yellow-ochre color structure with a solid perimeter wall is one of the most dramatic visual experiences in the Middle East.

When we were planning the changes we were going to make in Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and we were thinking about what we wanted to do to magic, we decided that it did not need changes as extensive as the Matrix (see this post and this other post for info about those changes). The system essentially worked, and it was consistent with rules in the rest of the game, so a major overhaul did not seem to be in order. That’s not to say everything was perfect. There were some balancing issues we wanted to address (including adepts, which we discussed here), some flavor we wanted to put in, some new things to add. What kind of things, you ask? Well, things like this:

• Adjusting Drain Values: In Shadowrun, Fourth Edition Drain Values tended to favor mana-based stun spells, which meant spellcasters could bring down enemies with Stun damage without having to resist a ton of Drain. That made these spells too powerful. Drain Values were revised and rebalanced across the board.
• Restraining spirits: Spirits can be powerful weapons–sometimes too powerful. There is a particular problem in the area of Edge. Spirits tend to be around for the short term, which means that if a conjurer wants to, he can have them blow through their Edge in short order, without them showing the same restraint that characters do in deciding when to employ those extra dice. Since the conjurer can keep summoning new spirits, they often had access to a lot of Edge, which was not balanced. The fix was that spirits cannot use Edge when they are bound or carrying out services. If a magician wants a spirit to have access to Edge on one of its tasks, he has to use his own, not the spirit’s.
• Enhancing Alchemy: Moving from a specialization of Enchanting in SR4 to its own skill in SR5, Alchemy received a strong boost. It can now be used to create reagents, which have expanded functions (such as helping increase your limits in certain tests) and to design preparations, which hold spells for later release.
• Adjusting tradition flavor: One way to distinguish traditions from each other in SR5 is to look at how they interact with spirits. The core book has details on how conjurers of the hermetic and shamanic traditions view spirits and how that affects their interactions, along with other details about each tradition.
• Simplifying spell damage: We streamlined the damage and the Resistance Tests from Indirect and Direct Combat spells, making the process of casting them a little smoother.
• Rebalancing foci: Foci are too cool to go anywhere, but they needed to be a little cheaper (especially since their price made them so lucrative to manufacture). Their price has dropped, and some risks were added to the manufacturing process to make it a little more of a challenge to leap into.

All these changes, along with other little tweaks and changes in flavor, should preserve the essential character of Shadowrun magic while balancing it better with the rest of the game–but not so much that people will stop geeking the mage first.

As promised, Dust: An Elysian Tail has found its way to Steam today. Until May 31, you can grab Dust for $13.50, ten percent off its usual $15 asking price.

The action-adventure RPG from Humble Heart made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade back in August as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion. Despite how vast Dust: An Elysian Tail is, it's actually missing a third of its intended story, which was cut due to the months of extra time it would've taken to finalize the larger vision. Even with the omitted content, Dust: An Elysian Tail turned out to be a fine game.

PSA: Dust: An Elysian Tail explores Steam today originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 24 May 2013 23:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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le Bat

And there’s my cute allowance already exceeded for today….

swan2swan:

rufftoon:

waterisntwet:

Heracleion, Lost Egyptian City Revealed After 1,200 Years Under Sea.

That last shot of the stone stela coming out of the water. Wow. I was expecting it to be covered with sediments and other sea life stuff, but no! It’s pristine looking!

That topmost image looks like cover art for something.

IMG_0073.JPG by DerekLee on Flickr.

I love the shocked expressions on the angels. And the martyred bishop is cool. “No, I’m fine, can someone just get me a latte?”

throughtosunrise:

kimerakincaid:

g-erti:

Every Series, Every Episode!

StarTrek.com has made every episode available for streaming on their website! (and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that its only temporary!)

Have a series you’ve been meaning to watch? Can’t afford Netflix? No problem! Go forth; all of Star Trek is now at your disposal!

SHRIEKING AND FLAILING

OMG, VOYAGER, I’M COMING FOR YOU.

(Yeah, I loved it. What?)

Ah, the animated series. I loved that. (And now maybe I can finally get some decent screengrabs from “Where No One Has Gone Before”.)

stry_cat writes "You may remember the story of Brandon Raub, who was detained without due process over some Facebook posts he made. Now with the help of the Rutherford Institute, he is suing his captors. According to his complaint [PDF], his detention was part of a federal government program code-named 'Operation Vigilant Eagle,' which monitors military veterans with certain political views."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A lot of people are telling me that as an “autism mother,” I should be thrilled that SAP, the German software company, is looking to hire hundreds of adults with the same disability as my son. SAP believes individuals who have autism make excellent software testers, programmers and data quality assurance specialists.

But I am not thrilled. I am worried.

Setting aside our own family’s reality—that an SAP job would be completely inappropriate for my son, now 25—I envision enormous potential for failure and disappointment. True, these come with the autism “territory.”  This neuro-biological, communication disability is, indeed, both an epidemic and a puzzle not easily solved, even by a mass hiring like this one.

SAP seems to think it can take on the task of hiring and training so many disabled individuals with very little experience of its own. According to its own press release, it has hired only six people with autism in India, while screening for another five positions in Ireland. Compare these numbers to current official US data, which show that one in 88 children who are eight years old still have autism, meaning they are not likely to grow out of it. Globally, tens of millions of people are said to be affected.

