Things that rule:
Muse. This video is surreal.
Half-Life. Even when condensed to 60 seconds.
Fallout 3. Because you should have just given him the sweet roll (probably only funny ‘cause I played it, but whatev).
Sorry. Not feeling very well and am also in a gaming mood.
Today’s song: My Humps by The Black Eyed Peas (shut up.)
This Week’s Science Blog: The Robots are Getting Creepier
Oh my freaking god, nightmares.
This one’s pretty hilarious, though:
The fact that these things are made out of something called “septom” makes it even creepier, I think.
Today’s song: U + Me = by Dan Black
Oh! Canada!
Holy crap, the Canadian dollar was worth more than the US dollar early this morning. Creepy.
And this, because I have nothing else to say for today:
Starts out slow, gets pretty interesting (and colorful) a minute or so in.
Today’s song: Technicolor by Tim Myers
Random number generation is too important to be left to chance
I appear to be unable to form coherent thoughts that last for more than three minutes at a time today.
You know what that means…
RANDOMBLOG!
Had I the money and time, I would love to do a cruise around the world. How fantastically awesome would that be? I could totally make it happen in a year’s time if I didn’t have to pay rent, haha.
I want my new shiny to get here! I need a new electronic to fondle, never mind that it was a poor purchase choice. I’ll just have to learn to fondle live with the consequences.
Lady Gaga’s song Teeth has a freakish resemblance to Prisencolinensinainciusol in terms of the beat. I’m also in love with it. Go figure.
THAT IS ALL!
Today’s song: Teeth by Lady Gaga
Math Puns: The First Sine of Madness
I’ve been in a math mood as of late. Here are some things that are fun.
– Create an arbitrary matrix. See if you can find the eigenvalues.
– Do stuff like this. Or just mathify food in general (Tukey sandwiches! Chocolate chi-squares! Mandelbratwurst! The ever punnalicious pumpkin pi! I could go on…). I think if we all had to Fourier transform our breakfasts in the morning our lives would be a lot cooler.
– I do interval workouts on the elliptical machine in the rec center. During the high intensity intervals, I start at zero in my head, count up to the next prime number, and count backwards to zero. Then I start again, counting up to the prime number after the first prime number, count backwards to zero, and repeat ad nauseum (like this: 0,1,0; 0,1,2,1,0; 0,1,2,3,2,1,0; 0,1,2,3,5,3,2,1,0; etc.).
– Do stuff like Zeno. Whenever you have to do something for a set period of time (like 30 minutes), divide the time in half in your head then, when you reach the halfway time, divide it in half again, and again, and again, until you’ve got like a minute left. I find this helps the time pass more quickly when I’m doing something not so enjoyable. Plus it’s fun.
– This video:
Yay!
Today’s song: Rich Girl$ by Down With Webster
This Week’s Science BloAAAAH GOD MY REALITY
Today we enter the world of auxetics, materials that, when stretched, expand perpendicular to the applied force.
Wait, what? This:
It sounds counterintuitive at first (at least it did for me), but this type of hexagonal material seems familiar for whatever reason. These materials have a negative Poisson’s ratio—thus their expansion when stretched. Most materials have a positive Poisson’s ratio, since they thin as they stretch. According to one article I’ve read, Poisson’s ratio is defined as minus the transverse strain divided by the axial strain in the direction of stretching force…Poisson’s ratios, denoted by a Greek nu, n, for various materials are approximately 0.5 for rubbers and for soft biological tissues, 0.45 for lead, 0.33 for aluminum, 0.27 for common steels, 0.1 to 0.4 for cellular solids such as typical polymer foams, and nearly zero for cork.” This article was written back in 1987, back before auxetic materials had been thoroughly examined. Now there are models that have just been put out to help explain the behavior of this weird stuff that occurs naturally in some rock, bone, and, apparently, paper.
More info here, here, and here. Cool, huh?
Today’s song: Mashina by NikitA
NaNoWriMo: T-minus 30 days
WOO!
The only good thing about October is that there are only 31 (30 now) days left until NaNo starts. Seriously. Every October for like the past three years has blown heavy metal chunks for me. Screw you, October.
I don’t have a definite plot in place. Actually, I do. I have like five definite plots in place. I just have to choose which one to implement. I’m leaning strongly towards the road trip/religious undertones one, but I might genre ditch and go for a more sci-fi story, just to annoy myself and try to work within a genre of which I’m not a big fan.
Who knows? I didn’t know where I was going with things last year, but I finally got an idea on paper that I’d had in my head for awhile.
Anyway.
Today was probably the last sunny day of the year up here, so I took the opportunity to test out the accuracy of the pedometer feature on the new Nano by comparing it to a regular old pedometer.
