Reactuate

River Song’s Steampunk Sonic Screwdriver

Ron — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:50:27 +0000

River Song's Sonic Screwdriver

Discovered Netflix instant now has the new Dr Who last night and was scrolling through episodes wondering what to watch. Hit the Silence in the Library and thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to rewatch the episode where the Dr first meets River Song, knowing what I know now about her?”

Yes it was. I still wonder, did they know then?

It is a two part episode and at the end of Forest of the Dead, the Doctor set down River’s Sonic Screwdriver on her book and there is a long slow zoom in. Of late I’ve been mildly obsesses with Steampunk and looking at her screwdriver close up thought, “Wow, that looks steampunk!”

Click the image on this post for a larger look and see if you don’t agree.

Couple of geek notes.

There’s some continuity errors between the close ups and the 2 shots with the Doctor and the Screwdriver here.

I’m not sure the close up in his hand is the same screwdriver. There is a loop on the one on the book, but it seems to disappear in all the other shots. Could be he’s holding it where you can’t see it, but I’m not sure.

Finding Your Inner Super

Ron — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:06:38 +0000

So you’ve decided to go to the coolest birthday party of the year and you have come as a super hero. How do you pick one?

If You Are Geek

You probably already have some preferences, and a lot of choices to go through.

Think body type.

If you are a little pear shaped, picking a super hero that wears spandex may not be the best choice. It could be the fun and bold choice no matter what hero, but as a geek, you probably want to be the super and not parody it.

Look for superheros that wear more normal clothes. The Punisher. Rorschach.

Or embrace your rotundness and pick a rounder superhero/villain. The Penquin, out of shape Mr. Incredible, Night Owl in the Watchman graphic novel – they buffed him up for the movie, and Author the Moth, the Tick’s sidekick.

Think Colors

You know how hard it is for find a blonde male superhero? Harder than you think. Well if you want to go with your natural hair, you may narrow your choices right out of the box.

One attendee of the party has white hair. Immediately I think of Storm. But my friend is white and Storm is black.

Notice how the comic artist design costumes so they go with hair color? Poison Ivy’s costume has to be green, so her hair is red – the complementary color.

Think Details

Think about your favorite super hero. Now start removing stuff from their costume. What is the minimum stuff that has to be there for it to be your character? You don’t have to have the 90 lb rubber Batman costume. Minimized, you need some kind of mask, a grey/black shirt with the logo, and a big belt. That’s very minimal, but it could covey who you are if you have the attitude to pull it off.

This also really works if you are sexying up the character. You have to know what details are required, which ones can be modified in a sexy way, and which ones can be tossed if they aren’t sexy. Superman needs the S, needs costume to be red and blue, here’s the original supergirl, and here’s the sexy version.

What Can You Do?

Do you want to just go to your closet and pickout stuff to wear? Or are you going to a costume store and buying something?

It’s pretty easy to go to Frankel’s and buy a Batman costume. Much less easy to build one, at least from my closet.

I thought about going as Inspector Gadget. Seems like a simple costume, trench coat and hat. I can do that easily. But…is he really Inspector Gadget if it doesn’t have some gadget thing boinging out of his hat or coat? Now it is more complicated.

If You Are Not a Geek

If you aren’t a geek you probably don’t have someone you want to be from the start. Instead you are going for something cool and it is more about what you can do and look good in.

Think Natural or Unnatural Colors

What color is your hair? As mentioned above, blonde male supers are hard to find, but blonde females not so much.

Skin color? It is a geek debate about how few black superheros there are. But really for this party coming as a black superman is OK.

Or forget what you are now, change your color.

Buy a wig.

Just use makeup to make the big change. Harley Quinn is covered head to toe in red, black and white. You don’t have to be you.

Think Unknown Superheros

A superhero has to have super powers. That doesn’t mean they have to be from Marvel, DC or a comic book.

In my eyes, Dr Who is a super hero. So is Neo from the Matrix.

For a costume party you want to pick someone that has a distinct look, but they don’t have to be a comic book hero.

Childhood Memories

Didn’t you watch cartoons as a kid? Even if you aren’t a comic book geek you probably still have super heros in your head. What about Wonder Woman. Superman and Batman. All cultural icons.

Go Sexy And The Geeks Won’t Care

Ladies the fact is if you come dressed in spiderman or batman underroos and high heels, the geeks won’t care about your non-canon costume. Guys if you’ve got the body for it, coming in University of Florida swim trunks and saying you are Aquaman might work. Of course the party is in January.

