The Gaming Den

I use little alcohol swab-wipes for major gunkage that comes from 4-6 year olds playing on devices. Something to remove the sneeze-goo and cheetoh crusties before applying microfiber wipes.

[edit:
- but heed hyzmarca's warning below. alcohol isn't good for everything.

erik wrote:I use little alcohol swab-wipes for major gunkage that comes from 4-6 year olds playing on devices. Something to remove the sneeze-goo and cheetoh crusties before applying microfiber wipes.

Do not, under any circumstances, use alcohol on a modern LCD, the chemical coatings used to reduce glare are very alcohol soluble. I have giant discolored streaks on my TV because I did not know this, but now I do. Do not repeat this mistake.

For cleaning LCDs, the best choice is pure distilled water. You do not want to use tap water or bottled drinking water of any sort because they have dissolved minerals that will stick to your screen and form unsightly splotches. Though if you do these can potentially be scrubbed out with a microfiber cloth.

Note, do not under any circumstances, drink pure distilled water. It will fuck you up. Your body cannot handle pure H20, you need a certain amount of minerals disolved in your drinking water.

Shrapnel wrote:How does one go about cleaning a touch screen (like, say, a Wii U game pad)?

Do you just use a damp washcloth or whatever, or do you need to do something special?

A wash cloth may be too much. Modern screens are notoriously sensitive to abrasives. That's why microfiber cloths are recommended, less chance of scratching. Tap water, also, can leave mineral spots and streaks.

Distilled water, microfiber cloth, is the standard. Tap water won't cause permanent damage and you can use it in a pinch, but there will be spots. You might be able to get away with gently scrubbing with the least abrasive paper towels you can find, emphasis on gently. Paper towels aren't recemended for LCDs because they can scratch. Normal Washcloths are probably way too abrasive.


Here is what nintendo says:

http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com ... pad-screen

hyzmarca wrote:Note, do not under any circumstances, drink pure distilled water. It will fuck you up. Your body cannot handle pure H20, you need a certain amount of minerals disolved in your drinking water.

A cursory internet search reveals this to be extremely false. Drinking only distilled water can result in you not getting enough of some needed minerals that are found in water. Who gives a shit, if you drink a bottle of Distilled Water and a bottle of regular you get the same thing as if you only drank the regular. It isn't poisinous and you aren't fucked by drinking it. You are basically saying "The body can't handle pure sugar, because you will fucking die if that is all you eat" except even less so.

hyzmarca wrote:

erik wrote:I use little alcohol swab-wipes for major gunkage that comes from 4-6 year olds playing on devices. Something to remove the sneeze-goo and cheetoh crusties before applying microfiber wipes.

Do not, under any circumstances, use alcohol on a modern LCD, the chemical coatings used to reduce glare are very alcohol soluble. I have giant discolored streaks on my TV because I did not know this, but now I do. Do not repeat this mistake.

Sorry. I was using it on glass screens or glass screens covered by plastic protector film (iphone, ipod, macbook) so I've been blessed to avoid your experience but believe your disclaimer.

Kaelik wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:Note, do not under any circumstances, drink pure distilled water. It will fuck you up. Your body cannot handle pure H20, you need a certain amount of minerals disolved in your drinking water.

A cursory internet search reveals this to be extremely false. Drinking only distilled water can result in you not getting enough of some needed minerals that are found in water. Who gives a shit, if you drink a bottle of Distilled Water and a bottle of regular you get the same thing as if you only drank the regular. It isn't poisinous and you aren't fucked by drinking it. You are basically saying "The body can't handle pure sugar, because you will fucking die if that is all you eat" except even less so.

I have consumed distilled water, and I am still alive with no discernible digestive effects.

Game On,
fbmf

Distilled water is perfectly safe as long as you're not drinking only distilled water and absolutely nothing else.

hyzmarca wrote:Your body cannot handle pure H20

lol, like anything could remain undiluted once you put it in someone's fucking mouth.

Eikre wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:Your body cannot handle pure H20

lol, like anything could remain undiluted once you put it in someone's fucking mouth.

Yeah, I screwed up with that one.

Teaches me to post on the fly like that. I was confusing it with water intoxication, which is lethal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

Anyway, drinking distilled water results in a faster loss of minerals and electrolytes, but it won't kill you unless to do it to excess. But any water will kill you if you drink it to excess.

A) you've never had the crazily pure water that's postulating, because it's stupidly expensive (e.g. http://www.atcc.org/en/Products/Culture ... nformation)
B) what Eikre said.

