• Nerd update

    Few things to post today, going to do them all at the same time.

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  • Visual Thesaurus is a neat concept

    Found another neat site called Visual Thesaurus. I don’t know too many grammar nazis so I’m not sure this would appeal to any of my friends but I do find this to be an interesting project. They’ve created a visual reference guide for using a Thesaurus. You can type in a word and it will create a mapping of it. The words are all always “pinpointed” to an idea or definition. These “anchors” then connect to words that are related. So while some words might have 2 or 3 anchors, as in 2 or 3 definitions, each definition gets it’s own chain of words connected to it. The best part is it’s all interactive. (more…)

  • Days and days

    So I want to talk for a minute. It’s almost maddening how often I feel like I put myself through internal hell for arbitrary reasons. One would begin to wonder whether or not I really was a martyr. But regardless of the obvious objective stance I could take on such subjects, a feeling of almost hauntingly tranquil isolation seems to linger with me. (more…)

  • New state of matter?

    Some boys over at Oxford have managed to discover what they are calling a “new exotic state of matter”. The experiments involved shooting a short pulse from a FLASH laser, whatever that might be, at aluminum. It apparently turned the aluminum clear and then an ultravoilet radiation.

    ‘What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’

    The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.

    Very interesting stuff.

  • Your WTF for the day – Personal Urns

    Meet Todd.

    Todd met an early grave at the age of 26. After his horrific car accident (involving a dog, three homeless men and what one could only hope was a piece of steak attached to a stick upon the dog’s head), the family was forced to have a closed casket funeral. Rather than be forced to forever cling to old pictures of the long lost companion Todd, the family took a different route. The route of Personal Urns.

    There are two models, a normal and keepsake size. They are readily suited for wigs and nameplates on the urn and only require 1 or 2 photos of the person. The best part is, you could get ANY head you wanted. Want Kobe Bryant as your mother’s urn? How about Vonnegut? You ask why, I ask why not? Who says this even has to be limited to just holding ashes. This should be available to the world… That is if you are willing to shell out the $2,600 for the full or $600 for the smaller one, which won’t hold all the ashes, mind you.

  • Role Models – Wilt, Andre, and Arnold

    But it had to be posted. This is Wilt Chamberlain, Arnold, and Andre the Giant on the set of Conan. And I just love seeing Arnold being man-handled by these giants.

  • Dreamlines

    So I found a website called Dream Lines. It’s a rather neat project that I stumbled upon today. If I were to take a mildly educated guess, I would say the basic function of it takes any one phrase that you type. It takes this subject and searches for images of it. I’m not sure which engine they use but my guess would be Google. Once it finds images, it takes a sketch rendering program that is compatible with Java and renders out the images from the search. It does this very slowly and very sketchlike.

    The weird thing is it cycles through multiple images, so while one is being sketched and built, it will suddenly switch to another image, which at the beginning, also is just being started. This creates that dream-like aesthetic that I think the developers were going for and, in my opinion, nailed. So as a word of warning, some of the images take some time to get the final product, and it does have quite the load time. But I think it’s another neat concept and even has some artistic value that I think hasn’t really been seen in recent technological break-throughs.

  • Role Models – New Cash

    I love finding this junk.

  • Reading and had to share

    I told myself to post something today, and I had almost given up hope on what to write about. Then I started reading and inspiration was found. Well, not so much on my end. I’ve been reading Beyond Good & Evil by Nietzsche and found two excerpts that I found wonderful.

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  • Sand art

    So this is something I had heard about but never saw until now. Sand art is an amazing art form that, as could be assumed, uses sand as it’s paint. Using a large table with a projector built in, the artist goes about using the sand to create images, using the density of it to create very interesting pieces and works with shadows in mere seconds. It’s pretty fun to watch and imagine how articulate and focused your hand movements have to be. There are others to be found if you google them.

    That is all.

  • After the fact…

    So it’s been a minute since my last update.  I do, in fact, have a good reason. This weekend was moving weekend. While I could have updated throughout, I doubt very seriously anything I had to say was worth while. It was a long and painful Saturday, starting the moving process at 10:00AM and finally winding down to sleep at 2:30AM. (more…)

  • Role Models – To my coder girl

    To all you programming ladies you there. You know who you are. 😉

  • Long week

    So it’s been a looong week and it’s only going to drag out farther. I spent my weekend staying busy. I went down to my father’s for food and to greet Aaron when he got back from Michigan. He finished up with a 13 hour drive, so he was pretty exhausted. Then I drove up to see Dana and her roommates. I do enjoy their company and think they are a phenomenal group. There was a run-in with their neighbors that eventually lead to name calling and angry tones. Wasn’t very awesome.

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  • Role Models – James David Manning Jr. PhD

    So I’m not one to talk about politics, and I might take this down before too long, but I think this is just ridiculous. I know by posting this I am fueling his fire for attention, but I think it’s important to listen to people, no matter how crazy they talk, if only for the sake of realizing just how crazy people can be.

    This is James David Manning, PhD talking about the Patrick Henry revolution and how the white people are about to riot…. and he’s joining. If you can sit through to the end, he starts singing about 8:30 into it. It’s rather amusing if you don’t take it seriously.

  • Granola Bars and a finish to moderation

    Are actually quite delicious. I was re-introduced to these delightful treats. Somehow the world has a different taste now that I’m coke free. Funny how that works. I also noted that I have felt like I have a lot more energy since I’ve quit the substance abuse, as that seems to be the only way to describe my previous relations to the drink. I have recently considered going vegetarian for kicks and giggles. I guess I really just enjoy challenging myself to try new and different things, or should I say lifestyles. I usually don’t do minor changes. I’m usually a big change kind of guy.

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