I think the 90’s were an amazing time for game books. This is one I’ve not seen before. It was a series of paired game books that have a first-person style play.
You play against another person who is playing at the same time with the companion book. Just like in a real first-person shooter, depending on how you (and your opponent) move around, you can come up behind, in front, or to the side of your enemy as you fight against each other in the dungeon.
Other notable authors such as Rob Adams, Paul Bonner, Gary Chalk, Melvyn Grant, Richard Hook, Peter Andrew Jones, Cyril Julien, Peter Lyon, Peter Parr, Graham Round, and Brian Williams have also generously offered similar permission for their contributions. This includes books from famous series like Lone Wolf, Freeway Warrior, Kai, Grand Master, Magnakai, and even some of the Lone Wolf PC games. Project Aon hosts the books on their free website and gives you free permission to use them.
One of the first things you’ll run into is that you’re not going to be able to generate any images at 512×512 or larger if you have a graphics card with 8GB of VRAM or less. Even smaller if you only have 4GB of VRAM. The first/easiest method is to limit the output image size. There is also an option that splits the model into 4 parts and loads each separately (thought it will take longer), or using a more optimized/compressed set of trained model data.
So how do you do that if you have an older graphics card that only has 4GB or 8GB of VRAM? TingTingin has some tips at the end of his installation video if you are using a card with 8GB of VRAM (nVidia 3070’s for example).
Summary (at 15:45): Modify your txt2img.py and add the line ‘model.half()’ after model = instantiate_from_config(config.model) in the load_model_from_config() function.
The 1980’s Dungeon’s and Dragon’s cartoon was one of my Saturday morning favorites. I loved the adventures and magical places they went. It turns out Hasbro, like many toy companies, is starting to cater to adult nostalgia via it’s Hasbro Pulse series of toys.
Cortical Labs has taken hundreds of thousands of cortical cells from dissected rodent embryo brains, placed them in a dish, and are being taught to play Pong. The brain cells were collected from rodent embryo brains and placed in high-density multielectrode arrays. The real-time electrophysiological activity of defined motor regions was gathered to move the pong paddle. If a successful interception occurred, a predictable stimulus was delivered across all electrodes simultaneously at 100Hz for 10ms (briefly interrupting the regular sensory stimulation). If this activity did not result in an interception of the ball by the paddle, an unpredictable stimulus was delivered (150mV voltage at 5Hz for 4 seconds). This predictable/unpredictable stimulus response is apparently a natural response of brain cells.
Apparently this ‘wetware‘ hybrid approach of using real brain cells with electro-chemical interface exhibited better performance more quickly than current AI methods.
While fascinating and ground breaking I must admit it is also disturbing. It raises some serious ethical questions, especially in countries where scientific ethics differ greatly. To what degree do we want to augment our computational devices with real animal – or even human – brain cells? How could those embryonic brain cells be sourced since it seems to imply the death of the animal/person? What if we could use such devices in our own brains to enhance our own learning powers? And the bigger question: what is the end results/goals – and if we even should be considering these kinds of “wetware” brain cell augmented devices?
Reset your graphics driver – Win + CTRL + SHIFT + B
Remembering a wifi password you entered forever ago: c:\> netsh wlan show profile < shows a list of wifi profiles you have connected to > c:\> netsh wlan show profile <wifiProfileName> key=clear < shows the wifi password you last entered >
Message every single windows system on the network c:\> msg * <message>
Hackertyper – Hit F11 to fullscreen your browser and then look like a hacker. https://hackertyper.net/
FakeUpdate – go to the website, get on your friend’s computer, load the update screen for that OS, hit F11 to go fullscreen, and then see how long they’ll sit there before resetting. https://fakeupdate.net/
With nuclear blustering from Russia starting up again, one can take a trip back to the 80’s when world-wide nuclear Armageddon was literally just 90 minutes away at any time. That is still technically true, but tensions are still dramatically less than the constant alert status of those years. What is also still true is learning important information about radiation detectors and Geiger counters.