There's an iconic antagonism between "Mom & Pop" stores and Wal-Mart. Wal-mart typically maintains a price-match structure. Have there ever been groups of stores using the tactic of each of them advertising one or two items they don't carry much of, but Wal-mart does, at a penny apiece. They would theoretically lose some money, but Wal-mart would have a large chunk of stock suddenly price-matched to nothing?

virgil wrote:There's an iconic antagonism between "Mom & Pop" stores and Wal-Mart. Wal-mart typically maintains a price-match structure. Have there ever been groups of stores using the tactic of each of them advertising one or two items they don't carry much of, but Wal-mart does, at a penny apiece. They would theoretically lose some money, but Wal-mart would have a large chunk of stock suddenly price-matched to nothing?

Wal Mart does not price match just anyone. It mostly price matches it's large competitors, your HEBs/Krogers/Randalls/whatever in Texas.

fectin wrote:A) you've never had the crazily pure water that's postulating, because it's stupidly expensive (e.g. http://www.atcc.org/en/Products/Culture ... nformation)

Exactly so. Ultrapure water will in fact have the effects stated previously (specifically the leaching of minerals from your bones. Also ultrapure water is corrosive and will literally start chemical fires in certain situations.

Ultrapure water is not distilled water in the same way that cocaine is not coca tea though.

Source: I had a colleague in my previous career who worked in a facility that made ultra-pure water and talked shop with him a bit.

EDIT: Here's something that is on my mind lately. Heavy water (i.e., water that has deuterium instead of hydrogen) is poisonous. I have an admittedly imperfect view on chemistry, but I was under the impression that with the exception of unstable radioactive isotopes that they were chemically identical (i.e., Carbon 14 and Carbon 12 are basically the same thing over the short term...)

If someone who has a better grasp of chemistry could explain, that would kick ass.

Also, your colleague was bullshitting you. The only property of water that changes when you purify it is conductance; pure water is an insulator, and it's only the dissolved salts in the water that conduct electricity.

Leeching calcium from your bones is a normal physiological response to low calcium levels in your blood, though I can't imagine anyone getting the majority of their calcium from water.

And starting chemical fires with ultrapurified water? If you drop an alkali metal in there, sure you'll have an explosion, but tap water will do the same. There are a lot of violently exothermic reactions that involve water.

Shiritai wrote:Also, your colleague was bullshitting you. The only property of water that changes when you purify it is conductance; pure water is an insulator, and it's only the dissolved salts in the water that conduct electricity.

Leeching calcium from your bones is a normal physiological response to low calcium levels in your blood, though I can't imagine anyone getting the majority of their calcium from water.

And starting chemical fires with ultrapurified water? If you drop an alkali metal in there, sure you'll have an explosion, but tap water will do the same. There are a lot of violently exothermic reactions that involve water.

Yeah this. "Ultrapure" also isn't going to kill you or hurt you at all if you drink a glass of it.

I know you idiots really want there to be pure water that somehow is too much to handle and kills people, but it doesn't fucking exist.

Shiritai wrote:I can't imagine anyone getting the majority of their calcium from water.

Come drink Indiana tap water sometime. =-D


edit: I posted in snark, but just checked and apparently Indianapolis water has 200-350 mg/L of calcium carbonate (40% calcium by mass), giving a gallon of indy hard water about about 320-560 mg of calcium.

lol, my tap water's pretty soft I must admit. Though since you brought it up... seems like hard water could be a significant source of magnesium at the very least. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3775162/

edit: Yeah, there's a good bit more in hard water than I was expecting.

Not sure about how it is in your location, but if the water isn't hard enough they add calcium carbonate to the water. If it's saturated with it, then it won't dissolve as much lead and copper along the way. Lead and copper in your drinking water is BAD.

Everything has calcium. NB: not really, but close enough.

Like, there's a gland set in your neck (parathyroid) that regulates your calcium intake, bone storage, and excretion on a constant basis so that you physically cannot absorb or excrete more than what is safe.

Because having hypocalcaemia or hypercalcaemia will kill you. Seizures and shit. The body uses the bones to regulate blood calcium in both directions, as well as the kidneys and limited absorption amounts. It doesn't just all float into your blood, milk would kill you if that happened.

Living on ultra-pure water and refined sugar would certainly kill you given time, but I wouldn't expect blood calcium would be the failure point.

