Eternal Flame Falls

Eternal Flame Falls

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About 30 miles south of Niagara Falls, just below the Canadian border in northwestern New York, inside Shale Creek Preserve about a half-hour drive south of Buffalo, lies a hiking trail with an unusual payoff, if you can find it: Eternal Flame Falls, a waterfall tucked away in a grotto that contains a natural “torch” about 8 inches high.

The ground at the base of Eternal Flame Falls emits a steady supply of natural gas, which rises from deep below the surface up through fault lines and into the open air. This, in turn, is what lights the flame, found on the waterfall’s right-hand side about 5 feet up from the creek bed.

The flame is visible year-round, but the waterfall can run dry in the summer and often is only fully flowing in the spring. If you go right after there’s been some decent rainfall, you’ll get to enjoy the waterfall’s full effect.

The flame stays lit on its own, but bring a lighter just in case — occasionally it goes out, in which case it’s your duty as a good citizen to relight it. It ignites quickly, with a distinct “pop,” so maybe try one of those extra-long candle lighters if you’re nervous.

Back issues

Back issues

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Issuu is an online site that has tons of really high quality scans of periodicals, comic books, rare books, and all kinds of media.

In looking for some original Blade Runner information, I was surprised to find they had some Syd Mead art books and comic books. Amazing resource, but not sure how they’re managing copyright law.

https://issuu.com/futurenoir/docs/bladerunner_sketchbook
https://issuu.com/mondolfo/docs/brac02
Spend a night at the North Pole

Spend a night at the North Pole

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Starting April 2020, the North Pole will no longer be only for intrepid explorers and polar bears. The northernmost point on Earth will get a temporary hotel. 10 heated glass igloos will be transported to the safest part of the glacier.

Luxury Action is a Finnish travel company behind the mobile igloos. They will only open for one month, when travelers can reach the hostile environment by helicopter. 

Now all you have to do is cough up €95,000 ($104,604) for the experience, which includes two nights in Svalbard (an archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole), flights and logistics from Svalbard to the North Pole and then back to Svalbard, a night at the North Pole, and all meals, security, and guiding. 

Read more about it here: https://www.afar.com/magazine/north-pole-igloos-will-be-the-northernmost-hotel-in-the-world?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=091719%20Igloo/AllInclusiveCruises&utm_content=A&utm_term=Daily%20Wander%20Newsletter


C# App hangs when BitmapDecoder.CreateAsync is called

C# App hangs when BitmapDecoder.CreateAsync is called

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Calling ASync functions from UI event handling routines/the main UI thread in C# turns out to require some basic knowledge to avoid getting into deadlocks. I sort of jumped in without doing much learning, so here were some of my learning resources as I made the inevitable mistakes:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12507749/winrt-app-hangs-when-bitmapdecoder-createasyncstream-is-called

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/8bed034e-a8f6-4322-a801-79f014815dd9/bitmapencodercreateasync-never-returns?forum=winappswithcsharp

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12235085/winrt-loading-static-data-with-getfilefromapplicationuriasync

Debugging tips:

Psychic Debugging of Async Methods

https://medium.com/bynder-tech/c-why-you-should-use-configureawait-false-in-your-library-code-d7837dce3d7f

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.threading.tasks.task-1.result?view=netframework-4.8

C# and Universal Windows App file handling:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get-started/fileio-learning-track

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/files/file-access-permissions

The details of fighting game logic

The details of fighting game logic

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Making a button-mashing fighting game like Street Fighter has some surprisingly sophisticated logic when it comes to frame-perfect animation hits and combos. Strange Wire does an awesome job describing the difficulties and some ways to solve them.

What are those difficulties? Problems like checking hit and hurt boxes at the right parts of animation frames. Attaching events at the right parts of the animations can be tricky – especially if animators are still tweaking them. And the ever-present issue of keep the code clean.

Definitely worth a read whether you’re doing 2D to 3D fighters.

https://strangewire.blogspot.com/2019/09/frame-specific-attacks-in-unity.html

Incubus – 1966 Esperanto horror film featuring a pre-Star Trek William Shatner

Incubus – 1966 Esperanto horror film featuring a pre-Star Trek William Shatner

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On a strange island inhabited by demons and spirits, a man battles the forces of evil!

Esperanto is a constructed auxiliary language devised by Polish ophthalmologist and linguist L.L. Zamenhof in 1887 to foster harmony between people from different countries. The vocabulary stems mostly from the Romance/Latin languages with additional input from Germanic, Slavic, and Greek languages.

Who knew that it would be used to make a film? And a film that stars a pre-Star Trek William Shatner. The idea was that use of Esperanto was intended to create an eerie, other-worldly feeling and makers claimed they hoped for greater international sales.

It was thought lost forever when the negatives were destroyed, but a single copy was found in 1996 in Paris and used to create all current videos of it. Give it a watch or read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1966_film)