Science for SEO: TGIF

Showing posts with label TGIF. Show all posts

January 30, 2009

TGIF - wicked!

Hi all, welcome to another TGIF post. I hope that you have had a chilled out week and that you have enjoyed working and got time to have a bit of fun, if your work isn't also your source of fun. This week I have been experiencing Sydney for the 1st time and mostly working unfortunately but I also made it to the beach and swam in the pool enough times to balance all that out :)

It was pointed out to me that this post is basically "what I wasted time on this week" - fair point.

Without further ado...

Stuff I liked this week:

The list of top 10 complaint letters courtesy of The Telegraph.

Levitated have some super cool pictures of abstract things which I really like (fractals and stuff).

The 100m long picture depicting people walking on Warschauer strasse railroad bridge - shot over 20 days.

Quotes:

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind". (Lord Kelvin) [but I don't agree :)]

"Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration". (S.Kelly-Bootle)

"It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free".( S Mconnell)

"As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications". (D. Parnas)

Facts:

Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.

The only letter not appearing on the Periodic Table is the letter “J”.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

Presenting the "Round orbita mouse" - it's all round, it's wireless, it spins around...

January 23, 2009

TGIF - weeeeeee

Welcome to yet another installment of TGIF, and I do hope that this post finds you well. It has been a long week for a lot of people I have spoken to, some of the adjectives used were "crappy", "boring", "stressful", "@!*%£^&!" and so on. Something must be up with the universe. I think me having a particularly relaxing time on idyllic islands in southern Thailand has put everything out of synch. Fear not, the balance will return very soon.

Without further ado...

Stuff I liked this week:

This cool site shows you how the brain works from top to bottom.

A list of 10 debunked scientific beliefs of the past.

I like Design 21, the Social Design network in partnership with UNESCO - excellent stuff.

My favourite thing this week was Steve Spalding's article called "Why I love the scientific method and so should you" on the "How to split an atom" site.

The scientific method is:

1 - Ask a Question

2 - Do Background Research

3 - Construct a Hypothesis

4 - Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

5 - Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

6 - Communicate Your Results

Oh look, there's my thesis plan all written up and ready (apart from the "further work" section) :)

Quotes:

Computer Science is a science of abstraction -creating the right model for a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it. (A.Aho and J. Ullman)

The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves. (The Countess of Lovelace on Babbage's Analytical Engine)

I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be -you aren't stretching your imagination. (J. Backus)

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: testing is the treatment. (K.Beck)

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. (E. Berard)

I particularly like:

Rules of Optimization:

Rule 1: Don't do it.

Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet.

(M.A Jackson)

Facts:

Macintosh invented the start menu in 1982 and the Recycle bin in 1984

Xerox invented desktop icons in 1981

John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry founded ABC Computer in 1942 thus becoming the 1st computer business.

John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly invented the UNIVAC computer which was able to pick presidential winners

Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston invented the 1st Spreadsheet Software called VisiCalc in 1978 (it paid for itself within 2 weeks of its release)

This is a really cool video made in stop motion with paper - it's simply brilliant.

January 16, 2009

TGIF - yippie

Welcome to another installment of TGIF. I am assuming that those of you who have had a very cold week will not want to hear about how hot and sunny it is here in Thailand so I won't expand. I hope that you have all had a great week and that you picked up a few exciting projects along the way.

Without further ado...

I love Larissa Meek's 28 cakes for Geeks. Feel free to make me one and send it through. I love cake.

Check out some very cool videos called "“Accurate Scientific Visualizations of the T4 bacteriophage infection process and replication” - you'll have to go and look.

Quotes:

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation. (H. H. Munro)

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. (Merrick Furst)

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. (Donald Knuth)

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. (Dick Brandon)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (A. Clarke)

Facts:

A byte, in computer terms, means 8 bits. A nibble is half that: 4 bits. (Two nibbles make a byte)

While it took the radio 38 years, and the television a short 13 years, it took the World Wide Web only 4 years to reach 50 million users.

The Afghan capital Kabul has a cyber cafe

Wikipedia has a page devoted to toilet roll holders

The oldest surviving computer in the world is called CSIRAC and is located in Melbourne

Microsoft writes the code for autopilot systems in all major airplanes

And thank you to Steve for this nice little YouTube gem :)

January 09, 2009

TGIF - 2009 starts

Welcome to the 1st TGIF of 2009. I'm glad many of you have enjoyed this series during 2008 and I hope that you enjoy the 2009 collection. Hopefully the festive season was enormous fun for everyone and you are not feeling the January Blues too much. If you are I hope that this installment lightens your mood.