Your bones aren't really weaker or stronger by that process unless you turn it off somehow (like no vitamin D), that was a myth pushed by the various national dairy boards back in the day, that you need calcium for strong bones. No, you need meat or sunlight, and something to jar them into action like star-jumps. The process of balancing blood calcium is not adding or removing structural elements from bone, is the point.

Not really answering anyone's question is it, so spoilered, but still posted. On dietary Calcium.

The deuterium thing was interesting, basically 2:1 is a much bigger mass ratio than 16:14, affecting the shape of the molecules more (thanks Quantum Mechanics), and eventually some protein folding stuff just doesn't run to completion in solution. Them proteins, eh.

tussock wrote:
The deuterium thing was interesting, basically 2:1 is a much bigger mass ratio than 16:14, affecting the shape of the molecules more (thanks Quantum Mechanics), and eventually some protein folding stuff just doesn't run to completion in solution. Them proteins, eh.

That actually makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining.

tussock wrote: Your bones aren't really weaker or stronger by that process unless you turn it off somehow (like no vitamin D), that was a myth pushed by the various national dairy boards back in the day, that you need calcium for strong bones. No, you need meat or sunlight, and something to jar them into action like star-jumps. The process of balancing blood calcium is not adding or removing structural elements from bone, is the point.

Uh, no. Removing actual bone does in fact make your bones weaker.

I don't think you understood your link, Shiritai, which is an add for a pill. Bones, even at a stable mass, are constantly being reabsorbed and regrown. Bones get lighter and heavier because you stress them less or more, respectively, leading to your body not putting as much weight back where it's not currently needed.

To be clear: we are all removing bone all the time, our bones are net stronger if you stress them and net weaker if you do not, because the process of removing them is the start of the process which regrows them into the currently most desirable shape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoporosis

The risk of osteoporosis fractures can be reduced with lifestyle changes and in those with previous osteoporosis related fractures, medications. Lifestyle change includes diet, exercise, and preventing falls.

Having weak bones is part of a thing called ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frailty_syndrome

Where folk are weak for various reasons, and so do not stress their bones and muscles enough to keep them growing. As they get progressively lighter, the stress is further reduced, and then eventually they die. Old people who lift weights do not lose bone mass, in fact they regrow it to normal adult levels (part of which includes reabsorbing the bone all the time).

Unfortunately many old people cannot lift weights or anything similar because they are in pain with random swelling, or benign tumors all over the show, or fucked up energy supplies from failing mitocondria. All sorts.

Back to the osteoporosis ...

A review by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) found insufficient evidence to recommend calcium and vitamin D supplements to prevent fractures.

Because calcium intake does not matter. Because there is calcium in everything, and you can't actually absorb it if your body feels supplies are already sufficient.


Really. Removing old bone is part of making your bones into newer bones, which are weaker or stronger depending on what you need them for at the moment. This happens constantly. Go into the weightlessness of space for just a few weeks, don't excercise, and you come back with bones so weak you can't even stand up on them.

Why is a PM I have tried to send last week just sitting in my Outbox, instead of going to the Sentbox?

tussock wrote:I don't think you understood your link, Shiritai, which is an add for a pill.

I don't think I understood your reply. I only took issue with your statement that "The process of balancing blood calcium is not adding or removing structural elements from bone", while your post was... a lecture on stuff I already knew.

And an ad for a pill? Really? Why don't you tell me what you think my link said; at least that might be entertaining.

Right. That'd be typical for me then. I don't see how it can. Everything that is removed leaves a rough surface, just right to cause regrowth in proportion to local stresses. Over the time spans required to significantly weaken a bone, you've got to have reduced stress on the bone (or an inability to fix bone at all) to really weaken it.

So what you're "losing" is necessarily useless weight. The structural bits that you use cannot be lost by balancing blood calcium, but the bits you are not using will be, and those will be lost regardless of your blood calcium levels.

Logic. The balancing of blood calcium is not changing the strength of your bones, even though the process which constantly updates the strength of your bones is also tweaked at times to help balance blood calcium. I guess I used the wrong terminology for that up front, and here I am trying to figure out why you're disagreeing.

link wrote:A new drug has been developed for the treatment of osteoporosis that targets the interaction between RANK and RANKL. Denosumab is monoclonal antibody that binds to RANKL; thus it mimics the effect of osteoprotegerin. Denosumab (marketed as Prolia®) was approved for the treatment of osteoporosis in June 2010.

That's what I thought your link said. Information on how bones work, bought to you by the company with a registered trademark and patent on the drug which changes that. Now sponsoring your education.