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Mighty No. 9 Suffers Another Delay, Inafune "Sincerely Sorry" for Disappointing Fans

Mighty No. 9, Keiji Inafune's spiritual successor to Mega Man, has been delayed again. The announcement was made in an update to Kickstarter backers, where Inafune--who created Mega Man along with a number of iconic properties for Capcom, before leaving in 2010--explained developer Comcept encountered "critical" issues in the game's online matchmaking.

Keiji Inafune’s Mighty No. 9 delayed … again

Mighty No. 9 is a lesson for future Kickstarters

"We started to record meteorology at the coldest point in the last 10,000 years."

https://vimeo.com/14366077

I've been taking the antidepressant imipramine for a month now. It has worked well in the past, and in many ways I feel it's working now. However I am finding that the things that once interested me, no longer do. I can't motivate myself to do anything productive. Instead I just hit the Reload button in my web browser.

When I reload a page only to discover no new content has appeared, I feel totally useless.

I've experienced this before; the experience passed after some time, even without medication. So at times I tell myself just be patient this will go away.

My depression is not the "Goodbye Cruel World" sort. I've experienced that before as well, and have attempted several times. These days I feel silly about that - I demolished a perfectly good car because I lost all hope, but then a few months later that hope had returned, but with the exception that I was riding public transport.

In reality there are many things I could do to enjoy my time.

Yesterday I contemplated this problem then walked about five miles round trip to fetch my prescriptions, also to hang out in a day center for the mentally ill. It was a good experience. I felt really weary when I finally got back to my camp and lay down in my sleeping bag, but it was a good sort of weariness.

I often write Walls Of Text then publish them online. Lately I cannot even do that I have nothing to write about, and when I attempt to write a new Wall Of Text it falls flat.

I know this will pass too, I am heavily into writing.

George Washington slave book pulled after criticism

A children's picture book about George Washington and his slaves has been pulled by publishers Scholastic.

A Birthday Cake for George Washington tells the story of Washington's slave Hercules, a cook, and his daughter.

It had been criticised for its images of smiling slaves, and described as being "highly problematic".

Scholastic said in a statement that without more historical context, the book "may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves".

The book, telling the story of Hercules and Delia making a cake together, had been released on 5 January. It was met with a barrage of one-star reviews on Amazon, with readers describing it as "disgustingly inaccurate", and one writing: "I can't believe people are celebrating a children's story that depicts happy, joyful slaves."

Scholastic's description of the story had read: "Everyone is buzzing about the president's birthday! Especially George Washington's servants, who scurry around the kitchen preparing to make this the best celebration ever. Oh, how George Washington loves his cake! And, oh, how he depends on Hercules, his head chef, to make it for him. Hercules, a slave, takes great pride in baking the president's cake."

Auschwitz price-fixing claims: Israel police arrest nine

Nine executives at Israeli travel agencies have been arrested on suspicion of fixing the price of high school students' trips to former Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz.

Police say they are investigating allegations of a secret price-fixing arrangement by companies who organise the trips for students.

Investigators have raided the homes of executives and frozen bank accounts.

At least six travel agencies are accused of violating competition rules.

They are suspected of colluding on prices before responding to an education ministry tender to take students to Holocaust memorials.

When the Israeli education ministry approached a number of different companies, it received identical quotes.

Reports say the alleged collusion was aimed at artificially inflating prices.

Rubio: "we make deals with Iran, we betray our allies like Israel"

...You forgot to say Saudi Arabia.

Long exchange between Trump and Cruz over Cruz's citizenship. It seems most of the boos around this portion are pro-Trump.

~40 minutes in. Carson: "I was mentioned." Host: "You were?" Carson: "He said 'everybody'."

~86 minutes in. Christie trying to be the NSA's top cheerleader yet again. No Rand on stage to balance him out anymore.

~95 minutes in. Kasich: "I believe in the PTT."

~100 minutes in. Trump cuts in to call Jeb weak. Are the boos for Trump or Jeb?

~124 minutes in. Some kind of heckling. "We want ----."

Christie calls FBI Director Comey a friend.

~131 minutes in. Rubio calls Snowden a traitor who committed treason while bashing Cruz.

~134 minutes in. Bush talks about encryption/cybersecurity. "NSA should be put in charge of the civilian side of [cybersecurity]." "If you can encrypt messages, ISIS can." Narrowly avoids endorsing backdoors, but he's a Bush so we know how much that's worth.

Kasich's closing statement mentions reform of military contractor spending. Bencarson.com's closing statement mentions bencarson.com. Rubio: a Hillary Clinton-based closing statement. Cruz: mentions a Benghazi movie, panders to military and law enforcement. Trump: mentions the 10 sailors in Iran, something about making America good again.