Granted, what may save SAP is that it is wisely teaming up with the Specialisterne Foundation, an organization that has been earnestly working to employ individuals with autism in the software industry since 2004, founded by parents of a son with autism.

But does SAP know how to translate this into its own corporate culture? And what about all the “copycat” companies that might try to do this without support, whether to seek altruism brownie points or because they believe, with justification, that people with autism will help them to make more money?

To make money, a company needs to spend money. This is particularly true when it comes to hiring people with autism. Supporting even the most “high functioning” and verbal but affected individuals in a work environment often requires an extraordinary amount of resources, patience, skill, and perhaps genius. It takes life coaches, behaviorists, sensory integration experts, “social script” writers and more. You don’t merely welcome someone with autism to the firm and send them off to human resources.

The much-heralded ability of the autistic brain to focus is also widely  misunderstood. I know very smart people with autism who would much prefer to “focus” on CSI, Star Wars or the intricacies of the calendar, than any other task at hand, including choosing a health plan or naming a beneficiary. Some would fight—legitimately, I think—for their right to do so, for their right to think differently. Learning how to handle this in an office setting requires training.

Getting back to my own son, Dan, and so many on the spectrum like him, I worry that this grandstanding by SAP will lead to stereotyping, which is the last thing people with autism need. Software is not the one-size-fits-all industry for autism. Or, as the cliché goes: “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”

My son stopped talking when he was 3, after a period of prolonged development. He has movement issues, but they seem to fade when he works at a farm or when someone works closely with him. Over a few months, one of his aides was able to teach him to dismantle a computer with a screwdriver. What once took Dan 40 minutes to do now takes him four. He now also works taking apart computers in order for the parts to be recycled rather than landfilled.

I am grateful that my son is engaged by work. But it is frightening how truly far away we are from making sure that those who have autism live the full and productive lives to which they are entitled as human beings. An uncounted plethora of young adults with autism—adults who, like my son, would not be hired by SAP—work at jobs that are meaningless to them and society or stay home with elderly parents who soon won’ t be able to care for them.

As a society, we need to come up with many more solutions so that people with autism can work. In the best of worlds, SAP’s initiative will open those doors, as well as its own.

You can follow Barbara on Twitter at  @BarbaraFischkin. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. 

Karen Nelson, an archivist for the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California, discovered 20 vials of moon dust from the Apollo 11 flight stashed away in the lab's warehouse.

ABC News

Ethiopian Marathon Runner Honors Boston Victims ABC News The winner of the men's race at the Boston Marathon says he is returning his winner's medal to honor the city and those killed and injured in the terrorist bombings near the finish line of one of the world's top running events. Boston Marathon Last Mile.JPEG ... 2013 Marathon winner to give medal to BostonBoston Globe Boston Marathon winner honours blast victimsBBC News Boston Marathoners Finish Their Race This WeekendNew York Magazine WISH -WKBW-TV -The Republic all 193 news articles »

Storm

I’ll just leave this here, then.

Les Miserables-inspired fighting game, yep.

mckelvie:

kierongillen:

sexpigeon:

Encourage your players to wear leather and mirrorshades.

I did all this when paying cyberpunk as a teen. All of it.

You didn’t really need the “when playing cyberpunk” in there, be honest. 

Oh look, it’s my senior year in high school.

Sexo e gênero são coisas distintas. Ser masculino não depende da constituição biológica de cada um, mas, sim, da construção de uma identidade. Ou seja, é algo intangível. São as convenções sociais que fazem com que nos enquadremos em algum gênero. E é a moda, o vestuário, uma das principais formas que sempre tivemos de nos expressar socialmente. Porque nós, seres humanos, somos muito limitados para lidar com o intangível.

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Frozach Submitted

The Days Of The Hat As Essential Accessory.

Buster Keaton.

Learn It Young.

Buster Keaton in childhood.

“A man wearing a seersucker suit with aplomb could cash a check anywhere in New York with no questions asked.”

- Damon Runyon

biomedicalephemera:

Top: Common Opossum - Didelphis marsupialis
Bottom: Virginia Opossum - Didelphis virginiana

Stay in the pouch, kids! We can’t stop here; this is bat country!

Even though several marsupial families lived in the Americas before the last ice age, opossums are the only ones still remaining. Thanks to their opportunistic omnivorous diet and high rate of reproduction, opossums have survived in their current form for millenia, even despite their extremely low encephalization quotient. While rote brain volume does not in and of itself determine intelligence of an animal, mammals with smaller encephalization quotients tend to be more specialized and quickly speciated when hardships are encountered (such as ice ages).
Opossums in the Americas generally have an EQ around 1/5 that of the raccoons.

Didelphidae (Western hemisphere opossums) have very short lifespans, generally living less than two years in the wild, which is very unusual for a mammal of their size (up to the size of a large housecat). However, they can generally produce two successful litters of up to 13 young each in their short lives.

Australian opossums, while distantly related to those in the Americas, have furry tails, larger brains, and are much less urbanized. They also bear fewer young, live at least twice as long, and are less than half the size of the largest North American opossums.

Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle. Charles d’Orbigny, 1849.