Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 251

Sunday, December 6th, 2020

When I was young, my paternal grandparents gave me a gift subscription to a magazine called “Science ’85” (later “Science ’86” and so on). As the linked Wikipedia entry discusses, this was a general interest science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (AAAS also publishes “Science”, which is a highly prestigious and technical peer-reviewed journal.)

One of the articles I remember from that magazine was about Kurt Gödel. That was the first time I’d ever encountered the man, and I find him fascinating in general. I think one of the reasons I’m fascinated by Gödel is the relationship between his Incompleteness theorem and Turing’s “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.”

This is a lecture: “Kurt Godel: The World’s Most Incredible Mind” by Mark Colyvan of the University of Sydney. (The title given in the video is “Kurt Gödel and the Limits of Mathematics”.) Each of these chunks is about 15 minutes long, so you can take some time to recover between parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

Three is a magic number.

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020

I really enjoy Rachel By the Bay’s writing, but I specifically wanted to bookmark this: “My list of magic numbers for your turkey day enjoyment“.

A couple of personal additions (hey, if Rachel can add C-64 and VIC-20 magic numbers, I can add these):

POKE 65495,0: On the old Radio Shack Color Computer, this sped up the CPU. Specifically, according to the Intertubes: “POKE 65495,0 would cause the processor to run at double speed ( 1.795 MHz ) when accessing instructions in ROM and Normal Speed ( 0.895 MHz ) when accessing DRAM.” It also messed up the timing for tape input and output, so you had to disable it before saving or loading from tape. POKE 65494,0 would return the system to normal.

POKE 65497,0: This switched the processor fully to double speed for all memory access, including DRAM. It also disabled video: you basically just got snow on your monitor until you reset the system with POKE 65496,0.

Edited to add #1:

A spot in the middle of the ocean that shows up on a map and, once zoomed WAY out, shows Africa to the north and east of it is 0 degrees north, 0 degrees west, and it’s what happens when someone treats zero as null or vice-versa in a mapping/location system. See also: Null Island.

Worth keeping in mind. For OPSEC purposes, I set the EXIF location data in many of the photos I take (especially firearms photos around the house) to 0.000000 north and 0.000000 west.

Posted in Bookmarks, Geek, Photography | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 244

Sunday, November 29th, 2020

Science Sunday!

Today, I thought it might be fun to take a tour of MIT’s research reactor.

Longer bonus video: “It’s Rocket Science! with Professor Chris Bishop”. Including burning toast (does Professor Bishop have a flambe license?) and a demo of hypergolic propellants.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 239

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

Techmoan is kind of a fun channel, but one that I try to avoid overusing. I’m using it today because this video popped up, and it answers a question that’s been in the back of my mind.

Whatever happened to portable televisions? Remember the Sony Watchman?

Obviously, the digital transition killed off the old analog portables. But why don’t we have portable digital televisions?

Short answer: we do, but not from any major manufacturers, and they’re pretty much crap as televisions. (Some of them may be decent portable media players, but do they do anything you can’t do with a small laptop or tablet?)

When I’m out shopping in thrift stores and other odd places, and see one of those cool looking old portable devices with a TV built in, I think about picking it up and hooking up a converter box, just for the lulz.

Bonus: “Prison Tech”. Not really the kind of thing people in prison improvise, but rather what kind of tech you’re allowed to have (and can purchase) for prison use.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Geek, History, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 238

Monday, November 23rd, 2020

Since I’ve done copper mining, I thought it might be fun to do another element.

Lead. Sweet, sweet, lead.

From 1972, “The Lead Matrix”, brought to you by the Lead Industries Association.

And as a bonus: “A Story Of Lead”, from the Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines circa 1948.

Posted in Geek, History | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 237

Sunday, November 22nd, 2020

Science Sunday!

It seems like it has been a while since I’ve done any computer science, so today I thought I’d focus on someone I find interesting, and who died far too young: John von Neumann.

Short: an explanation of Von Neumann architecture from Computerphile.

Long: a documentary about John von Neumann from the Mathematical Association of America.

I should probably mention that von Neumann wasn’t just an early computer scientist: he was also a brilliant mathematician and theoretical physicist, which I think comes out in this video.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 230

Sunday, November 15th, 2020

Science Sunday!

I thought I’d do a variety package today.

First up: from the ” Megaprojects” people, “Project HARP”. Yet another thing that fascinates me, and only in part because who doesn’t like the science of big cannons?

The other reason this fascinates me, of course, is: Gerald Bull.

Next: I’m kind of borderline about including these. The hosts are just on the ragged edge of annoying me. But: fire science is science, and this was actually filmed in Del Valle, near Austin.

From “The Slow-Mo Guys”, a backdraft in 4K and slow motion.

And: “How to avoid a Backdraft”.

Finally: I know this is long-ish and very talking head, but I’ve read a couple of Paul De Kruff’s books, so this is relevant to my interests. Also: medical science is science, even if medicine is magical and magical is art.

“Paul De Kruif: The Microbe Hunter and Author”.

Posted in Books, Geek | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 223

Sunday, November 8th, 2020

Science Sunday!

This is an interesting intersection of two things I’m interested in: space history and photography.

“How did NASA get those great film shots of Apollo and the Shuttle?”

Bonus: I’ve touched on Harold “Doc” Edgerton previously, but this is a nice tribute and explanation of his work from MIT.

Bonus #2: “Quicker ‘n a Wink”, Doc in 1940.

I’m not going to include them here, but if you search YouTube, you can find some videos that emulate Dr. Edgerton’s photos with modern equipment.

My reason for not including them here is that they do require purchasing some equipment that you probably do not already have: while the price for the additional equipment in one video is reasonable (slightly more than $50) I don’t want to be seen as endorsing the products.

