Fantasist's Scroll

What do you use to get the Job done?

Slashdot, a geek news service, has an interesting article about writer’s choices of tools. They mainly focus on word processors, of course, but it goes beyond that. There are some rather insightful comments about the article, too. Especially, the comment made that, basically, all we need in a word processing program is Open, Save, Bold, Italic, Underline, Spellcheck, and Print. What else do you really need to get the message accross? That’s all I use in this blog, for instance. So, do we need to spend big money on the latest version of Microsoft Word? Not really. We can do just fine with the free Wordpad, if we’re willing to use an actual dictionary instead of Spellcheck.
So, what are you waiting for? Go start writing!

And, living batteries are born.

I love new power-related technology. Especially when it all turns back to the original power source: life. So, these two stories, one on USA Today and the other on SpaceDaily, about batteries that are powered by bacteria, just tickle me. The idea of germs, basically, keeping us in energy. Of course, some of you will make the extension to the Matrix, but that’s your hang-up, man.

Enjoy the stories.

Freakishly, we can still raed them.

And, you probably just did. Yes, that misspelling of “read” was on purpose. I did it as an example of what Kourosh Saberi of Caltech, Pasadena, and David R. Perrott of California State University, Los Angeles, California have discovered about how we “see” words. According to this article on Nature.com, we apparently don’t usually read all the letters in a word, just the first and last. The rest of the letters can be there in almost any order and we’ll still “see” the right word. It’s bizarre, but apparently true, to a certain extent, of course.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s why I have such trouble spelling?
In any case, it’s an interesting article and idea. Go check it out.