Careful Parody

You don’t want to insult the geeks or the character, but if you can make fun of their superpower in a nice way that could work. Do all of Mr Fantastic‘s part stretch? Is 100% of the Thing’s body rock hard?

It is also a parody to go as the Flash if you are way rounder than that skinny character. It’s embracing who you are and who they aren’t. Which is fun and shows your own self confidence.

A Final Note To Non-Geeks

Do a little research. A lot of my friends, and a lot of people in general, are closet superhero nerds. You want to be able to talk intelligently about who you are. At the lease go read their wikipedia page.

Tactical Shemagh Scarf

Ron — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:13:56 +0000

I admit when I decided I wanted one of these scarfs it was because of the military association. Not because I thought it would help me hunt terrorists better, you know something I do everyday, but more to show association and support.

So I googled Shemagh Scarf and discovered it is “Tactical”.

People it’s not even black. How can you even think it is tactical.

The fact it is just the Arab equivalent of a bandana doesn’t stop it from being labeled tactical.

Plus I have cool idea to use it in a photoshoot.

Business Tactical

Ron — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:13:09 +0000

For the military office worker. When you need to carry your laptop in a bag that helps with actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end, you need this stuff.

I actually like 5.11 Tactical stuff. Some of my favorite EMS pants are 5.11 pants. I was on their site to buy a $200+ hi-vis coat – the opposite to tactical and twice as useful – and saw this category. It was the straw the broke the camel’s back and what started this category.

Stupid Tactical Useages

Ron — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:08:42 +0000

I can’t take it any more. I am sooo tired of the word tactical being slapped on everything. So I’ve started a new category on the blog to post crazy uses of the word tactical.

I also love the idea that if it is tactical it has to be black. I call it the “paint it black” taticool.

Here’s the definition of tactical:

tactical |ˈtaktikəl|
adjective
of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end: as a tactical officer in the field he had no equal.
• (of bombing or weapons) done or for use in immediate support of military or naval operations. Often contrasted with strategic.
• (of a person or their actions) showing adroit planning; aiming at an end beyond the immediate action: in a tactical retreat, she moved into a hotel with her daughters.

Energy Drink Review: Rock Star Sugar Free

Ron — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:22:54 +0000

I’m a Red Bull man. (Boy that sounds strange to say). When I want caffeine and energy I normally drink Red Bull Sugar Free. I’ll drink the sugar full if I have to, but prefer to not have an insulin response paired with my stimulants.

Now I’ve decided to branch out and since I haven’t written a post here in a long time, I decided to write a quick review of the drinks I’m trying.

The first one was Rockstar Energy Drink. And the first thing I noticed was the can size.

I know when we American’s got into the energy drink business – following Red Bull – we did the typical bigger is better thing. But I’m used to drinking the small Red Bull cans, so any of the American drinks look huge. Do I need that much? Not really. And do I need that much caffeine? I doubt it.

Second thing I noticed was color. I like to drink out of glass, not a can. So when I’m home, like today, I’ll poor my drink in a glass. RockStar Sugar Free looks just like Red Bull, with the iconic bright yellow color.

The taste is also very similar to Red Bull, this is very much a knock off in my opinion. Probably not quite as tart, but it still makes you pucker on the first drink.

My final conclusion is it would be an OK substitute for my normal SF Red Bull. Taste is similar and everything else is the same. But if it isn’t cheaper, I doubt I’d pick it over Red Bull.

Something new for 30 days

Ron — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 05:15:39 +0000

I decided I’d try and watch something intellectual before going to bed tonight. I watched a number of TED Talk clips, some of which I’ll post later. But it was this one that I most wanted to put into action.

Now if I could just decided what I wanted to do for 30 days.

The Plan Was….Part II

Ron — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:00:06 +0000

Part 1 ended when I finished my classes, put my house on the market and left Houston. I’d planned my leaving Houston so that I could spend some quality time with the Mrs in Abilene. Then I had EMSWorld Expo in Las Vegas for a week.

The Plan was travel to Abilene on Saturday, hang out for the week. Spend time reading my stuff for the first week of school since I was going to be in Vegas. Also take a moment and do some deep thinking and planning for what I was going to do with myself now that I was unemployed.

Things looked good. Trip was uneventful on Saturday. The Mrs took me to a really cool high cuisine restaurant in of all places Clyde Texas Saturday night. Much wild monkey was done.