Heads-up: I'm off on a 2 week holiday to Thailand and Cambodia for a couple of weeks and then I will be in Sydney for a while. If you're in any of those places drop me line and we can meet up for some geek talk. I will still be blogging and available to you though!

Without further ado...

Quotes:

"The first time you do something it’s science. The second time is engineering. The third time is … just being a technician. I’m a scientist: once I do something, I want to do something else. (Clifford Stoll) - thanks to Alex.

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it." (Anon)

"He who is ashamed of asking is ashamed of learning." (Anon)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science -the one that heralds new discoveries- is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny...". (I. Asimov)

Facts:

From the smallest microprocessor to the biggest mainframe, the average American depends on over 264 computers per day.

In the 1980s, an IBM computer wasn't considered 100 percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft Flight Simulator*

The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute, less than half the normal rate of 20.

By the year 2012 there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the Internet.

Cool links:

Computer parts art - pretty cool and imaginative!

A computer coffee machine no less

More computer case mods

The game "Window cleaner" looks super boring - why on earth did someone bother to invent and code it (this is not a joke part of the film)? And who would want a talking John Mcenroe robot for 5.5 million dollars? - Very very funny stuff!

December 19, 2008

TGIF - holidays!

Welcome to another installment of TGIF. I hope you are all well and that you are looking forward to the Christmas break. Many of you finish work today for at least 2 weeks so make sure you celebrate accordingly and enjoy a beverage of your choice and a couple of sweet treats too :)

Without further ado...

The Pedantic web:

“I see the the birth of artificial intelligence leading to increasingly snotty and patronizing personalities emerging via AI on the web to enhance our experience, just as they do in real life. At the moment it is difficult to imagine but over the next few years you are going to hear more and more about the Pedantic Web. It is a natural step in the evolution of the web towards Web 9.0 which we have named the Romantic Web. Eventually the web will contain and involve all of our relationships and connections, it will be our friend, our lover and our master.” (James Johnson - found on the no longer updated Science Faction blog)

Twitter -Taking it too far?

Facts:

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

"The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet.

Thomas Edison (who invented the light bulb) was afraid of the dark.

Bill Gates house was partially designed using a Mac.

Atari sold 400000 VCS consoles in 1979.

The Atari 2600 only has 128 bytes of RAM.

Following on from our Atari facts, an Atari commercial from 1978 (the year I was born!):

December 12, 2008

TGIF - terrific!

Hello, and welcome to another edition of TGIF. This week has been cold, icy and snowing for a lot of us, but lets not forget all those living on the other side of the world enjoying a hot and sunny summer season. Amongst other things I spent my time filling in customs forms and so forth so I can send my things on to Sydney, where I'll be for a while as from late Feb. I am not sad to escape winter!

Without further ado:

Facts:

Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

The solution to a problem changes the problem.

It works better if you plug it in.

Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknown.

Quotes:

“If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.” (L.Wittgenstein)

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” (M.Kapor)

“Yes, we have a dress code. You have to dress.” (S.McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems)

“Computer viruses are an urban legend.” (P.Norton, 1988)

Error messages from Hex ("A Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg-esque, magic-powered computer"):

Mr. Jelly! Mr. Jelly! Error at Address Number 6, Treacle Mine Road.

+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++

+++Whoops! Here comes the cheese! +++

*Blip* *Blip* *Blip* End of Cheese Error

The coolest coolest computer program ever: Do you want one? I really do.

December 05, 2008

TGIF - Rock on!

Welcome to yet another installment of TGIF. I hope you all got some fresh air this week and didn't stay cooped up with your laptops...like I mostly did. I bet you're all looking forward to xmas, and have the dreaded/much anticipated office xmas party to look forward to. Enjoy yourselves this weekend, and don't get too caught up in shopping :)

Without further ado...

I have enjoyed wasting valuable time playing Pac-Man (I hope my advisor doesn't read this).

Pac-Man was released as an arcade game in 1980 in Japan (Pakku-man). "Perfect Pac-Man" occurs when you get the maximum points for each of the first 255 levels. Billy Mitchell did this in 1999 with a score of 3,333,360 points and it took him 6hrs.

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."

