Notes To and From My Son

Restart Page & Robot Hand

2012-01-17T19:06:00.005-07:00

Two completely unrelated internet finds, one about a nice robotics feat and a restart page with all the major operating system, a bit weird but cool nonetheless!

2012-01-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

From: http://www.socialsignal.com/image/short-and-sweet

M of the M

2012-01-08T20:25:00.002-07:00

Mario of the Month for January. Found here.

Algebra as geometry

2011-12-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

I love this simple, obvious geometric proof that (x + y)^2 = x^2 + 2xy + y^2. I wish someone has shown this to me when they first taught me algebra; it would have made things a lot clearer to me.

[Image from: http://www.mathaware.org/mam/00/master/essays/B3D/2/binomial.html]

Pi is wrong [!]

2011-12-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

This site argues that that 2 * pi (= tau) would be a more rational (ha ha!) constant to use than pi. Radical proposition, dude.

Microscopic working engine

2011-12-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

I love microscopic machines. "German physicists say they've built a heat engine measuring only a few micrometers across which works as well as a normal-sized version - although it sputters, they admit."
Via: www.tgdaily.com

First Planet Confirmed Within "Habitable Zone" According to NASA

2011-12-12T19:41:00.005-07:00

Of the thousands of planets that could possibly hold life, only one (so far) has been confirmed to be within the "perfect" location for liquefaction of water (as opposed to being on the edge). Read the full article on Kepler-22b here.

M of the M: December

2011-12-12T19:38:00.001-07:00

Mario of the month for December. Found here.

Have they discovered the God particle?

2011-12-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

The long-sought Higgs boson particle may be been discovered. This is "the elementary particle hypothesized to be the origin of the mass of all matter", sometimes called 'the God particle'.

Text from: www.scientificamerican.com\
Image from the Wikipedia article on the Higgs boson.

The next 10 years will be very unlike the last 10 years

2011-12-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Lego Mindstorms Clock

2011-12-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

See here for more details.

Super Mario Perler Beads | Vidéo Buzz

2011-12-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Super Mario Perler Beads | Vidéo Buzz

Glitch has glitches...

2011-12-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

Two months after launching, the on-line game Glitch is unlaunching to re-tool.

Minecraft Super Mario!

2011-12-02T08:43:00.002-07:00

This is a testament to the human spirit...what a huge undertaking!

GapMinder: World Stats

2011-11-30T20:22:00.007-07:00

GapMinder is an online time-waster (that might sometimes be considered a useful tool) that helps visualize many different statistics from different countries into a single neat graph. In this photo, I'm comparing the Sulfur emissions per person (y axis) to the % of self-employment (x axis) to CO2 emissions (size of bubble) in different countries. It's cool to mess around with, especially the effect of time on the numbers (you can scroll through the years to compare).

M of the M: November

2011-11-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

Mario of the Month for November.

Minecraft: Top Structures

2011-11-20T09:41:00.003-07:00

A person has actually taken the time to build an entire computer (16-bit) within Minecraft, maybe if he makes one powerful enough to run Minecraft itself the universe will blink out of existence (see full article here). Also, a guy with loads of time built a 1:1 scale replica of the Entreprise from Star Trek- nerdism at its best (article here). (the video "starts" at 1:30)

Running On Water: Myth or Reality?

2011-10-28T18:52:00.002-06:00

Running on water, is it possible? No, it's not but it's still a neat video.

Call of Duty coral

2011-10-28T00:03:00.000-06:00

Someone named a coral after names from Call of Duty.

How to talk climate change to your grandmother

2011-10-25T12:21:00.000-06:00

How to talk to a climate change skeptic.

Images from the National Snow and Ice Data Center

Augmented reality beamed directly into your eye

2011-10-24T19:46:00.001-06:00

I want this augmented reality contact lens.