Sunday we moved the youngest into his dorm. Sunday afternoon we took the oldest back to Austin. Good quality time.

Monday I started getting some stuff done around the house in Abilene and started thinking about what I needed to get ready for Las Vegas. Really took it pretty easy that day, which was what I needed. I think I slept 24 hours in the first 48 I was in Abilene.

Tuesday my grandmother died. I wasn’t particularly sad, she’d been ready to go since my grandfather died a couple of years earlier and had had to move out of her home almost a year ago, which she’d hated.

What it did mean was my plans were out the window. Now I had to be in Arkansas on Thursday and still fly to Vegas on Saturday.

Thank goodness I was flying Southwest. Now how to get to Arkansas. One option was to drive to Dallas and fly to Tulsa. But looking at schedules, that would be complicated. Especially because the Mrs was in new employee orientation and pre-semester planning. They would let her leave, but that still might not be best.

So the plan changed.

I used Southwest’s website to change my flight from leaving from Lubbock – I not longer trust American out of Abilene to get me anywhere – to fly out of Tulsa. Then we drove to Dallas and I rented a car one way to Tulsa. Only one rental place will do a one way rental, Enterprise. And they will only do it if you are going one way to somewhere else in their region. Dallas to Tulsa was OK, but Abilene to Tulsa wouldn’t be.

The plan had been to get my new website How To Become A Paramedic HQ, ready before going to Vegas. Did I have time now?

Yes, and it even worked out well. I rented the car in Dallas on Wednesday evening, then drove till 9PM and just stopped at the first hotel and asked “Do you have Internet and a room?” They did. I was then able to focus on working on that site from 9PM to 1:30 AM in the hotel room. Actually got about everything done, and was able to finish it up in the morning. Drove into Arkansas the next morning and had plenty of time for the viewing. Funeral the next day. Up early Saturday, drive to Tulsa, fly to Vegas.

The plan was party with my best friend in Vegas for 2 days before the conference started.

By 3 PM on Saturday I was nauseous. Problem was I’d already agreed to pay $170 for a massage at 7PM (hey its Vegas, everything’s expensive). At 6:30 I puke for the first time. But I’ve already shelled out the money. So I go down to spa, get shown around, take a shower. But I’m getting sicker I can feel it. Finally my masseur comes to take me to the room and asks how I’m doing. Long story short she gets the manager to refund my money and I go back to my room.

Where I start puking every 45 minutes for the next 24 hours.

What a way to spend a weekend in Vegas. I felt really bad for my friend who had to hang out in the room and listen to me puke for all that time.

One good thing about travelling with a doctor is they can prescribe medicine. The next day he prescribes and then picks up some Zofran. I’d stopped puking by then, but it kept if from coming back.

The plan was to party, but I didn’t have that much energy, so it was a pretty tame weekend.

The plan was to go to some conference panels, since they let me in free and all. And to look as some exhibits and meet some people that I might partner with. Also live podcasts on Wednesday and Thursday. With kilts on Thursday.

I never made it to a single conference panel. Too much time spent in the social media/podcasting booth. It was fun though. The ProMed guru of podcasting and streaming, Jamie Davis, did some cool stuff and I learned a lot helping with that.

If you’ve read my Kilted To Kick Cancer post, you know we ended up with only one live podcast and it was a day before the kilting was to start. But I adapted and ended up kilted for 2 days instead of one.

And actually the rest of the trip went to plan. Flew back to Lubbock on Friday – wish I’d planned it better and could have stayed Friday. There was a party Friday night in Lubbock for the two of us coming back from Vegas. The Mrs came and got me, and we returned to Abilene.

Hung out and relaxed with the Mrs, spending quality time doing what ever, and wild monkey time Saturday.

Sunday I drove back to Houston. Found the lawn guys had messed up the watering stuff and the front yard was dead. Backyard they had done nothing to, so it was 5 inches tall. Realtor had no sheets on the sign in the front yard.

Mostly relaxed on Monday, and am now back in the groove. Still don’t know what I’m going to do with my life exactly for the near future. Maybe on Friday I can figure that out. Class on Wednesday, EMS photoshoot on Thursday.

Memorizing Makes Your Brain Bigger.

Ron — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:45:22 +0000

I’m reading Moonwalking with Einstein, a book about memory and how the author made it better. Facinating stuff so far, but this little tidbit deserves a blog post. I’ll never think about cabbies – at least London cabbies – the same way again.