Not too big of a discrepancy, considering I spent like an hour of those three hours wandering around in Safeway. I think the Nano is more sensitive to “wandering” steps (as opposed to the more deliberate “get out of my way, I’m faster than you” steps) than the pedometer, hence the difference. I’d also trust the Nano’s calorie counter thingy more, since you can actually set your weight, something you can’t do on the pedometer.
And yes, it took me three hours to go ~11,000 steps. Like I said, Safeway, plus the whole “maybe I’ll stop and wait for the bus, ‘cause I have no damn idea where I am” ordeal when I couldn’t find the store I was looking for.
OH YEAH, and this:
I found this movie via Netflix and was going to watch it in its entirety tonight, but this song from the opening sequence totally ruined that, ‘cause I had to go find it, download it, and listen to it on repeat for about three hours. Apparently the movie is like Inception, but better.
Today’s song: Mediational Field by Susumu Hirasawa
Internet rapture
Hahahaha, oh Jesus:
Rock Band + Internet meme = greatest merge ever? I think so. This is another one of those “I don’t know why the hilarity factor is so high, but it is” videos.
1:27 and 1:40, oh my god.
Today’s song: Handle Me by Robyn
Dear Lord: thank you for YouTube
This is like 4,000 times funnier than it has any right to be.
Desire to get an iPhone just for this app = high.
Today’s song: Could It Be You (Punk Rock Chick) by Hwood
Instant Prozac
This made my night, so I must share it. If this doesn’t make you happy, it probably means you’re dead.
That harp player rules the world.
MIND TRIP
Woah, dude. This is how I see things.
Rock on.
Today’s song: Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer
This Week’s Science Blog: Rigidity is Fun
This is not technically a science blog, but I figured I should include sexy technology stuff every once and awhile, too. So here’s a cool video:
I love the little shapes they use. This is astounding technology.
That is all.
Today’s song: Where Is My Mind? by Maxence Cyrin
Waiter! There’s a Derivative in my Integral Pie!
Damn, I love the internet.
The link to the original video’s at the start of this one.
I would seriously love studying how these things go viral. Statistical analyses + internet = awesome.
Sorry, slow day.
Today’s song: Pull Shapes by the Pipettes
Three Things
ONE!
I love this more than I probably should:
TWO!
Same with this. I need to do something with his data, but I don’t know what yet.
THREE!
Anything named Sexy Hotness is something we should all own.
Sorry, it’s been a slow day.
Today’s song: Melodic Wings by Sean Gordon
“You’re so blind your hindsight needed Lasik before it was 20/20”
I wish I was as good at screwing with sounds as this guy is:
That is all.
Today’s song: Gardyn by Pogo
Social interaction? WHAT
Yay, first actual social interaction since finals (Boston doesn’t count; I was sitting in the corner doing calculus the whole time).
And Michael and I reconciled our differences (we had a bit of an argument regarding who invented calculus. It was pretty great). We didn’t agree on the fact that LEIBNIZ was first, but we did have a nice little conversation extolling R and bootstrapping, so we decided that counts.
Yay.
And this is pretty great; it gets more impressive as the video goes on. The tweezers part is my favorite.
Today’s song: Love Struck by V Factory
Did LittleDog scare you?
Meet his brother, BigDog. You may have already seen him ‘cause he’s been around longer (I think), but regardless:
Yeah, this totally isn’t creepy at all.
Both the stabilization after the guy kicks it and the way it catches itself from biting it on the ice patch literally gave me chills. Still, though…awesome. There’s another video of it with a giant sensor thingy on its head that enables it to follow a human and move without an operator.
The future is here, and it’s got really creepy legs.
Oh, and I’m leaving for Boston in like two hours, so blogs may not happen for a few days.
Today’s song: De Internationale by De Stem des Volks
“Robodog! Walk!”
So I read this article today entitled “LittleDog Learns Several Terrifying New Tricks,” which included a video. LittleDog is apparently like the latest thing in stable mobility for robotics. The article contained several hints that the LittleDog bot gave the author the creeps (plus a few nightmares). Reading the comments, a lot of others were pretty terrified of it, too. I started watching the video and wasn’t creeped out at all. In fact, I thought the little dude was quite cute, not to mention damn impressive.
It doesn’t get creepy until about, oh, 1:12, when he starts HOPPING UP THE STAIRS LIKE A MINIATURE POODLE.
A HEADLESS ONE.
WITH A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF UPPER BODY STRENGTH.
Somebody needs to make a .gif of it just popping up that first step. That would be great.
Regardless, it’s still pretty freaking incredible.
Oh, and here’s the article. It’s pretty funny. Haha, I was so obsessed with robots when I was in elementary school, too. Maybe that’s why this made me very happy.
Today’s song: Gone Gone Gone by The New Deal
Calculus: taking it to the limit (yeah, the jokes won’t stop until the class is over)
Two things:
1) Happy birthday, mom!