Interactive Periodic Table

2011-10-24T18:58:00.003-06:00

Probably the best periodic table on the nets, ptable has it all, advanced colour-coding, links to wikipedia pages on the elements, isotopes, specific proprieties, and (oh!) it's also a periodic table. Check it out!

NASA Sounds

2011-10-17T19:29:00.002-06:00

Maybe it's just me but I found these released NASA sounds quite enjoyable to listen to. One of my favourites is Atlas V: Launch.

Here's to the crazy ones...

2011-10-17T18:14:00.002-06:00

Octopi

2011-10-17T18:09:00.003-06:00

From Scienceblogs.com

Weird number observation

2011-10-17T18:06:00.001-06:00

Via: Futility Closet

World Map Info

2011-10-06T20:49:00.008-06:00

This website "Charts Bin" dedicates itself to interesting and/or weird information of countries around the globe in an interactive way- it's pretty cool! One of the cooler ones is the coffee per capita of almost every country, neat! Image found: here.

M of M: October

2011-10-06T20:47:00.001-06:00

Mario of the Month for October. Link: here.

20 countries with the most debt

2011-09-25T09:34:00.002-06:00

This review of the 20 countries with the most debt did surprise me. [Image from the linked Edmonton Journal story.]

Faster than light particles!

2011-09-22T14:18:00.003-06:00

Yikes! There is a claim that CERN scientists have measured particles going faster than the speed of light! If so, this would invalidate Einsteinian physics. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

I like this response, reported in the story about this at the journal Science's website:

"Chang Kee Jung, a neutrino physicist at Stony Brook University in New York, says he'd wager that the result is the product of a systematic error. 'I wouldn't bet my wife and kids because they'd get mad,' he says. 'But I'd bet my house.'"

Robotic Pong

2011-09-20T20:27:00.003-06:00

Cool, but unfortunately these are still being controlled by humans for now.

The Impossible Hamster

2011-09-20T15:49:00.001-06:00

Glass of the future

2011-09-19T20:35:00.000-06:00

Super Mario mushroom from a radish

2011-09-19T20:30:00.001-06:00

Luck of the draw

2011-09-19T20:17:00.005-06:00

[Click for full size]

Gamers make scientific breakthrough!

2011-09-19T08:24:00.000-06:00

The protein-folding game FoldIt has made a major scientific break-through: gamers figured out the structure of a protein involved in AIDS.

Smallest Electrical Motor Ever Created (to date)

2011-09-07T20:38:00.003-06:00

We are one step closer to making nanobots with the recent advance to a motor the size of a single molecule. Via Boing Boing.

M of the M: September

2011-09-03T14:15:00.004-06:00

Mario of the Month for September. Found: here.

vsauce DONG sum-up

2011-08-29T08:20:00.002-06:00

Here are a bunch of interesting links you can do online, found via vsauce.

Whathappenedinmybirthyear.com sums up the wikipedia events of the year in a neat fashion.

Dude moving cars is a dude that moves his hands over a video (video above too).

Finally, there's an interesting game that makes you do decisions for a poor american family: SPENT.

M of the M

2011-08-11T19:31:00.002-06:00

Mario of the Month for August, found here.

Apple market capitalisation exceeds Exxon’s

2011-08-09T20:43:00.000-06:00

For a few moments today, Apple was the most valuable company in the world. I link through BoingBoing so you can read the comments on whether this is a sign of changing times.

The Pentagon Spends More Money Fixing Rusty Old Shit than Canada Spends on Its Entire Military

2011-08-09T10:47:00.000-06:00

Posted this mainly because I loved the headline on Gizmodo.

A classic puzzle

2011-07-28T16:16:00.001-06:00

This is an old puzzle, but interesting if you haven't heard it before.

A hunter walked one kilometer south from his camp. Then he walked one kilometer west. There he shot a bear. Then he walked one kilometer north, and found that he was back at his camp. What color was the bear?

The answer can be found here. A lot more puzzles collected by the same guy can be found here.

M of the M

2011-07-16T10:01:00.002-06:00

Mario of the Month for July. Reference: here.

