Je krabbelt de huidige datum bovenaan een pagina waarop je wat aantekeningen van een meeting maakt en dan besef je ineens dat vandaag een palindroom dag is. Jaaa vrienden… 1 februari 2010 wordt in de lage landen geschreven als 01-02-2010 en dat is van links naar rechts gelezen hetzelfde als van rechts naar links oftewel: een palindroom.
Je hebt er niets aan… het blijft een rotdag… maar toch…
Oh my goodness, take a look at this. You like to play the old fashioned boardgames like Settlers of Catan? Yet you don’t want to appear as the oldtimer that you actually are? Maybe you should go OLED like some researchers of the Queens University did. Digital game pieces rock the world. Check the article on cnet and watch this great video. They use projection in the video but you’ll get the idea
This will make a lot of games more exciting… well except for solving a puzzle since you can just throw the pieces on the table and let the oleds display the image correctly. 
Oh now… as a fractal lover (especially the Mandelbrot set) I was amazed at the 3D extension of the mandelbrot set which they dubbed the Mandelbulb. Here you can find detailed information on the set. But maybe you don’t care for formula’s… you just want the images? I have to sink my teeth into this puppy for a while before I fully understand how this is created. Meanwhile here’s a nice video of the mandelbulb. Fractal dimensions now in 3D… what a day…
Oooh nee toch.. “accordion”…. denk je bij accordionmuziek ook aan geforceerd lachend vrolijk meezwierende pippo’s die oubollige deuntjes staan te trekken? Moet je dit eens zien… nee echt…
Vivaldi – de vier jaargetijden – zomer…. op een accordion…. kick ass kid!
Link gevonden via de twitter van Jewel Kilcher.
Some people have too much time on their hands… thank the übernerd for that!
Only the background should be black and the ladders should be blue… but what I’m a nagging about? Great job!!
Oh this is a dream come true: I finally got promoted. Where I work I’m part of a large department. To allow people to get acquainted they introduced a who-is-who directory where you can lookup people by name. There’s even a photograph for facial recognition.
After being urged to submit my information and photo by email I entered my information and included a photoshopped (actually “gimped”) photograph where I gave myself large dark alien eyes. Since I figured my submission would be rejected anyway I entered my function to be “SME / Technical Theo”. To my big surprise the entry was copied verbatim into the directory including the photo. So now it’s official: I’m a Technical Theo at last… and an alien. Now I wish I’d put down “MacGyver” as function…
Oh well, maybe you’ve already seen this but this morning a coworker showed me a nice easter-egg in firefox. Just type ‘about:robots‘ in the address bar of firefox (or click the link, duh!). For those who want to short-sell themselves and don’t use firefox I put a screenshot below. Also check the name of the page “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!“…
Jaaa je weet dat je het altijd al hebt willen hebben en ik weet dat ook. Dus hier is je kans! Het blad “New Scientist” heeft een prijsvraag ter ere van het 40-jarig jubileum van de maanlanding. De hoofdprijs is een stuk maansteen. En meedoen is zo simpel… zo simpel… Je hoeft alleen maar een betere text te verzinnen die Neil Armstrong had kunnen zeggen in plaats van: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
En dat kun jij… Dat kun jij beter dan ik. Het mag iets cultureels zijn:
High diddle diddle,
The Cat and the Fiddle,
The Cow jump’d over the Moon
Of iets diepzinnigs:
E=mc2, where E=earth, m=moon, c=cow that jumped over the m
Of iets grappigs (of een poging daartoe):
Hi Honey, I’m actually in a tv studio, I’ll be home for dinner tonight.
Kortom… Win die maansteen.
I always liked the extremely funny musical parodies of Weird Al Yankovic. I recently found out that Weird Al is on twitter. He twitters about all & nothing. So read about how he has been recording some new songs in the studio. I especially like the photos he’s making. For instance 9 days ago he met Ray Manzarek, the legendary keyboard player/composer from The Doors… Who doesn’t love the brilliant organ solo in “Break on through” and “Light my Fire”?
And look-a-here who he has also met… captain Kirk. Oh boy, how exciting life is when you ride the rollercoaster instead of watching it from the ground. There’s even a picture of Al cutting himself while shaving… how’s that for glamour?
Oh this is very nice. I just came across this geek hack that plays the Super Mario tune using the stepper motor of a laser cutter. Now they actually use both axis. One for the tune the other for the bass parts. A truly amazing hack found through hackday.com. Even the ruby source code is available through the link.
Oh this is nice. A small video of a simulation what you would see if you were falling into a blackhole… well until you hit the singularity itself.. that is still a mystery. But if you happen to fall into a blackhole please drop a line and tell me what happens next…
Now this has to be the ultimate mod for a macbook. EdsJunk cracked his MacBook open and added a second monitor to it. So instead of the dull backlit apple logo you can now display anything on it. Here’s a video of the result… oh boy…
I was digging digg and found this offbeat picture of a guy sitting amidst a web of wires using some paper documentation to figure out what is connected to what. Well if the wiring in your datacenter looks like this you can be sure that the chances of the documentation being accurate are neigh.
Aren't you glad you don't work in IT? No! I'm just glad I don't work here
Anyway the caption on the image on digg was “Aren’t you glad you don’t work in IT” as if we need to feel pity for this guy or any other IT guy. Well the wiring in this picture is a clear demonstration of incompetence (not perse by the guy in the image). Don’t pity them, educate them. I’ve done my rounds in datacenters and I’ve seen many examples of wiring gone haywire. I don’t take pictures at client sites to respect the confidentiality agreements but I found some great examples on the web of proper wiring and many examples of even worse wiring than depicted above. See below.
Oh no… today is 03/03/09 and today is much anticipated by many obsessed math-fans. It’s Square Root Day. For those who don’t know: 3 x 3 = 9 (32=9). This so utterly useless, boring and stupid that I had to mention it. You can read all about it here… and here’s a small quote so you know you won’t miss anything by completely ignoring this topic.
“These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day — and poof — they’re gone,” said Ron Gordon, a Redwood City teacher who started a contest meant to get people excited about the event.
Yes, today is a beautiful day for all unix fans around the world. In Unix we measure time in seconds since 1 januari 1970… and today that will go beyond 1234567890. How nice. The javascript clock below is counting… don’t miss it.
countdown
Download the clock javascript code
For those who missed it: there are some screenshots below
(more…)