Back in the day, these old yellow box-like Civil Defense Geiger Counters were scattered around just about every community:
There were numerous different models that operated differently depending what they measured. These models are now over 50 years old. Radiation detectors require calibration and regular testing to give anything remotely like a good reading. You can often find these at military surplus stores for well under $100, but unless you test them against known sources and calibrate them at different levels against different sources, it’s difficult to trust detectors this old. Especially because they were often abused/poorly stored.
Today, you can find a lot of radiation detectors on the web. However, one needs to understand what they are buying before they jump in. Two of the biggest factors for a detector are: radiation range and radiation type.
Why range matters: 3.6 Roentgen – Not great, not terrible
The vast majority of Geiger counters you find online are for low radiation dosages. How low? They often max out at values like 32 millirem (1/1000th of a rem) per hour. While this is great for the amounts of radiation the average person might encounter via radon, food, or minerals, how would it fare during a nuclear war or serious nuclear accident?
According to the scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in their 1987 “Nuclear War Survival Skills” document, “Instruments that measure only milliroentgen-range dose rates are sold for war use by some companies. Since most Americans have no idea what size of radiation doses would incapacitate or kill them, and do not even know that a milliroentgen is 1/1000 of a roentgen, some people buy instruments that are capable of measuring maximum dose rates of only one roentgen or less per hour.” (One roentgen is equivalent to one rem.)
The book instead says that a meter that “can measure one roentgen per hour (rem) is far too low to be of much use in a nuclear war.” So, just like the instruments at Chernobyl that could only register 3.6 roentgen/hr, devices that only measure millirem/hour are essentially useless during a large nuclear accident or attack. They would almost immediately be maxed out and tell you very little.
What you need is a high-range radiation detector – something that can read up to hundreds of rem/hour – if you want it for a survival tool after a serious nuclear accident or war.
Detected Radiation Types
The next important factor is what TYPE of radiation a detector can measure. There are 4 major types that would be important in a nuclear accident or attack. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and X-ray radiation. Alpha radiation is the lowest penetrating type of radiation, clothing or even a sheet of paper is sufficient to protect you from alpha radiation. Its biggest danger is ingesting alpha particles by inhaling or eating contaminated dust/food. They are dangerous if they get inside your body – this is why wearing a good mask is important.
Beta particles are slightly more penetrative than alpha, but still blocked easily by wood or thin metal layers.
Gamma radiation is much more dangerous. It can penetrate all but thick concrete, lead, or other heavy shielding. Its penetrative power is the most dangerous.
X-ray radiation is pretty self explanatory as we are familiar with them from dentist offices to all sorts of medical diagnostics. X-rays are usually short lived but emitted in tremendous amounts during nuclear blasts.
For military purposes, most of their detectors only record X-ray and gamma levels. These are by far the most dangerous types of radiation. Your detector should at least detect those 2 kinds of radiation at a minimum.
The biggest thing to know is that after a nuclear attack or serious accident, there will be rising and falling amounts of different nucleotides over time as higher energy sources decay to lower ones:
The most important factor is that time is your friend. The first 2-5 days are the most critical time to stay sheltered and to protect yourself from contamination and fallout:
This would be done primarily by staying in a safely shielded/enclosed shelter, taking thyroid pills, wearing masks to avoid inhaling particles, and by only eating clean food and water. Most guides would recommend at least a month’s worth of supplies before any help would arrive.
Calculating your dose
When reading a radiation detector, reading the radiation level alone is not enough information to figure out if you are in danger. Dosage of radiation is a calculation of radiation level AND time of exposure. Most detectors read values in microsieverts (uSv), millisieverts (mSv), or rontgen per hour (rem). To calculate your dosage, you need to calculate the radiation rate along with the time you were exposed to it. If you are in a 10mSv (or 1 rem) environment for 1 hour, you would receive a 10mSv (1 rem) dosage. If you were in that environment for 2 hours, you would get a 20mSv or 2 rem dosage. If you were only in that environment for 30 minutes, you would get half that dose – 5mSv or 0.5 rem.
