Random Access

I have forgotten how much of a piece of piece Windows XP can be. Yes, I’ve been spoiled by the simplicity of OSX and program upgrades and installations. I recently had to wipe and reinstall XP on one of my machines in the north office. I forgot about that today when I had to do some online training. Which means that I had to reinstall a number of helper applications in order to use the training modules.

Install.
Reboot.
Install.
Reboot.
Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.

I got everything installed. I went through the training modules. Life was good. Yay.

Earlier in the afternoon, Code Monkey and I went for a constitutional. We were talking about how temperate it was today. From there we went off on a tangent about skin color and heat absorption. That, in turn, led me onto a tangent about Kryptonians’ (and Daxamites’) ability to absorb energy from yellow solar radiation. Then, came the big tangent:

Where were the Black Kryptonians?!

CM and I then had a couple of other questions:

1. Would the concept of Black Kryptonians work? If high melanin-content in the skin reflects heat, then would the darker-skinned be as “super” under a yellow sun as their light-skinned counterparts?
2. If Krypton was a cold/ice planet, as seen in Superman and Superman II, would there even be any dark-skinned Kryptonians?

Of course, this meant that I had to look up whether or not there had ever been Black Kryptonians in the comics. Lo and behold, there were! Evidence was found here, here and even here.

Still no word on Black Daxamites, though.

Stray Toasters

• Newsarama had a link to Legion of Super-Potatoes. The second page, with the Legion of Substitute Potatoes, nearly made me double over and smack my head on my desk from laughter.
• This is the cover of the first issue of Legion of Super-Heroes that I ever bought:



• Living Between Wednesdays had an amusing look at The Invincible Iron Man #172, featuring a drunken Tony Stark…
• …which makes a perfect segue for this:



• Isabella Rossellini Does Bug Porn
• What if John Byrne had written the X-Men?
• Also, check out the official trailer for Wolverine and the X-Men, the upcoming animated series from Marvel. It looks like an interesting twist on the X-Men mythos.



• Not the droids you’re expecting…
• While watching CNN’s primary coverage, SaraRules mentioned that she was fascinated by the multi-touch interactive display they used to track/follow voting reports. So, I showed her the multi-touch exhibition from TED in 2006:

  Then I showed her an item from Popular Mechanics.com about the Microsoft Milan. That made me wonder when the Milan was going to be available to the public. Apparently, it hits the market on 30 May 2008.

Namaste.