interesting math side notes

always fun to actually read the news and other feeds on my home page.

from wikihow.com
Calculate Pi by Throwing Frozen Hot Dogs

and from the bbc
Ancient Moon Computer

sort

sorting algorithms visulized.
very cool.

bad criminal

this guy is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mim90zCi34Y

$20 nockaround?

I was looking at walmart and ran across some $20 pay as you go phones that work on the cingular network. it got me to thinking that for a mere couple of dollars, I could purchase a new phone to move my simcard in from my work phone so when I crash, or fall in the lake on the weekends I won't lose my corporate phone? would this work?

funniest

thefunniest.info lets you vote between scraped images off the net (and user propersed images) to derive a dynamic top10 list. found this from kevs crappy comic link.

Iridium

were you thinking i was going to talk about the element or the satellite service. well, i found some cool stuff on hack-a-day about a recent burning man festival where they tracked solar flares reflected off the iridum communications satellites. you can see when you can see a flair in your neck of the woods, weather you be in the central or western neck at heavens-above.com. more on flares here

wired has a great article (from 1998, the start of the iridium service) that is well written, and tells the story of how a 3 man rogue group from motorola turned out a product that should have gone to governments but found a way to deliver it to the public sector. I particurally like the part how in 1991 they announced the plans to the public, but they forgot to get clearance from the FCC (and the worldwide counterpart) for frequency allocation. that could have been a show stopper. dating back to the 1945 erra, the satellite communcaitons idea was actually what gave birth to the application of geosynchronous orbits. its a little strange because the article says LEO (low earth orbit) was chosen because of the 1W limit they wanted in the handhelds, but ham uses 5 (and up to 7 in a pinch). maybe its because its 1.6ghz as opposed to 430mhz range. who knows. one other reason for non geo orbits was given, in that they'd need 30 foot dishes up there, but LEO is like 450miles away, so the arrays could be built much smaller.

one final thing, and jen, you can verify: supposedly iridium is 77 electrons? but as luck would have it, the final mesh ended up being 66 satelites due to the optimization. the name stuck, and

this is why all your chem students think iridium has 66 electrons

comic

this comic is awesome.
the artist has many drarwings (pronounced like the jack handy snl from years ago).
you'll find out from his other comics that he is nearly obscessed with velociraptors and often sizes up buildings against attacks and also does math as he walks to enure he's going the most effecient route. it's great.

$10

We ran out of a component to build at work, and it set us back 3 weeks in producion. I worked a solid 4 hours (where others had been working months) and found the part locally, and had it delivered the next day.

I increased capacity in the plant by 2.25 million dollars. and I have a shiny new $10 gift card to walmart to show for it.

talk about grattitude. I love this place.

browser speed

my favorite browser, hands down is firefox because of my extentions.
that being said, if security and speed are more your cup of tea, read this as it's a very comprehensive comparison of what is out there and what it offers in the speed department.

GW score

for kev, my current scores. no serios playing, just screwing around. all good scores were done with mouse. some with keyboard fire, but later (including the top score) was done with mouse move and mouse fire. (pure mouse)

Alien Incursion

I was watching Alien Incursion and saw a GPS coordinate. using coord converter and google maps with coordinates I think this is near Eugene OR. lets see how the movie plays out to see if i'm right.

The measure of a nerd

So, we just watched a movie where things were a little different. People were running to payphones to make calls, the cars were old and the computers were big ugly boxes.

After the movie some people were asking how old it was (Leanna and Sarah). I recalled seeing some of the computers in the movie and said... well if 386's were hot then it had to be somewhere around 92. They picked up the box and.... 1992 I got it right based on the age of the computers. I am a very proud nerd today :).