Here’s some dose rates of some places/objects to give you an example, or watch this excellent video by Veritasium
Workers clearing the Chernobyl roof as bio-robots (fatal dose in 115 seconds – most got 40-90sec worth)
So what constitutes a dangerous amount of radiation?
The average person receives about 1.5 to 3.5 millisievert (mSv) per year via normal background radiation – or around a reading of 0.17-0.39 microsieverts (uSv) per hour (a microsievert is 1/1000 of a millisievert).
Example: Calculation of the average full-year dose is: 0.17uSv/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 1489.2 uSv/year = 1.4892 mSv/year. (or 0.14892 rem/year)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in their 1987 “Nuclear War Survival Skills” document say that in the event of a nuclear war – ‘small’ doses of around 6 rem per day should “produce no incapacitating symptoms. The human body usually can repair almost all radiation damage if the daily doses are not too large.” Outside of war time, regulations say a US radiation worker should have no more than 5 rem, or 50 mSv for a WHOLE YEAR exposure. That would be an environment with no more than 0.00068 rem/6.8 uSv per hour exposure. After a war, if you wanted to stay below a 6 rem/60 mSv per day exposure – you would not want to be in any environment over (a frighteningly high) 2.5mSv/hr (or 2500uSv/hr). You might survive those rates, but would almost certainly would experience serious issues because your whole year dose would be a terrifying 2190 rem/yr (21,900 mSv/yr) vs a normal exposure of <0.2 rem/yr (2 mSv/yr)
For whole doses, you are now looking at these kinds of effects when you calculate the dose over time:
mSv
rem
Effect
0.035
0.0035
Cumulative dose of a cross-country US flight
0.1
0.01
1 chest X-ray
2.0
0.2
1 year of average background radiation
50
5
Maximum yearly dose for US radiation worker
60
6
Limit of maximum reasonably safe annual dose
80
8
Astronaut who spends 6 months in space on space station
50-100
5-10
changes in blood chemistry. Possible later effects or chromosomal damage
120
12
Average reported Chernobyl liquidator dosage
160
16
Radiation smoker’s lungs receive in one year (from radioactive Pu and Pb in tobacco)
250
25
Average dose of a Chernobyl bio-robot during their 40-90 second work session on the roof of Chernobyl. https://youtu.be/XzfsfYnuc8c
500
50
Nausea, within hours. Reduction of white blood cell count.
700
70
Vomiting
750
75
Hair loss, within 2-3 weeks
900
90
Diarrhea
1000-2000
100-200
Mild radiation sickness within a few hours: vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue; reduction in resistance to infection.
2000-3000
200-300
Serious radiation sickness effects as above plus hemorrhage. Exposure is lethal to 10-35% of the population after 30 days.
3000-4000
300-400
Serious radiation sickness; also marrow and intestine destruction; Death in 50-70% of cases.
4000-10,000
400-1000
Acute illness, early death and lifelong health effects. Death in 60-95% of cases.
10,000-50,000
1000-5000
Acute illness, early death in days; Death in 100% of cases.
Modern radiation detection
So with that background, what kind of detector should you buy? What you need during a serious nuclear accident is a radiation detector that can minimally detect X-rays and gamma rays up to 300rem (3000mSv) with trustworthy results. This is what is used by military forces around the world and the range those old yellow civil defense devices could measure.
Unfortunately, when tested, a great number of high-range radiation detectors give dangerously inaccurate results. Many that are sold on the internet are not calibrated nor tested – when many were tested by Oak Ridge, they often reported within 20% of true values on lower doses, but were often off by more than 80% at higher ranges. They found some read 100 rem/hour when the true radiation level was closer to 500 rem/hour. Further, many devices will most likely not survive EMP that would occur during a nuclear attack.
