If this is true — and I have to admit more than a little skepticism about this, given the just-so story near the end — it could be the single biggest medical breakthrough in decades. You know how in Mass Effect, characters can take life-threatening damage and after one little button-press, they’re right back in the fight? Bullet wounds, rockets, whatever — just slap on your medi-gel dispenser button and your armor seals up the wound and lets you keep fighting.
A grad student has supposedly taken that Mass Effect equivalent of a magic healing potion, Medi-Gel, and turned it into a reality.
It is a synthetic version of the extracellular matrix (ECM) that holds our cells together and tells them what to do in the event of a bleeding injury, instructing them to get clotting. It also binds together with the damaged ECM cells of the patient, working with them to form a seal over the area of the wound.
There were a few major OMFSM moments for me with regard to costuming at CONvergence.
There was someone dressed as the true Commander Shepard from Mass Effect (e.g., not DickShep) — and they were even Renegade, with the heavy visible scarring. To top things off, they had the original N7 armor, with a damn good M-77 Paladin replica to boot. I’d share the pic I got, but I’d need to track down the con-goer and request permission.
There was also a male Aperture Science “volunteer” running around with a LEGO ASHPD (portal gun), which I also got a pic of, but I found a better demonstration here:
I also encountered about a dozen different folks cosplayingHomestuckcharacters. No overlap in characters, far as I could tell. At the Gender Differences panel, I even sat next to someone who’d used a 3D printer to fabricate Rose’s belt buckle and combat knitting needles. If there’s ever been a reason to buy a 3D printer, it’s to create props for cosplay.
I’ve never mentioned Homestuck before on this blog, have I? A few months ago, I discovered what I thought would be a silly little faux-adventure-game webcomic on a site called MS Paint Adventures. I thought it would be a funny little diversion that might take a day to get through the archives, but I was so very, very wrong. Not only was it not a faux-adventure at all, the “actions” at the bottom of each comic were (for the first few acts at least) all submitted on the site’s forums. An animated, user-driven “webcomic” whose plot intermingles philosophy, social dynamics, and games of all flavors and types. It begins like an adventure game, gains Sims-like overtones, and evolves rapidly into a reality-bending RPG.
Seeing so many people cosplaying characters from a comic that I’d only just discovered, and fallen in love with, was a major squee moment for me.
I have a scant few pictures that I definitely can share, that I need to post to the blog as soon as I’m able. That’s, unfortunately, not right now.
Got a bunch of stuff that’s been in tabs for a while that need clearing out, but that deserve to be seen. Might as well do another Random Crap in my Tabs to catch up, and take back some system resources. A bunch of it is meme-worthy, so I expect you’ve probably seen them before. Maybe even on FtB. Possibly. Frankly, I’m too lazy to check, and either way, I know I haven’t talked about them, so you’re certainly missing my keen insight! Continue reading “RCimT: Saturday tab clean-up”→