I Went to a Cannabis-Themed Gala and Saw the Future

Marketed as "Canada's first vapour gala," the Go Greene Winter Gala was held at a "private upscale location" made known to ticketholders the day of. Go Greene is an advocacy group that promotes diversity within the cannabis community. It was founded by former Alaska-based TV journalist Charlo Greene, who quit her job on air to become a full-time activist.

[...] A table outside the door of the party room was stacked with goodies like THC-infused soda, cookies, and candy. I passed, and by that I mean I stuffed them into my purse, because I knew I wouldn't be able to interview people baked. Once outfitted with green wristbands, we headed into what was akin to a massive hotbox. There was green lighting, gold balloons that spelled out "Go Greene," and a green carpet that was made of felt or something very similar to felt and was secured to the floor with visible packing tape.

The 80 or so guests were instructed to dress to impress, and many of them obliged, wearing gowns, tuxedos, and random head gear. (I put on a grey dress that I wear to work all the time because I'm lazy.) They posed for photos in front of a backdrop branded with the names of different cannabis industry sponsors—the kind normally reserved for film festivals and obnoxious clubs.

[...] Caterers made their way around the room carrying trays of prosciutto-wrapped melon and black bean cakes, while hip-hop artists and DJs performed on a slightly elevated stage. The bar was manned by two dabtenders with blowtorches. (There was no booze on premise, which is probably for the best.)

Sarah Gilles, who works at promotions/events company The High Five, was serving up weed juice shots and giving away swag bags filled with her cannabis-infused beauty products like body butter and a scrub. She told me weed is responsible for her glowing "420 face" and that people who suffer from skin conditions and pain should consider using it.

[...] My photographer and I were separated briefly until I found her sitting alone on a bright red dentist's chair beside the bathroom, hair tousled and eyes glazed.

"I did dabs," she said. "I seriously actually can't feel my face right now." Her words convinced me to do one, after which we posted up on a couch in the loft discussing all the times we'd ghosted on events because we were too high. Then we did exactly that.

In hindsight, I realized the weed ball was novel for more than just its atmosphere; there seemed to be no fear of being busted by cops and, for the first time in my experience reporting on drugs, no one hesitated to give me their name.

But the party is only a small reflection of movements taking place across the country. Pot shops (including a recreational one with a dab bar), already well-established on Canada's west coast, are making their way east. Judges have been calling bullshit on possession-related cases due to the "ridiculous" laws they hinge on, and politicians are vocalizing their visions for having cannabis sold in liquor stores. Dealers are even hosting holiday sales.

So while pragmatists will tell you legalization is a long way from being a reality, in some ways it seems it's already here.

Other selected stories:

Google dives into virtual reality with new division and new boss

Yahoo dumps 13.5TB of users' news interaction data for machine eating

Intel: For Mainstream Gamers, Our IGPs Are Equivalent to Discrete GPUs

Plan For Cuba Ferry Terminal Reveals Shift In Miami Politics

Microsoft Releases Its JavaScript Engine As Open Source 'ChakraCore'