2) Congrats to all who are graduating today, though I’m pretty sure no one who’s graduating this semester reads my blogs.
Haha, sorry, not much more to say today. Cleaned the apartment and did calculus practice problems for five hours.
Oh, and this. I miss this show.
Today’s song: Flippers by Art vs. Science
Waiter! There’s a tachyon in my—oh wait, there it goes, never mind.
There are a lot of tricks to riding the bus.
If you go during the busy times of the day, you may not get a seat due to the sheer number of people. However, during the busy times there are also a lot more buses running, which means that you might have a shot if you’re one of the first in line.
If you go during the dead times of the day, then you also may not get a seat, as there are a lot fewer buses running and the lines to get on the bus grow quite a bit between buses.
However, there appear to be a few times during the day where the bus company still determines it to be busy but there are lulls in the number of people taking the bus. This is best represented in graph form. Times circled in green represent good times to take the bus, times in yellow represent bad times.
Why? Because I felt like it.
Also, this is pretty fantastic.
Today’s song: Save Me a Place by Lights
Blogs: they’re still happening, I promise
HELLO DORKS!
Though you probably won’t see this until Monday or so, here is a warning to all you (read: maybe one of you) who regularly read these: moving to new apartment = happening this weekend, so I’ll have no access to the vast series of tubes until Monday. Throughout the rest of next week, blogs may be somewhat late (gasp!). I don’t know why I even bother putting a warning about late blogs in here, as you will not be able to see this until the blogs happen again.
Pah.
Anyway.
YAY new apartment time.
Here’s something to entertain you all while I’m away:
Parody or not, I want one just to look that cool.
Today’s song: Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
Canadian radio: it’s not all Barenaked Ladies and The New Pornographers up here
I submit that you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a rap about Quebec.
Or a country jig about New Brunswick.
I’m not even kidding. I think Canada’s tourism department promotes solely through their music industry. I had the radio playing for about five hours this afternoon and I think I head a little ditty about almost every province. It’s funny until you realize it’s like rapping about Idaho or singing a blues song about Florida.
The rest of the songs were just freaking weird. There was this one whose chorus consisted solely of the phrase “watch out for the fuzz” repeated about twenty times (this, interestingly enough, wasn’t a rap but some sort of upbeat folksy tune). I’m not denying that there are some really weird songs from the States, but these are weird in an entirely different way.
And now I can’t stop singing “Noooooova Scotia!” to the Oklahoma! melody. This may need to be a song rewrite in the near future.
ALSO:
I’m not embedding ’cause the screencap will haunt you. This is perhaps one of the creepiest videos involving chocolate bunnies on YouTube. Don’t watch if:
a) you can’t avoid thinking that putting eyes on something automatically makes it a living thing
b) you’ve had a bad experience with an iron/heat lamp/hair dryer
c) there are chocolate bunnies in the room
You’ve been warned.
I fall into category A, which may be why it’s so disturbing to me, but I don’t know. I mean, I know it’s just chocolate, but it’s bunny-shaped and has eyes. Peep death doesn’t bother me, but the fact that the chocolate bunny eyes seem to be staring into my soul is somewhat unsettling. Some of the comment-leavers seem sufficiently freaked out as well.
Haha, I hope you don’t watch it right before going to bed like I did.
Today’s song: Round and Round by Ratt
p-values have nothing to do with the worth of your urine
There wasn’t much of interest today in my actual life, so I bring you…THE INTERNET!
There’s something exceedingly intriguing about this, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what. The comments are pretty great as well. This also seems to last for a lot longer than 1:50.
Another wonderful quote from bash.org.
BigPigPeaches: So my GF and I are watching “The Empire Strikes Back” last night. Let me say that this is possibly my favorite movie of all time.
BigPigPeaches: But suddenly I consider: we have always thought of R2D2 as a light-hearted comic relief type of droid. With his tweets, chirps, raspberries, and whoops, how could he be anything other than cute?
BigPigPeaches: But what if people were misunderstanding what he is actually saying? What if he could be accurately translated? And what if he were saying things that weren’t cute at all?
BigPigPeaches: (The scene where Luke and R2D2 are leaving Hoth in Luke’s x-wing)
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: Hey, assclamp, where the hell are you hauling me?
BigPigPeaches: Luke: There’s nothing wrong, Artoo, I’m just setting a new course.
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: Oh, goodie. Are we going to see your dad? Cause you know he’s Darth Vader, right? I mean, you know that, otherwise you’re even more of a dumbass than I thought.
BigPigPeaches: Luke: We’re not going to regroup with the others.
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: That’s probably because they know what they’re doing, and you don’t.
BigPigPeaches: Luke: We’re going to the Dagobah system.
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: The Bagadouche system? What an appropriate destination for a douchebag such as yourself. Are you sure you don’t want me to fly? Cause I’ll bet you’re going to crash us into some godforsaken swampy bog, you mindless pube.
