Wow, first meta-post. I hope I don’t do this too often. So I added a link to this blog on my Facebook profile recently, and the views shot way up. Thanks for the support, guys! Please do comment, as I appreciate any feedback on what is interesting, what is not, and what is worth posting about more. Ideally, this would be a conversation, and not just me talking at empty space.
I’ve added two more links to my blogroll: J’s and my Tumblr accounts. It’s a more convenient way to post the shorter things like a link or a photo. J also found a way to enable comments on Tumblr, so it’s even more awesome.
And just to keep this post a little non-meta, B came to visit today (he’s a classmate who is the same year as me). Five of us went to P. F. Chang’s today for dinner. It’s not authentic Chinese food, but very good anyways (try the lettuce wraps!).
Anyway, it was amusing to observe the different conversations that people have, depending on the group that is present. For example, the average intelligence level of our conversation was about that of a herd of chinchillas (i.e. nonexistent), whereas every once in a while, it would spike to some rather lofty value. Examples include when someone mentioned that the yellow stripes in the parking lot made a triangle if you projected it from hyperbolic space to normal Euclidean space; and, ironically, when we were talking about how dumb our banter was.
On a related note, I read somewhere a long time ago that the amount of meta-discussion increases with intelligence level. I think B got to 5 or 6 levels of meta-ness before we all collapsed back into chinchillas. Does this make me a level 7 meta-rodent?
I feel like the world is going by so quickly. In the past few weeks, it’s been change after change, and it’s all I can do to try to remember as much of it as I can. I will write more substantially about this in the future, but for now, there is a video that captures a little of what I am feeling that I’d like to share.
If that link doesn’t work, try this one: other formats.
xkcd has an interesting discussion of the evolution of laser-powered propulsion.
Choicy quotation:
If we were lifting the squirrel with a motor, railgun, or electric catapult, with 1.21 gigawatts we could send it screaming upward at ridiculous speeds.
Example image:
Imagine the possibilities!
I came across this thread on digital Photography School where people post their experiences with people’s reactions to seeing a photographer. Some excerpts:
I find taking night shots in and around downtown dangerous. I attract too much attention, let me rephrase that…my tripod attracts too much attention. Drivers will start trying to see where my focal point is and start veering off the road, sometimes right at me!
A couple of months ago I actually had some old lady call the police on me. In her mind, somebody setting up a tripod by a lake was most likely robbing her neighbor
Speaking of public photography, I took this one of my lunch at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo, LA. People were looking at us, but no one told us to stop taking photos inside their establishment.
From Wikipedia:
Ray tracing is a general technique from geometrical optics of modeling the path taken by light by following rays of light as they interact with optical surfaces. It is used in the design of optical systems, such as camera lenses, microscopes, telescopes and binoculars. The term is also applied to mean a specific rendering algorithmic approach in 3D computer graphics, where mathematically-modelled visualisations of programmed scenes are produced using a technique which follows rays from the eyepoint outward, rather than originating at the light sources. It produces results similar to ray casting and scanline rendering, but facilitates more advanced optical effects, such as accurate simulations of reflection and refraction, and is still efficient enough to frequently be of practical use when such high quality output is sought.
Some examples at the POV-Ray Hall of Fame:
It’s amazing to think about the sheer amount of frustration we are willing to put up with when we use our cell phones. From intermittent signals when we’re on the ground floor of buildings, to call failures simply because we’re making a call right after checking voicemail, to slow UIs and carrier lock-in, we are constantly reminded that in our pockets we carry a marvel of monopolistic intervention. Did I mention that my phone doesn’t know when daylight savings time begins? Maybe by next week it will have seen the light.
When I used Sprint, the calls were truly clear. Now with T-Mobile (do they actually think they can trademark magenta?), I miss the first syllable of most sentences, and the ’s’ sound is low-passed to oblivion. It’s gotten to the point where I add ‘mmm’ to the beginning of short phrases so that the chain of audio transmission can rev up before I speak the main content. It’s pretty sad, really. I must sound doubly insane when you see me talking on the phone.
Sometimes I wonder about how a seemingly insignificant event can change the future of so many people. Of course, I can’t observe the changes without traveling to parallel universes, but when you have a lot of time (or a lot of curiousity), it’s fun to wonder.
Yesterday, I spent some time walking around Avery to take photos of people in their natural habitat. A friend was carrying a to-go box and cup of water back to her room, and I asked her to pause for a picture.
She obliged, but upon turning to resume her original mission, inertia took hold and the cup tipped over. The water made an interesting pattern in the carpet, and I wondered what had changed due to my (mostly unconscious) decision to ask for a picture. Will she see a friend on the way to get more water and have a nice chat? Will people look at the wet carpet and wonder about it for a while, subtly changing their thought patterns for the afternoon?
The obvious consequence is that I am writing several paragraphs on the subject—more than I bargained for when I planned that picture. It reminds me of this game I played several years ago, Chaos Theory. Where do you click? When? This is partly the reason I sometimes feel like I can’t take action; I want to make the optimum choice, and in doing so, I make no choice at all. I wonder if I should do something about that…
*ponders*
Egyptian Ratscrew is not a test of reaction time; it is a test of concentration. I find that once you’ve got the hang of the game, it is much harder to focus only on the cards and not to be distracted by the activities around you. The ability to focus becomes the main impediment to lower hand-to-pile times, especially as reaction times (eye-to-hand-movement) reach a physical limit. The human nervous system can only transmit information so fast.
I felt more aware of my surroundings when I was driving back from a game of ER at Tea Station. It must have been because of the game.
