Fallout 1 & 2 soundtracks remastered, free to download

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Fallout 1 and 2 composer Mark Morgan has a little side project that he calls his \’Vault Archives.\’ His goal was to remaster all the songs he composed for the Fallout series. Now it seems that he\’s done with his project, and he was kind enough to share the results with everyone.

The OSTs for both games are available as a free download on Aural Network. These 24 tracks are remixed and remastered, full-bandwidth tracks from the classic games, available to you at no cost. What I\’ve heard so far sounds amazing. Go get it!

How Do Dogs Learn New Words?

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

..and what can word-learning in dogs teach us about the evolution of language in humans?
Time Out…. This is just amazing!  Really, just amazing…  Give it a read or two…  And pet your animal(s) today….  Okay, go back to reading the article…  Time In!
What is involved in the learning of a single new word? Consider the word \”tiger\”, being learned by a child with already a modest vocabulary, at least for animal words. First the child must make a new entry in the mental lexicon – that \”tiger\” is a word in the first place. He has to categorize it as a noun. It has to be categorized under \”animal\” (a supernym) and related to its hyponyms, like \”Sumatran tiger.\” Then, of course, the child has to learn what actual *thing* the word \”tiger\” refers to. Now, various conceptual categories likely have to be restructured. Before, the child might have referred to tigers as \”cats,\” but now the child has must conceptually distinguish cats from tigers. Sometimes, the child has to accomplish all of this without explicit instruction; he or she may be exposed to a word casually, or in the course of conversation. Early research showed that children indeed were able to learn new words after just a single casual exposure. As you can see, learning only one new word involves learning a considerable amount of new information.
The process by which a child learns a new word after only one exposure is called \”fast mapping.\” And kids \”fast map\”, well, fast. And often. From 2 years of age, typical English-speaking children add about ten new words a day to their vocabulary until they reach an average vocabulary size of 60,000 words by high school graduation.
Is the ability to fast map unique to language learning, or does it reflect more general cognitive learning skills that may be shared with other animals? Meet Rico.
via Monday Pets: How Do Dogs Learn New Words? : The Thoughtful Animal.

How to remove CD Spin Doctor and/or perform a clean Install of Toast

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

This information is from Roxio:
To perform a clean install of Toast. Please follow all of the instructions below:

  1. Please go to the following folder locations:BE SURE TO REMOVE THE FILES FROM BOTH LOCATIONS
    Macintosh HD> Library> Preferences
    Macintosh HD> Users> your username> Library> Preferences:
    trash the following files:
    * com.roxio.Toast.plist
    * Roxio Toast Prefs
    * com.roxio.CDSpinDoctor6.plist
    * com.tivo.desktop.plist
    * com.roxio.mac2tivo.plist
    * and any other com.roxio.*   files located at either of these locations.
    BEFORE MOVING ON, please confirm that you have removed all the listed files from BOTH the above locations.
  2. You will also need to remove the Application Support. Please perform the following:Macintosh HD> Users> your username> Library> Application Support> Now trash the following folders:
    * CDSpinDoctor
    * Mac2Tivo
    * Roxio
  3. Trash the Toast Titanium folder(and all other Toast folders) from the applications folder and trash the Dock icon for Toast.  Now click Finder(in the menubar at the top of the screen) Then Secure Empty Trash.
  4. Once that is complete, run Disk Utility (located in Applications> Utilities folder) and Repair Disk Permissions on your main hard drive.
  5. Restart the computer and Reinstall using the Toast Titanium Disc or download file.
  6. If there is an update available for your version, you may install just the update alone from the following link:http://www.roxio.com/enu/support/toast/software_updates.html

Now here\’s my information, to just uninstall CDSpin Doctor…

  • Perform Step 1, but just remove  com.roxio.CDSpinDoctor6.plist   from the preferences folder(s).
  • Perform Step 2, but just remove the CDSpinDoctor folder from the Application Support folder
  • Check for CDSDAudioCaptureSupport.kext in /Library/Extensions.  If it exists, then drag it to the Trash.
  • Secure Erase is *NOT* needed from Step 3, but do empty the trash.
  • For Step 4, repairing Disk Permissions shouldn\’t be needed, but it would not cause any harm…
  • This should be all that is necessary to uninstall CD Spin Doctor…

This article discusses uninstall CD Spin Doctor, which is a very manual process, but these other articles discuss:

io9 details the historical worst fossil fuel disasters…

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Here\’s a snipet….

Largest Oil Spill Of All Time: Really, this list could be mostly oil spills. There have been so many. You only have to look at the Wikipedia page to see that enough oil has been splashed in the water to keep all our cars running for decades. The largest, in terms of volume of oil, was the Gulf War Oil Spill, in which Iraq opened the valves at its oil terminal and dumped oil into the Gulf, in an attempt to keep U.S. forces from landing. The resulting slick was 4,242 square miles, and five inches thick. It\’s between five and 27 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. The largest accidental oil spill, in gallons, was Ixtoc I in Mexico, which dumped half a million tons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and polluted 162 miles of U.S. beaches. A rare sea turtle\’s natural habitat was flooded, and the endangered turtles had to be airlifted to safety. Honorable mention also has to go to the Atlantic Empress, a Greek oil tanker that managed to be involved in two separate massive oil spills.

Go take a gander… via io9. We come from the future..