So, maybe we should steer clear of things you buy on Amazon or eBay. Their dose rates are too low, or are likely dangerously inaccurate. What you need is a real professional tool, and that means some serious money.
Ecotest MKS-05
The cheapest high-range models I could find with a reasonable reputation are also ones seen in Ukraine around Chernobyl: Ecotest MKS-05 Terra-P detectors. They measure from 0.1 uSv to 9,999mSv/hr (±25%), detects X-ray and gamma and a calculated beta exposure. With a ±25% range of error it is not great, but definitely useful as a high-range device. It also acts as a dosimeter. They cost around $400 and seem to be well reviewed. Just be sure to buy them from a reputable vendor.
The next high-range model with much better tolerances and seems to be used by scientists around Chernobyl are the Thermo Scientific RadEye survey meters.
Some of their detectors are able to register from uSv all the way to 10 Sv/hr (1000 rem). Noteably the RadEye PRD-ER4, SPRD-ER, and G-Ex and GF-Ex. These models cost an eye-watering $1900-$2300. The GF-10-Ex can reach 3 Sv/hr (300 rem) and can be found for around $1650
Thermo Scientific RadEye G-Ex
Besides those, you might also consider the lower dosage meters in the B series:
RadEye B20-ER
Youtube videos often use the B models in contaminated zones like Chernobyl – like the Thermo Scientific RadEyeB20-ER. These kinds of devices are for first responders. They detect alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray radiation. Unfortunately, even the -ER (extended range) model is limited to reading from 0.2uSv to 100 mSv/hr (10 rem/hr). They also calculate cumulative doses so you don’t need to keep a mental calculation as you move through different radiation levels. Unfortunately, they also cost about $2000 – so they are also very expensive.
Gamma-Scout
Gamma-Scout is a German made device with good calibration, is well reviewed, and used by numerous people during radiation scouting events around Chernobyl/Fukushima. It registers alpha, beta and gamma emissions from 0.1 to 1,000 μSv/h. So, it’s not useful as the RadEye due to the limited range, but good for lower-dose environments. Costing around $450, you could buy this and the Ecotest for under $1000 and likely cover your bases.
2025 Update:
Radioactive Drew does a great job of testing different radiation detectors on real radiation sources and clearly demonstrates how well they do (or don’t) work. It’s interesting to see how long it takes some testers to give you a good reading (a long time in some cases!) and it clearly demonstrations show you how detectors without certain detection capabilities may report things look fine – when you are getting doses of other kinds of radiation it doesn’t detect. Again, the RadEye’s are best.
Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine – “If you see me, then weep”
Inscription on a rock in the Elbe River near the northern Czech town of Děčín, close to the German border
Not only is Europe battling astronomical fuel prices, but also one of the worst droughts in almost 500 years. How bad? Historically bad – and we know because it’s literally written in stone.
Water levels are at their lowest in decades – and rocks are appearing from under the shoreline with grim and frightening inscriptions. These rocks inscribed with dates and warnings even have names. They’re called Hungerstein or Hunger Stones. These stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again.
The earliest readable year on the Děčín stone is 1616. Traces of inscriptions relating to much earlier droughts, including 1417 and 1473, have been largely eroded over time. Ten later dry years, between 1707 and 1893, are also recorded. Most hunger stones are found on the Elbe, which flows from the north of what is now the Czech Republic through former Bohemia and then Germany before reaching the North Sea near Hamburg. Others appear on the Rhine, Danube and Moselle.
It turns out you can’t just set up an AI model and let it crank for years. You need to pay attention to something called drift. There are ways of telling if your AI model is drifting by monitoring model accuracy, outputs, and inputs on an ongoing basis and re-balancing them.
I was going to try out RKC sleep for my next mattress as a local option (I heard good things about a the Beautyrest Black hybrid). I’ve been told they sell top brand mattresses at amazing discounts – often well below wholesale. If you don’t mind the no-frills shopping experience in search of top name mattresses for super-cheap – give them a shot.