– The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

Who on earth did he speak to? Maybe he should have gone further afield too.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

– Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.

I actually think this is right if you add "near" to "future".

Facts:

A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.

The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano.

Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.

Enjoy this brilliant video and have an excellent weekend.

November 28, 2008

TGIF - let's celebrate :)

Welcome to another weekly installment of TGIF here at SFS. I hope the week has treated you well and that you have had happy surprises along the way, and an excellent Thanksgiving for the American readers amongst you. Everyone else will have to wait for xmas for fun and games and good food. Unless like me you're invited to a posh dinner in your favourite restaurant like I am tonight :)

Without further ado...

Geeky xmas presents you might want to add to your list:

I love these awesome T-shirts from Nerdy T-shirts. I'd quite like the "Reading is for awesome people" and the PacMan one.

ThinkGeek (which is the ultimate geek gift site) do super strong caffeine comestibles, and I love the LED umbrella. They have some very nice geeky baby and kids clothes as well.

Firebox do these very cute lego brick USB keys. Definitely want one. Also feel free to send through this delicious looking box of munchies my way.

Scientifics do the amphibian solar powered car, way cool. And seriously, who wouldn't want a pair of night vision googles like these?

From Amazon (who I buy too many things from) I like the "Geek Logik: 50 Foolproof Equations for Everyday Life" book, and "The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor's Guide" - build away. My wish list is huge, so I'll stop there.

Here are or Geeky facts of the week:

The first ever Internet marketing campaign was in 1978, when an advertising note was sent via ARPANET (precursor to the Web) to about 600 people on the thing. It advertised a new computer, and as a result Digital Equipment Corp. sold over 20 of them at about $1 million each.

If you opened up the case of the original Macintosh, you will find 47 signatures, one for each member of Apple's Macintosh division as of 1982.

Your brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.

Some divers in 1901 discovered the oldest mechanical computer ever. It is a 2,100 year old machine and was used to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in the English dictionary. It refers to a lung disease caused by inhaling particles from volcanoes.

Wonder Woman co-creator William Moulton Marston also created the systolic blood-pressure test, which led to the creation of the polygraph (lie detector).

I also took the geek test, and guess what...

77% Geek

November 21, 2008

TGIF - hooray

I hope that you all had a brilliant week full of fulfilling and exciting projects and that the less interesting things eased by. I hope you're looking forward to a nice weekend hiding from the cold or boldly facing it with vigour!

Without further ado...some cool comics this week:

Be sure to check out "Kevin and the Googlebots", it's a brilliant comic strip by, well...Kevin. It's one of my new favourites!

Also check out the Geeky comic, a nice site if you're looking for a smile.

And then there's Monty the inventor of course.

I love Abstruse Goose too, simple and super funny.

I don't need to mention Dilbert, but if you haven't come across him yet...shame on you.

The usual geek facts for your pleasure:

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

By the year 2012 there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the Internet.

E-mail has been around longer than the World Wide Web.

The first computer mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart in around 1964 and was made of wood.

Microsoft has no idea why the following happens:

Open Microsoft Word and type

=rand (200, 99)

And then press ENTER.

To finish...one of my favourite bits of footage ever...enjoy.

BTW I love the fact that some of you only visit on Friday for the TGIF post - clearly it's my best work :)

November 14, 2008

TGIF - cool

Welcome to another round of TGIF. I hope the week has treated you well and that you're looking to a fun weekend. Make sure you make the most of it, and yake time to chill out.

Without further ado:

Check out this site with a colletion of geek jewellery, I really like the Lego ring, but the USB bracelets are cool too.

Check out the awesome footage from some robot programmers, I'm not sure this is part of their research, but I'd like to be involved!

And do not miss out on the dancing Daleks.

And now for some geeky facts:

32% of all Geek keyboard faults are caused by a build up of doughnut particles, nose hairs and Frito crumbs stuck between the keys.

There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee. Of these, only 26 have been tested, and half caused cancer in rats.

A Geek once wrote an entire piece of code using only zeros.

The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate."

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

November 07, 2008

TGIF - weekend ahoy

Welcome to another Friday, time for an easy and chilled out post with geeky humour and some inspiration to celebrate the end of a long week. I'll be working on my PhD this weekend, so will be in a darkened room in front of my laptop and a series if IDE's - fret not, I like it :)

Without further ado:

Programs for sale: Fast, Reliable, Cheap: choose two.