Zidane World Cup Headbutt Animation Festival

2011-07-12T20:29:00.002-06:00

Videos Throughout Time (YTTM)

2011-06-24T20:02:00.001-06:00

YTTM gives a good glipse of the video throughout time from the earliest sound recorded to the modern days.

M of the M

2011-06-24T19:54:00.002-06:00

Mario of the Month for July. Source: here.

M of the M

2011-06-24T17:35:00.002-06:00

Mario of the month for May (a post of Mario found in Sweden). Reference: here.

Evolution and motorboat sounds.

2011-06-21T17:50:00.000-06:00

It's hard not to like this video that combines beauty pageant girls a.) trying to talk coherently about evolution and b.) making weird sounds.

Winning

2011-04-10T20:17:00.000-06:00

M of the M

2011-04-01T20:27:00.002-06:00

Mario of the Month for April. Reference: Flickr: Mario & Luigi.

Gmail Motion

2011-04-01T20:24:00.003-06:00

Yet another new feature added to Gmail!

Grandma Pong

2011-03-26T21:25:00.000-06:00

Image from: http://www.totalprosports.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/grandmapong.gif

Visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem

2011-03-26T21:10:00.003-06:00

From: http://themetapicture.com/media/why-couldnt-i-have-been-shown-this-in-maths-class.gif

Super Mario as a first person shooter game

2011-03-18T10:25:00.000-06:00

Bia: BoingBoing.net

Surrounded by screens

2011-03-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

Via: Gizmodo.com

M of the M

2011-03-06T17:55:00.002-07:00

Mario of the month for March. Found: here.

Ray William Johnson =3

2011-02-28T19:22:00.003-07:00

Reviews of both viral and interesting videos.

Epic MealTime

2011-02-28T18:53:00.004-07:00

A bunch of University Students making videos with ridiculous food! Main channel can be found at: EpicMealTime

M of the M

2011-02-28T18:48:00.002-07:00

Mario of the Month for February- found: here.

Touch trigonometry

2011-02-27T11:00:00.001-07:00

Image by dullhunk via Flickr

I like this interactive visualization of trigonometry.

The old Gallium melting spoon trick...

2011-02-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Via: BoingBoing.net

Hilariously over-the-top Indian movie scene.

2011-01-27T14:10:00.002-07:00

From the Tamil movie Endhiran, the most expensive movie in Indian cinema history. Via: BoingBoing

Courtroom quotations

2011-01-26T18:52:00.001-07:00

I enjoy this collection of (alleged) courtroom quotations, which has the feel of FailBlog.org. Some of my favorites:

Lawyer: "How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?"

------------

Lawyer: "Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?"
Witness: "All my autopsies have been performed on dead people."

------------

Lawyer: "I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture."
Witness: "That's me."
Lawyer: "Were you present when that picture was taken?

Fun party game of passing the secret electronic forms conversion.

2011-01-11T02:48:00.002-07:00

Translation party is an amusing electronic form of 'Pass The Secret' game, or (after running it on the previous phrase) "Fun party game of passing the secret electronic forms conversion."

M of the M

2011-01-03T17:47:00.003-07:00

Mario of the Month for January.

I Whip My Hair Back and Forth

2011-01-03T17:42:00.004-07:00

The original song can be found: here.

M of the M

2010-12-02T21:50:00.005-07:00

Mario of the Month for December. Found: here.

Trapping antimatter

2010-11-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

Gizmodo has a report about trapping anti-matter for the first time.

A little bit of history

2010-11-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

They are auctioning off a mint Apple I computer, expected to sell for $161,600 - $248,200. This machine came out in 1976, with 8K of RAM and a computer that ran at 1 Mhz. The computer I wrote this on has a million times more RAM and has two processors that run over 2500 times faster.

M of the M

2010-11-11T19:46:00.003-07:00

Mario of the Month for November. Found: here.

