Mooninite Mayhem

Mooninite Quote Generator

Interesting man

This article is about an interesting man and his opinions. It’s hard to tell how much information is actually there. That art of what makes it appealing. 

Texting More Expensive Than Data From Hubble

I don’t get the whole “texting” thing. I sound like a luddite, especially since my dislike is based on ease of use, rather than on the tremendous safety hazards I’ve witnessed it create (texting while driving is just silly, and yesterday I ran past someone texting while riding their bike… that shit is way more dangerous than calling people). But now I have a backup complaint besides my luddite-ness!

SMS 4x more expensive than data from the Hubble

Shrimp vision

This article contains a write up of a discovery about Mantis shrimp vision. They see polarized light. It end “And of course,” Dr Kleinlogel concludes, “they can still flirt with each other using fancy polarisation cues!”

Deth Tour

From my brother on darw1n.net:

The Deth Tour 2008

Which includes

6/16
House of Blues
Chicago, IL

Also, new Metalacolypse starting espisodes start May 18th.

Talks

In case you’re not aware, I’m in Colorado right now. I attended the IAPS conference from May 6-8, and now I’m at the Auger collaboration meeting. I had to give two talks today; one covering some results of a project I’ve been doing, and a shorter talk describing the program I wrote with the postdoc that was used in the project. Apparently they went well, but I managed to get one of the theorists on my case. But, now that the talks are in the past, I can relax for the first time in 3 months.

The best part is that my program will very likely be adopted as the tracking program for cosmic rays through the galactic magnetic field. Auger is broken up into many ‘physics tasks’, one of which is the ‘Magnetic Fields and Multiplets’ task, of which I am a part. Well, since the November collaboration meeting in Malargue Argentina, I’ve been working on the program with the goal of redoing the AGN correlation analysiss with new assumptions. It turns out that 4 other groups in Auger have also been doing this. But, as I learned today, My and Brian’s program is the most customizable (hell’s yeah!), so that when I presented a summary of the input and output formats, and how easy it is to use, it blew all the other programs out of the water.

I’ve also met a few more people and am getting a better understanding of the project and its inner workings (physics and social). We’ll see what happens.

Oh, I’d also like to say “fucking Lamar”, or as I coined earlier, ‘Lamargue’. It feels like I’m actually in GTA San Andreas, when you get to Las Venturas. Constant 30mph winds, restaurants close at 830pm, and no alcohol sales on Sundays. How the hell am I supposed to celebrate my talks being over if I can’t drink?

M out

Glam up your DS

I think Tony’s DS is a little drab. But don’t worry! He can get it glammed up by a Japanese company. They can make it look like a 12-year old’s lunch box for just $100.

Bling out your DS

(Josh has been playing a lot of DS too. He’s probably just as keen on this as Tony.)

New NIN Album - The Slip

So I downloaded the completely FREE new NIN album yesterday. It’s actually pretty good, I’ll admit I had low expectations because of the completely free nature but I would say that I would in fact have paid $5 for it much like Ghost I-IV (which is a good workday listen but only has maybe 5 really standout tracks, several are great, that classic NIN where he just hits an amazing melody/rhythm and just let’s it grow). So why only $5? Well for one thing it’s a pretty short album (10 tracks) and some tracks(4-5) are just alright, plus I’m cheap. It’s not as good as Year Zero (which I think was awesome and totally worth the $8 I paid for it) but it’s still pretty good.

Also Discipline is a great song, pick up the download if only for that.

Random Updates

• I went to a wedding in NJ this weekend. I could see the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan sky line from the hotel restuarant. The bar at the wedding made espresso martinis. It was great.
• I’m using google reader to manage a few RSS feeds. I acknowledge that RSS feeds were invented a few microseconds after the internet began. I’ve been slow to adopt. But I highly recommend Google reader for keeping up with web comics.
• It is not snowing in Chicago and the weather is great.

Jack McCoy

Jack McCoy just had the best line ever…

“You know I’m a sucker for executions.”

Chair, chair, chair!