        This has been an exciting time for us, and not just the scientists, everyone on board is really excited. Even me, and you know me, nothing gets me excited. We found another stellar system harboring life in this galaxy, and this one is really, really weird. It’s unbelievably, unimaginably weird. It may be the weirdest planet in the universe.
        Yes, we’ve already found fifty three living worlds in this galaxy, and that in itself is pretty exciting, since we’ve only found seventy eight planets with life on them in our own galaxy in all the time we’ve been exploring it, and here we’ve found fifty three on our first expedition to this galaxy on our first visit here. But this weird world...
        Like our galaxy, most of the planets and moons with life have only microbial life. We (well, the scientists, but they know what they’re talking about) are certain that at least one of the many species on the planet is a tool-using species that has even constructed space vessels. We’ve never run across anything close to being like that, ever, in all the time our species has been exploring space.
        I feel really honored to be the pilot of the first intergalactic vessel, even though we’re visiting G2, the closest galaxy to our own. They’re so close the two galaxies will eventually start to merge within our great grandchildren’s lifetimes. But still, I’m the first one to pilot a craft out of the galaxy and into another one.
        The really weird planet we found was the third planet from CXG-947. Okay, G2-CXG-947, but when I say CXG-947 you can assume the G2. Actually, you can assume all of them are G2 because that’s where we were and all the stars are G2, just like our galaxy is G1.
        Its surface is mostly dihydrogen monoxide like our planet, and unlike ours its atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. Most of the biologists were absolutely certain that life was impossible there, since there is so little free oxygen and carbon dioxide, but there it was. And not only life, but an incredible diversity of life, far more diverse than we’ve seen in any other life-bearing planet, in that galaxy or our own.
        Ironically, the biologists weren’t interested in the CXG-947 stellar system at all at first, as I said. They thought none of the planets’ atmospheres or other environmental variables were fit for life.
        The first planet from CXG-947 was small, hot, had no atmosphere, and one hemisphere always faced the star. The second had an atmosphere that was almost all carbon dioxide, and as a result was way too hot for life, as close as it was to the star. It would have been a perfect candidate for life if its orbit and the fourth planet’s orbits were switched. The third had all that nitrogen, the fourth with almost no atmosphere at all, and all the other bodies were either too large or too small as well as being too far from the star.
        It was the physicists who became interested in this star system first. They became curious when there was a short period where there were a number of flashes on XGC-947-3’s surface that emitted radiation in a very wide spectrum, as if a miniature star had appeared and died on the planet’s surface in an instant. This all happened on the planet’s northern hemisphere thousands of times within a short ten lokfars, then stopped.
        They wouldn’t have even seen it were it not for luck. We were passing between XGC-947 and XGC-948 on our way to ODX-102 when the flashes went off. We were really close, and they wouldn’t have seen them if we weren’t. It was only by accident that we found this strange place.
        More study revealed that the flashes were only semi-natural, that one of the planet’s species had actually engineered them. They were the result of uncontrolled fission and fusion reactions on the planet’s surface. The scientists have no idea why they did it, perhaps to test a scientific theory, or testing a means of harnessing those reactions’ power and an accident happened, over and over. But they can only guess, and tell me they don’t really know.
        Life on this planet was unlike anything the biologists had imagined, starting with being able to live in all that nitrogen. Yes, nitrogen Is inert, and that’s the problem. Life needs oxygen or some other such highly reactive nonmetallic element, even if it’s bound in a molecule like carbon dioxide, and so far oxygen and carbon dioxide were the only such gasses on planets that had anything actually living on them. However, the biologists tell me that perhaps there’s a planet with an atmosphere of chlorine or some other highly reactive gas bearing life that we have yet to find. I’m only the pilot so I don’t fully understand it like the biologists and chemists do, but that’s what they told me.
        Unlike any other life-bearing planet we’ve found, in our own galaxy or this one, some of its species are bipedal. Most of the bipedal animals the biologists studied were avian, but the intelligent species is also bipedal. I have no idea how anything could walk on only two legs, and the biologists are especially excited about it. Just try walking on two legs, it’s impossible. Heck, just try standing on two legs without holding on to something! That would be worthy of a circus sideshow. It makes me chuckle just thinking about it.
        But what fascinated the biologists the most was that none of the species were omnisexual. In every other planet we’ve seen all species are, and any member of any species can impregnate any other member of the species, including herself. These strange animals only had one set of genitals each. Yes, it happens. Even in our own species there’s an occasional child born with only one set of genitals, or worse and more rare two genitals of the same kind. But a planet where none of any of its animals have more than one set of genitals is unbelievably weird.
        They’re still trying to figure out how the intelligent species communicates, since so very few of the species there are bioluminescent, and the intelligent species isn’t. The leading theory is some sort of telepathy. This theory seems to hold up because the physicists have detected minute amounts of electromagnetic radiation that seems to be mechanically produced transmitted in certain patterns. They’re still trying to decipher the patterns, but so far haven’t had any luck doing so.
        Also, many species had strange projections from their... what the biologists call “heads”. They think these projections, which biologists call “ears” have something to do with their telepathy. Still others suggest that a projection they’ve named a “nose” may have something to do with it.
          Others have suggested that perhaps they are bioluminescent, only in a part of the spectrum we can’t see. There are some species on that weird place that change color, and perhaps a tiny change of color is how the intelligent animals communicate.