M of the M

2010-10-03T12:58:00.002-06:00

Mario of the Month for October. Via: here.

M of the M

2010-09-22T17:54:00.003-06:00

Mario of the Month for September. View original (and source): here.

Amazing gymnast pulls off an amazing sequence of flips

2010-09-12T22:28:00.001-06:00

It seems they won't let me embed this, but check out this amazing gymnast doing flips.

New bar bet

2010-09-12T00:13:00.001-06:00

Image via WikipediaHere's a new bar bet: Ask people to bet what the fifth-most-traded currency in the world is, after the U.S. dollar, the yen, the pound, and the euro.
Answer: Surprisingly (I think) the Australian dollar. I would have gone through China (the one doing the trading), Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and a lot of other countries before I'd have guessed Australia (if I ever would have)....

Italy Soccer "Training"

2010-09-09T19:38:00.008-06:00

Title also, for the video I was talking about previously see Double Rainbow.

2010-08-29T22:21:00.002-06:00

Gizmodo has an interesting article about how the iPhone (and probably other digital cameras) can distort fast-moving objects, with propellers being the most common example. This iPhone video of a propeller is from the comments; there are lots of other examples in the article. Weird effects happen because "as it turns out, most digital cameras don't actually take a picture the instant you hit the button. What they actually do to capture an image is scan over the frame either vertically or horizontally. So basically, not all parts of an image are recorded at exactly same time (the top right could be a little ahead of the bottom left, etc.). Hence it being called rolling shutter."

It is cool to think that if our eyes had rolling shutters, this is how we might see the world too, with fast moving objects seeming to move in and out of existence or bend in strange ways. It's a great example of how perception is not necessarily reality.

The meaning of Play Station controller symbols.

2010-08-25T21:24:00.001-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

This is interesting: Gizmodo has an article on the meaning of the symbols on a PlayStation controller. Teiyu Goto, an engineer involved in designing them, claims that "Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one's head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent 'yes' or 'no' decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that's what I wanted."

Star Wars Uncut

2010-08-19T16:13:00.000-06:00

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

I am hugely impressed by this attempt to re-shoot the entire Star Wars canon by cutting up the films into 15 second pieces and letting fans re-make those 15 seconds however they like. A truly great idea. A small sample is shown above.
Via BoingBoing.net

Know Your (Internet) Meme

2010-08-12T16:44:00.003-06:00

For more of these interesting videos visit "Know Your Meme.com".

Even-length palindromic numbers mod 11 = 0

2010-08-09T17:12:00.005-06:00

I was surprised to learn from a comment on Project Euler that palindromic numbers are always divisible by 11.

Here's the proof (for six digit numbers):
i.) A palindromic number has the form abccba [By definition]
ii.) abccba = 100000a + 10000b + 1000c + 100c + 10b + a [Expansion in Base 10]
iii.) abccba = (100000a + a) + (10000b + 10b) + (1000c + 100c) [Re-organizing ii.)]
iv.) abccba = 100001a + 10010b + 1100c [Re-organizing iii.)]
v.) abccba = 11 (9091a + 910b + 100c) [Factor out 11 from iv.)]
QED [= Proved, since we have factored 11 out.]

I think this always holds for palindromes (of any length) with an even number of characters, but it does not necessarily hold if you are allowed to include an 'odd' digit in the centre. (I know it sometimes holds because 121 = 11 x 11, but I don't know if 121 is a special case.)

M of the M

2010-08-05T14:01:00.005-06:00

This is a photo taken out of a larger album (composed of 505 photos to be exact) solely of Mario and Luigi around North America. This album is found here. Photo credit given to revengingangel. Mario of the Month for August 2010

Tales of Mere Existence

2010-08-04T20:22:00.003-06:00

For more of these types of videos see: here.

Venn Diagram

2010-08-04T00:07:00.000-06:00

Via: www.spreeblick.com

Trigonometry Visualized

2010-08-03T23:43:00.000-06:00

"BP Spills Coffee"

2010-07-30T19:37:00.005-06:00

A spoof of the current BP oil spill.