I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be -you aren't stretching your imagination. (J.Backus)

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. (J.Bronowski)

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. (T.Cargill)

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. (E. Dijkastra)

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. (Babbage)

About the last two:

So stop asking me to fix your computers - I have no idea how to I'm a Comp. Scientist
And this still happens all the time, still!

A few examples and funny ones at that from teaching days:

Student 1 catastrophe (after 2 intensive weeks of Java classes): "So, is the compiler a person or some software?".

Student 2 (admittedly after only a few classes of Java):

- "My code doesn't work"

- "Humm...let's take a look"

...after 15 minutes... "It's very strange, everything looks perfectly ok, lets type it all out again"...

...typing... System.out.println("Hello World!");

- Oh! Is it "println" with an "L" and not a "1"?

- Yes.

October 31, 2008

TGIF - woooo!

Welcome back to Friday, I hope that you're all looking forward to either a fun packed weekend or a relaxed one chilling on the sofa. I hope none of you are moving house like I was last week - not fun.

Anyway without much ado, here are the gems for today:

A project manager, hardware engineer and software engineer were in a car heading down a hill when the brakes failed. The driver managed to get it stopped by using the gears and a convenient dirt track.

All three jumped out and after peering under the car the hardware engineer said, "I see what the problem is and with this handy roll of duct tape I think I can fix it good enough to get us to the next town". The project manager quickly interrupted, "No, no, no. Before we do anything we need to decide on a vision for our future, figure out a plan and assign individual deliverables". At which point the software engineer said, "You know what, I think we should push the car back up to the top of the hill and see if it happens again".

“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behavior control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers” (Lewis Thomas)

"Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time." (2004)

...aw.....Bill....

A small surpise - I'm adding a TGIF cheesy tune too - can you guess what it is? Enjoy :)

"..the only thing missing is the sea...but don't worry, you can-sun-tan..."

October 24, 2008

TGIF - at long last.

Welcome...you survived yet another week, and you're now on the home run...the weekend hits soon.

As every friday here at SFS, we'll treat ourselves to some fun stuff - here goes:

The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for advertising that was to appear in the Sunday paper in jeopardy. None of the technicians could track down the problem. Finally, a frantic call was made to the retired printer who had worked with these presses for over 40 years. "We'll pay anything; just come in and fix them," he was told.

When he arrived, he walked around for a few minutes, surveying the presses; then he approached one of the control panels and opened it. He removed a dime from his pocket, turned a screw 1/4 of a turn, and said, "The presses will now work correctly." After being profusely thanked, he was told to submit a bill for his work.

The bill arrived a few days later, for $10,000.00! Not wanting to pay such a huge amount for so little work, the printer was told to please itemize his charges, with the hope that he would reduce the amount once he had to identify his services. The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn.

Commentary: most debugging problems are fixed easily; identifying the location of the problem is hard.

It is...it drives me mad. Luckily I have some clever friends to help out :)

Our usual...this brings to mind the mess that is Vista:

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good".

....aw...Bill....

October 17, 2008

TGIF - long week!

So welcome once again to Friday, I hope it's not too busy at your end and that you're looking forward to the weekend ahead. Here we go:

Holy Taco have a list of cool super geeky T-shirts. I really like the ones that say this:

Video games ruined my life, good thing I have 2 extra lives
I'm not a geek. I'm a level 9 warlord
I built microsoft and survived

So funny geeky quotations for this week - warning, these are very very geeky!

"To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password."
"After Perl everything else is just assembly language."
"Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are."
The software recommends using Windows Vista or better so I installed Linux."
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, 1981)

.....aw Bill....not again....

October 10, 2008

TGIF - fun facts

Welcome to Friday - to finish the week, here are interesting some facts from computing.

The QWERTY keyboard layout is 129 years old.
Macquariums are aquariums made from old macintosh computers.
Bill gates & Paul Allen started a company called Traf-O-Data to monitor traffic flow.
David Bradley wrote the code for [Ctr]+[Alt]+[Delete] key sequence.
Tetris has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, since it began in 1982
The first hard drive available for the Apple had a capacity of 5 megabytes.

And also:

In 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, investigated, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.

And you can play Tetris free here.

October 03, 2008

TGIF quotes and humour

To start things off for the weekend, here are a couple of quotes:

"All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer."

– IBM Maintenance Manual, 1925

"If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done."

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

"The Internet? We are not interested in it."

– Bill Gates, 1993

...oh Bill....