Sunday, April 17, 2011

People who are brutally honest...

Americans average 6.9 hours of sleep per night.  But science reveals we need 8 hours of sleep to prevent cognitive problems during the day.  Eight hours.  Let's see: bed at 10, alarm at 5.  Oops.

 Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty 

Art Madness II: America Picks the Greatest Post-War Artwork tournament was won by Smithson's Spiral Jetty.  You may recall when this began around the time of basketball's March Madness I predicted a Jackson Pollock victory.  I was wrong twice (he had two paintings in the field of 64 works).  And let's not get started on the fact that Rothko wasn't represented.

From the geometry department: The Eyeballing Game demonstrates how well you can freehand a parallelogram and other shapes.  An animated explanation of the Pythogarean theorem.  An animated star cube.  You can kinda consider this simulator of the sun's motion to be geometry.  And the videos from How Round is Your Circle are kinda mesmerizing.

If you call ! a bang and # a hash, you might not need the programmer's ASCII pronunciation guide.

For my craft beer mavens: New Zealand's Moa Beer is the only beer to be fermented in the bottle.  Labelmania is Aleheads' top 20 beer labels.  And I'm not sure how Boner Beer tastes but they certainly have the marketing angle figured out.

My fish's name is Roy.  These are not him.

Why can't software developers estimate time?   It's because the nature of the work involves creation of new knowledge for which there's no experience base.  

  • JGC Corp. provides CFD consulting services for plant design and equipment sizing.
  • The 3D PDF Consortium has been formed to ensure that PDF continues to be developed as an open standard for visualization, data exchange, and other purposes.
  • MTI Holland offers CFD services in the field of dredging and deep-sea mining.
  • Intelligent Light's FieldView 13 is 2-40x faster.

I can't get into Harvard now and I certainly couldn't have gotten admitted in 1899 if this entrance exam is any indication.  "Compare Athens with Sparta. Decline in the singular: facies, idem, ovile, sidus, filus.  Reduce 184800/1180410 to its lowest terms."  Etc.

Let the record show that several years ago I had the idea for an online business that sends greeting cards for you - and there are witnesses.  So I wish good luck to the folks at SendOutCards.  (Let the record also show that I had the idea for the all potato restaurant which has yet to take off.)

Those darn animators - always hiding things in their films.  Maybe Woody Woodpecker was just a front for some abstract art.

 Space Shuttle Endeavour

Boobs are inspiring but who knew they inspired so many products.

This page of World War Two trivia includes the original of the phrase "the whole 9 yards."

I'm still trying to figure out what the 100-year Case Shiller chart of home values means.  It's not that it's complicated but what are the implications? Why were homes so overvalued during the decade 1998-2008?  Is it perhaps because the market was flooded with easy credit chasing too few homes?  If you like to see a page full of incomprehensible numbers changing in real time, check out the U.S. national debt clock.

Here's part 3 of the Essential Visualization Resources.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Things that make noise: virtual keyboard, experiment with techno beats, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake,

More free online technical books than you can shake a stick at.  Thinking in C++, volumes 1 and 2. Computer Games with Python.  Aho and Ullman's Foundations of Computer Science.  An introduction to Classical Mechanics.

I may need these for the next time I have to give a presentation: inflatable crowd.

My, my.  What is that alluring scent you're wearing?  Fargginay you say?  Bacon cologne?

Puzzles anyone?  If you see "26 = L. of the A." and immediately think "letters of the alphabet" these brain teasers should be easy for you.

Do you like LEGOS and satellites?  Then get this LEGO SBIRS, space-based infrared system model.  Or maybe you like spaceships and t-shirts. Then get this Above The Earth shirt featuring 23 iconic space missions.

Start saving your allowance because next month Christie's is going to auction Mark Rothko's Untitled #17 1961.  It's expected to fetch around $20 million which is like a bargain considering his highest sale price was $72 million.

Iceland's Phallological Museum now has its first human member.  (I'm gonna have to update my organ donor card.)

Not just Paula Deen, it's Paula Deen riding things.

...often get more satisfaction from the brutality than from the honesty.

6 comments:

Jim said...

My youngest is starting to work through Computer Games With Python. Despite my trying to explain why strings are not the same thing as floating point numbers, she has progressed through chapter 6.

John said...

I have no idea why I've been finding so many Python resources recently. But I'm glad to know that this one at least appears to be a winner. I'll see if my boys have any interest.

Francis Shivone said...

After 30 years of critically looking at printing output I thought I could nail the "make a square placement," etc. I did alright but not that great.

The how round video WAS mesmerizing, I wonder if any of those applications are used in manufacturing. Again, printing, but the part that makes an ink roller oscillate always fascinated me.

I watched the Pythagorean theorem graphic a half-dozen times. If I watch it a dozen more I might get it.

I stopped at the boobs apps and ordered the mouse pad.

I'll be back later.

Great links.

John said...

I'm glad you liked How Round is Your Circle. All those rolling things are fun to watch.

Francis Shivone said...

According to your link and Google's NGram words in books search, the word "notwithstanding" hit its peak in 1820 and has trended down ever since.

My first name peaked in 1900 and then again in 1980 and is way down today.

"Ennui" peaked in 1840 and is hardly used today.

Fun stuff . . .

John said...

Ah, ennui. Reminds me of vocabulary in 12th grade English with Mrs. Gretar, the woman who more than any other helped me enjoy literature. Abject - that's probably not used too much anymore either.