Interesting/ Unique Tees

2010-07-18T14:51:00.004-06:00

For a full list visit: T-shirts That Just Made My Day.

Project Euler

2010-07-15T10:09:00.000-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

"Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems."

(Leonard Euler, pictured at left, was a Swiss 18th Century mathematician.)

M of the M

2010-07-13T16:17:00.001-06:00

Mario of the month for July.

Photo found: here.

The universe as rounding error

2010-07-08T05:51:00.000-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

I enjoyed this quote: "Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are hydrogen, the first element and the major constituent of stars. The other 10 percent of all atoms are helium. That's already 100 percent. The rest of the periodic table, Elements 3 through 118, lithium through ununoctium, barely register on a cosmic scale. The rest of the universe, you and I included, is a rounding error."
Sam Kean/ Hydrogen: Where It All Started in Slate

Mario projected onto a sidewalk

2010-07-07T10:23:00.000-06:00

Super Mario Bros. from Surfap on Vimeo.

Via: Gizmodo

Russian optimism

2010-07-02T09:21:00.001-06:00

Image by funkandjazz via Flickr

"Eight percent of Russians believe their national team will win the World Cup, despite the fact that it never qualified for the tournament, an independent poll has showed."

From Reuters via Yahoo News

2010 World Cup is lowest scoring competition ever

2010-06-28T22:46:00.001-06:00

"2010 is indisputably the lowest scoring World Cup in history."

From: http://footballpolemics.wordpress.com/ via: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

The man who sold a $22 billion share in Apple for $800

2010-06-24T12:33:00.000-06:00

Ron Wayne co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. At the beginning he owned 10% of the company. Today that 10% would be worth $22 billion. Alas, Wayne sold his 10% back for $800 before Apple succeeded. A rough investment decision! More details at CNN here.
With a tip'o'the hat to Uncle Eric.

OnLive gaming service comes to the Mac

2010-06-18T07:00:00.000-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

These are good times for gaming on the Mac: Following Steam's recent arrival, OnLive has now arrived for the Mac. From the site's own description: "The OnLive® Game Service is a revolutionary, on-demand video game platform that delivers the latest and most advanced games instantly over a broadband connection on virtually any PC or Mac®, via a small browser download, or HDTV, via OnLive's MicroConsole™ TV Adapter (coming soon). OnLive enables an entirely new way to discover, explore, purchase and experience the hottest video games from the world's leading publishers."

Shortest possible game of Monopoly

2010-06-16T09:01:00.000-06:00

"we started to wonder about what the shortest THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE game of Monopoly would be. That is, if everything went just the right way, with just the right sequence of rolls, Chance and Community Chest cards, and so on, what is the quickest way one player could go bankrupt? After working on the problem for a while, we boiled it down to a 4-turn (2 per player), 9 roll (including doubles) game. Detail on each move given below. If executed quickly enough, this theoretical game can be played in 21 seconds"
Text and video taken from (and further discussion at) scatter.wordpress.com, via BoingBoing.

Lego robot chess

2010-06-16T08:55:00.000-06:00

More info here.
Via Gizmodo.

FIFA US VS England Highlights- In LEGO

2010-06-14T16:34:00.004-06:00

Final score: 1-1, even if England was, in my opinion, dominating the game.

Stop motion Super Mario

2010-06-10T11:41:00.000-06:00

Pretty impressive.
As usual, via BoingBoing

The Khan Academy

2010-06-08T13:03:00.001-06:00

I love what this guy is doing: Salman Khan has recorded over a thousand ten-minute lectures on every topic in the K-12 curriculum (and quite a bit beyond that), and they are all free. There are tons of math lectures. He is doing it primarily as labor of love, not for profit. I hope he gets very rich off it anyway; he deserves it. Amazing and inspiring to see. Check out the Khan Academy.
Via: BoingBoingth