        The biologists wanted to land and do some up-close observations, but I vetoed that at once. The planet is simply too dangerous. There are violent animals, even the intelligent species, which sometimes cause huge explosions, and there are very often really nastily violent natural occurrences, such as high energy sparks hitting the ground from giant clouds of charged dihydrogen monoxide vapors, volcanoes, tornadoes, ground-quakes, tsunamis, and perhaps even scarier, more perilous things we hadn’t yet witnessed. It’s a very dangerous world, far too dangerous to land on. I had to explain to the biologists that landing there would be way outside the rule book, and if they kept pestering me I’d have to report them.
        When the mini-stars were flashing on the planet’s surface, the physicists sent a drone down for closer investigation, and it crashed. Those things never crash! And these mad scientists wanted to go down there? If they want to land they’re going to have to find a crazier pilot than me.
        There’s so much to learn about this amazing planet. The biologists are especially excited. They keep eschewing the violence, saying we would be inedible to any life form there, but that’s not enough for me. Not after that drone. And I wondered what “inedible” meant, but I didn’t ask.
        But we did fly really low sometimes. A few times, some machines tried to chase us. One seemed to shoot a rocket at us, but the rocket was really slow compared to us. That was another reason I refused to land, we simply didn’t understand these creatures. The intelligent species had sent objects into the planet’s orbit, and I kept our distance from those, too.
        The biologists finally convinced me to allow a couple of drones to pick up a few species of one of the planet’s life forms for study, all quadrupeds because the bipedal species were just too weird, and the hexapedals and octopeds were too small to handle easily or to study in any detail.
        My veto of bringing up bipeds really upset the biologists, because they wanted to study these strange species badly. Strange? Lorg, they’re downright weird. This whole gorflak planet is weird. Even the quadrupeds are weird; none of the quadrupeds have actimar limbs, although a few species sometimes use locomotive limbs for what animals on our planet would use actimars for, like picking stuff up. The intelligent bipeds and a few other species of bipeds do seem to have some sort of actimars, although they’re nothing like any life on our planet’s actimars.
        A few weird species that seem to be related to, or at least similar to the intelligent species that live in large stationary life forms don’t seem to have locomotive limbs at all, but four of those weird actimars that they use for locomotion. Great Gargoth, but the animals on that planet are unimaginably weird.
        The biologists think that since they can live in all that nitrogen, maybe something can live in the liquid dihydrogen monoxide. I don’t know, I’m no biologist but that makes absolutely no sense to me. How could anything breathe underwater? It’s a crazy notion, if you ask me.
        It seems that half or more of all of the species on the planet live by consuming other species. What horror! And what’s even weirder and more disgusting than that, some species propagate their young by having some of their parts actually consumed by other species of organism, who excrete the young elsewhere. There are species living inside other species. This planet is beyond imagination weird. It gives a whole new meaning to the word “alien”.
        The periculumologists, who study security, said that the obviously sentient species should be exterminated, and perhaps other similar, semi-bipedal species that had actimars as well. They moved so quickly and seemed to advance their technology so rapidly that sooner or later they could reach our galaxy and would be a great threat to us.
        The biologists nixed that idea, saying they posed no threat at all.
        First, our planet is five times as massive as that one, and they could never land on our planet, or withstand the acceleration necessary for intergalactic travel in the first place. But more important was the seemingly short life span of the mobile species. They would never leave their galaxy and could pose no threat, violent as they were. They simply don’t live long enough to ever reach us, even if they could stand the acceleration.
        There were a few species that lived almost as long as your pet gorflag, and you know those don’t live long, ten iglaps if you’re lucky, but some stationary species that grew very large lived that long and are still alive. But no other species there comes close.
          ODX-102 was supposed to be our last stop before returning, but they canceled that so they could study the wierdo planet more. I’m sure when the next expedition comes to G2 they’ll be back to this crazy place. The other planets are similar to our galaxy’s, but this crazy place was nothing like anything anyone had ever imagined.
        Excitingly interesting as this weird planet is, I’m anxious to get home. It was a very long trip here and the trip back will probably seem even longer than it is. We leave in a single lokfar, and I should be home in about fifteen iglaps.
        I don’t know why I’m writing this, the messenger drone will only get there an iglap or two before I do, but I’m excited to be on this mission and I miss you all.
        I managed to get a souvenir from the planet’s satellite, which the sentient species visited a few times and apparently gave up on. The souvenir is about as weird as that whole planet.
        Well, I have to start preparations for the journey back. I’ll see you when I get there!

It's not all about Oculus:

Tom's Hardware

JB McRee, Sr. Manager of Product Marketing of Virtual Reality at HTC confirmed to us that the Vive headset will in fact be available for pre-order on February 29, 2016. HTC doesn’t have any other details to share about the retail release, but McRee told said the details will be announced prior to the pre-order date.

Wikipedia

HTC Vive is an upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display being developed in co-production between HTC and Valve Corporation. It is also part of Valve Corporation's SteamVR project.

Today was a beautiful sunny day here in Portland. Cold, but clear.

I earned $14.50 in tips just by singing for twenty minutes.

I only know twenty minutes worth of songs. I always sing the same songs, I'm growing rather weary of them:

The Star Spangled Banner
America the Beautiful
My Country 'Tis of Thee
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Oh Clementine
You Are My Sunshine
House of the Rising Sun
Somewhere Over the Rainbow

It's hard to find songs that work well for me, singing both solo and a capella. But there are such songs I just got to find them.

I only sang for twenty minutes today because that's all the money I required for what I want to do today and tomorrow. But most people work full-time, why shouldn't I, by singing?

A room in Portland is about $600.

Next time I sing I'm going to keep singing until I have some money that I can just save.