(And I realize that may seem kind of hypocritical for someone who throws around Amazon affiliate links like candy. What can I say: man’s got to have some standards, even if they are low ones.)

Posted in Geek, History, Photography | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 216

Sunday, November 1st, 2020

Science Sunday!

Today, random. First up: “RMS Titanic: Fascinating Engineering Facts”. This actually talks about both Olympic and Titanic, and (unlike a lot of Titanic stuff) concentrates more on the engineering and shipbuilding: basically, how do you build and launch something that big?

This is only science adjacent, but I wanted to post this as a tribute: James Randi appears on “I’ve Got a Secret”.

And since that was only science adjacent, James Randi’s TED talk on homeopathy, quackery and fraud. I generally hesitate to link to TED talks, but this is an exception.

More Randi: this time, talking about Uri Geller and Geller’s “repudiation” of his claims to have psychic powers.

(As a side note, when Randi died, I got to wondering what Uri Geller was up to these days. I ran across this amusing bit from Geller’s Wikipedia entry.

In 1997 he tried to help the Second Division football club Exeter City win a crucial end of season game by placing “energy-infused” crystals behind the goals at Exeter’s ground (Exeter lost the game 5–1); he was appointed co-chairman of the club in 2002. The club was relegated to the Football Conference in May 2003, where it remained for five years. He has since severed ties with the club.

I think if Geller offers you his assistance, you should probably run in the opposite direction.)

(The James Randi Foundation channel on YouTube.)

Have you ever wondered, “How do they build those massive freaking mirrors for really big telescopes?” I’ve read some stuff about how the mirror for the Hale Telescope was built in the 1930s and 1940s, but today?

Finally: you’ve seen the footage. But do you know the engineering reason(s) why the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed?

Posted in Bridges, Geek, History, Ships | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 210

Monday, October 26th, 2020

When I was a lad in school, we had to read excerpts from The Diary of Samuel Pepys. I didn’t like it much at the time. But now I’m an older person with more enjoyment of history, and I feel Pepys goes down much better when you read him as he intended to be read: in blog form.

And one thing I haven’t really addressed, even in a glancing oblique way, is the current crisis. No, the other one. No, the other other one.

Anyway, I know this is a little long, but there’s a shorter bonus video afterwards.

Bonus: from the same channel, but shorter, scientific, and even thematically appropriate for Halloween: “The Mystery of the Bog Mummies”.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 209

Sunday, October 25th, 2020

Science Sunday!

My plan for today’s videos feel through because there was less science and more history in them than I really felt comfortable with for Science Sunday. So I moved those to Monday.

Instead, from MIT:

“The Sound of Gravity”, about LIGO and the search for gravity waves.

Bonus #1: “Editing Ourselves”, about CRISPER.

Bonus #2: Not by way of MIT, but a short video clip from “Cosmos”: Carl Sagan explains the 4th dimension.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

James Randi.

Thursday, October 22nd, 2020

He was 92. NYT. James Randi Educational Foundation.

The rest of Penn’s Twitter feed is worth reading, too. I love the lead of the NYT obit:

James Randi, a MacArthur award-winning magician who turned his formidable savvy to investigating claims of spoon bending, mind reading, fortunetelling, ghost whispering, water dowsing, faith healing, U.F.O. spotting and sundry varieties of bamboozlement, bunco, chicanery, flimflam, flummery, humbuggery, mountebankery, pettifoggery and out-and-out quacksalvery, as he quite often saw fit to call them, died on Tuesday at his home in Plantation, Fla. He was 92.

But in later years, Mr. Randi was not so much an illusionist as a disillusionist. Using a singular combination of reason, showmanship, constitutional cantankerousness and a profound knowledge of the weapons in the modern magician’s arsenal, he traveled the country exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.
Their methods, he often said, were available to any halfway adept student of conjuring — and ought to have been transparent to earlier investigators, who were sometimes taken in.
“These things used to be on the back of cornflakes boxes,” Mr. Randi, his voice italic with derision, once told the television interviewer Larry King. “But apparently some scientists either don’t eat cornflakes, or they don’t read the back of the box.”

…

Though his pursuit of Mr. Popoff was a consuming passion, Mr. Randi’s white whale was indisputably Mr. Geller, who had been famed since the 1970s for feats like bending keys and spoons, which he said he accomplished by telepathy.
Not so, said Mr. Randi, who explained that these were ordinary amusements, done by covertly bending the objects in advance.
In 1973, Mr. Geller made a disastrous appearance on “The Tonight Show” in which he was unable to summon his accustomed powers: On Mr. Randi’s advice, the show’s producers had supplied their own props and made sure Mr. Geller had no access to them beforehand.

…

Though he remained a dyed-in-the wool rationalist to the last, Mr. Randi did have a contingency plan for the hereafter, as he told New Times in 2009. “I want to be cremated,” he said. “And I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller’s eyes.”

The world is a smaller, colder, lesser place today.

Randi, responding to someone who compared psychic debunking to “the machine-gunning of butterflies”:

That writer never saw the distraught faces of parents whose children were caught up in some stupid cult that promises miracles. He never faced a man whose life savings had gone down the drain because a curse had to be lifted. He never held the hand of a woman at a dark seance who expected her loved one to come back to her as promised by a swindler who fed on her belief in nonsense. “Nothing is funnier…?” Tell that to the academics who lost their credibility by accepting the nonsense about telepathy that came out of the Stanford Research Institute. “The machine-gunning of butterflies?” Explain that to those whose spent their time and money trying to float in the air because a guru said they could. Are the “dangers of mass popular delusion” not “so menacing”? Mister, go dig up one of the 950 corpses of those who died in Guyana and shout in its face that Reverend Jim Jones was not dangerous.

—Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions

Posted in Geek, Magic, Obits | 1 Comment »

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