“These studious cyclists are training to become cabdrivers. Before they can receive accreditation from London’s Public Carriage Office, cabbies-in-training must spend two to four years memorizing the locations and traffic patterns of all 25,000 streets in the vast and vastly confusing city, as well as the locations of 1,400 landmarks. Their training culminates in the infamously daunting exam called “the Knowledge,” in which they not only have to plot the shortest route between any two points in the metropolitan area, but also name important places of interest along the way. Only about three out of ten people who train for the Knowledge obtain certification.

That is a high bar to set for mere cabdrivers. Amazing.

The author then follows up with something my neuro-radiologist best friend and I were talking about the other day in Vegas. I’d asked if the often sited “we only use 10% of our brain” was true. He wasn’t sure exactly, but said it is more likely we only use 10% at a time. Then we talked a little about memory. I mentioned the 60 Minutes piece with the actor from Taxi who remembered every day of her life in detail, and how there were more people like her interviewed on the show.

Then we talked about the interesting thing they found out about those people. They did an MRI of their brains and found hypertrophy in the part of the brain associated with memory. But in the story they didn’t know which came first. Did they have extraordinary memories because they were born with the hypertrophy, or did remembering all that cause them to have the hypertrophy?

Well they did the same thing with London’s cabbies.

…she brought in 16 taxi drivers into her lab and examined their brains with an MRI…The right posterior hippocampus, a part of the brain know to be involved in spatial navigation, was 7% larger than normal in the cabbies – a small by very significant difference….The more years a cabbie had been on the road, the more pronounced the effect

So it looks like memorizing changes your brain. More to come as I keep reading.

A Comfort Zone Expander: Kilted to Kick Cancer

Ron — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:14:07 +0000

Three years ago (has it really been that long?) I studied Pick Up. One of the things many pickup gurus – and especially Neil Strauss would do is come up with exercises that pushed you out of your comfort zone.

For the last 36 hours I’ve been living one of those.

I’ve gone Kilted.

Kilted to Kick Cancer and EMSWorld Expo Las Vegas

For my EMS podcast I went to Las Vegas for a huge conference and we live podcasted our show. A fellow EMS Blogger, the Happy Medic aka Justin Schorr and a cop blogger MotorCop came up with this idea to wear kilts for the month of September to raise awareness for male specific cancers, namely prostate and testicular cancers. Thus Kilted to Kick Cancer was born.

My co-host Kelly Greyson isn’t just about raising awareness, he wanted to raise money too. He agreed to go kilted for the whole month, including the days we podcast at the conference. Then he came up with a contest with a sweet prize package.

I told him I’d go kilted the first day of the month as well. Looking at the prizes I thought maybe all month wouldn’t be that bad.

Then some things changed at the show and we didn’t have a show on the first, but we still did for middle of the last day of August. So we decided to wear kilts for the show and I ran back to the hotel and changed in to my blackwatch kilt. Then the next morning – the big kick off day – I couldn’t not wear a kilt. So I’ve been going around Las Vegas in a kilt for two days.

Interesting Experiences

Like the pickup comfort expanding exercises, most of your problems are in your head. I went back to the hotel after the conference on Wednesday and battled going out again in my kilt – just staying in so I didn’t have to. And I was alone, so no one would know. And it really wasn’t the day anyway.

Excuses. Not very manly.

Next day new excuses run in your head. Well I did it yesterday, I only said I’d do it once. Etc. But I overcame these obstacles.

Raising Awareness

Everyone looks. You can see it in their side long glances. In the heads just starting to move as you pass them. In the pointed not asking.

But a few will do it. They ask. And when they do….

“I’m wearing a kilt because September is Prostate and Testicular Cancer awareness month. Some EMS people are doing this to raise awareness of these cancers. There is a month every year where every thing on the planet turns pink to save the boobies. This is our month for the cancers that kill guys. Just as many guys die of these cancers as women die of breast cancer, but it gets a zillion times more attention and money.”

Or something like that. Varies a little every time. Sometimes I encourage guys to go get tested. If you are over 40 your should be tested – yes that test – every year (You get tested via a blood test as well.)

Donate to Kilt Ron

I’m not going to wear it everyday. Mainly because I only have one kilt. But if you want me to wear it on a specific day – except on duty or at a clinical – make a donation and I will. You can donate either to the Livestrong Foundation for Testicular Cancer, or the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Or Both.

Use the links below so I get credit in the contest.