BigPigPeaches: (Later on in Cloud City, during the escape scene)
BigPigPeaches: 3PO: Artoo! Where have you been?
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: Listen, you bronzed dildo, I’ve been dicking around in a frigging swamp for the better part of two weeks while some wannabe wizard has been taking advice from an ancient lizard. I got slime in my droid genitals, a bad yeast infection, and I’m not in the mood for your prissy shit, so put a metal cork in it, buttnozzle.
BigPigPeaches: 3PO: Well at least you’re still in one piece, look what happened to me!
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: Yeah yeah yeah, you got blasted to shit, they should have left your ass in that scrap heap. You have contributed absolutely nothing useful to this point. By the way, how is it that you’re even more of a whiny bitch than you were in the first three movies? I thought they wiped your frigging memory.
BigPigPeaches: Do they have some sort of universal “BitchBot” app that they keep putting in your lame ass? Bitch.
BigPigPeaches: (while trying to unlock the landing platform door)
BigPigPeaches: 3PO: Artoo, you can tell the computer to override the security system!
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: Oh, thanks for reminding me, you pretentious fuckstick. Do you know what else I can do? I can FRIGGING FLY! George Lucas said so! But that didn’t stop me from falling into an effing swamp on that Bagadouche planet. By the way, did you know that Darth Vader is Luke’s father? Cause I DO!
BigPigPeaches: Oh, look, I got fried by a goddamn computer terminal. Thanks, dickweed.
BigPigPeaches: 3PO: Don’t blame me. I’m an interpreter. I’m not supposed to know a power socket from a computer terminal.
BigPigPeaches: Artoo: You’re supposed to know your droid ass from a hole in the ground, but you don’t. Jesus, I should have left your sorry ass on that ship, you sphincter. Just wait till I get to use my little welding thingy on your droid scrote. I hate you and all these miserable bastards. Where’s my Oscar?
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: Hello Omegle stranger
You: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMEGLE!!!
You: zoomzoomzoomzoomzoomzoomzoomzoom
Your conversational partner has disconnected.
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: I am Gordon Freeman, fear my crowbar!
Your conversational partner has disconnected.
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: are you justin bieber?
You: Do you want me to be?
Your conversational partner has disconnected
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: are you a furry?
You: Do you want me to be?
Your conversational partner has disconnected.
Today’s song: Nara by E. S. Posthumus
“I don’t know where I am, but it’s got good resolution”
Alternate title: “Me + Flight Sims = Bad” (damn you, GoogleEarth! Now I know I can’t fly an F16 from campus to my house without crashing at least 4 times).
Anyway.
I don’t know if I was searching for migraine info or if I found this via StumbleUpon, but this describes and shows pretty much exactly what happens when I have a migraine, which I thought was pretty awesome considering it’s hard to describe being able to see a bunch of flashing colors while simultaneously not being able to really see much of anything. My migraines usually start out with my thumbs tingling, then all my fingers pretty much go numb, then the visual crap starts. Then the death headache that lasts for about a day if I’m lucky enough to take Imitrex early enough in the process, but longer if I don’t. Luckily, I only get about one migraine per year, sometimes two, but with each one I’ve noticed a progressive increase in the loss of vision beforehand, so who knows what that means. Brains are weird.
Also, yay for the early nineties…
Today’s song: Peace (Herves Warehouse Frequencies Remix) by Depeche Mode
What is the sound of one claw snapping?
Wikipedia, you’ve done it again.
I randomly found the “unsolved problems in physics” page on Wiki tonight, and after multiple clicks to multiple other pages, I came across this one on sonoluminescence. Firstly, “it was too difficult to analyze the effect in early experiments because of the complex environment of a large number of short-lived bubbles” is probably one of the best sentences ever. Secondly, as I read further down the page, this whole phenomenon sounded somewhat familiar to me, but I didn’t know why.
Then I got to the near bottom of the article where they talk about the pistol shrimp, who naturally produce a type of sonoluminescence as a way to kill prey. I read their page and realized that I’d either read or seen or heard something about these shrimp at some point before, but I couldn’t remember when. But I do remember the death bubble.
Yeah, turns out these little guys pretty much sonic boom their prey to death. Check it out here:
I freely admit the “OH SNAP” comment from a viewer had me laughing.
The fact that a creature can do something so cool is proof that nature’s pretty badass.
Also, I dare you to show this screen capture to anyone and see if they can guess what the hell’s going down:
And for those of you wondering: yes, it is possible to get from “Sonoluminescence” to the “Pornography” page in six clicks (Sonoluminescence -> Viscosity -> Mistletoe -> Kiss -> Herpes -> Oral Sex -> Pornography)
Today’s song: Blue Bench by Sasuke
