Will a Lava Lamp work on Jupiter?

To find out the answer to his life threatening question, Mr. Neil Fraser built a centrifuge.   It looks dangerous:

It’s impressive though, it measures in at over 3 meters in diameter, and over 50 kilograms.  As a side project, it is very capable of enriching your own uranium, which, is legal by the way.

Here is a video of this dangerous device of death in action:

And for those of you too lazy to click read his site, or watch the video, here’s the answer.

Yes, a lava lamp will work on Jupiter.

Now, let’s get this guy a government contract, because that centrifuge looks far to poor for any real scientific research to be conducted on.  And also, I want to know if the color green is really the color green on Saturn gravity.

{Engadget | Gadget Venue }

Any Hootie and The Blowfish, let’s move back to what I’m trying to say, movies are fake.

You know that, I know that, 12 year olds know that, Doctors of Physics, and other learned people seem to have missed the common sense train.  It seems that certain professors, and scientists want to limit the number of impossible things that movies can do.  They want to limit it to one or two occurrences per movie.  I’m sorry what part of the word fiction do they not understand?

For those of you in the unknown, here’s the definition according to Google:

Fiction refers to books and stories about imaginary people and events, rather than books about real people or events

Now when I go see a movie, I automatically think, man, I wish that was doable in real life, and then realize, I’m watching a movie.  That’s not so much a leap of faith as it is a matter of common sense.  Most of the movie going world can make that realization.  It’s a shame those people can’t make that jump really, because all it shows is that they have no imagination.

Sure you could make a scientifically accurate film where everything is all peachy, and it takes 70 years to fly across the solar system.  But why would you watch it?  What would it be about?  How would you keep it interesting?

A movie’s main purpose is to entertain people.  Not to give you an accurate representation of how science works, that’s school’s job.

I like this guy’s article, but he doesn’t really say much against this new idea, just explains a whole lot about producing a TV/movie, vs. showing that same scene in an actual movie/tv show.

Whatever, I guess I’m just gonna fall back on the old adage of, it’s a movie, now shut the fuck up I’m trying to watch this.

I kept it like that for alittle, then I couldn’t read anything, and changed it back.

I’m not sure how it changed, but it is alittle concerning.  Anyway, I don’t care anymore, time for more awesome Russian Things.

His face makes the whole thing so great.  I wish I knew what he was saying, but that gives me more reason to learn Russian in the coming years.

His name is Edward Gil, and he’s apparently pretty big in Russia, I believe that, because he’s very entertaining, at least to me.

I do not like him with sun glasses, you loose everything in his eyes.

Here’s one more.

Also, because it’s vaguely Soviet based, and I haven’t listened to it in about 2 weeks, here’s something you will hate:

I was gonna call this post the Redundant clock, but I decided that that was just copying way too much the other 3 blog posts from where it came.

They also failed to write more then a sentence about this lovely piece of art, so that’s where I will change things.

For starters look at the elegance of it.  It’s simplicity is what makes it so elegant.  The lack of numbers, makes you think, and that’s the whole purpose of it, to think of the time.  I realize that this paragraph makes no sense at all, but that’s why you read my blog for the senseless rambleings of me.

Now I will take this time to add a link to this cool Russian clock problem.  (Yes, I am currently obsessed with Russia)  Whoever buys me anything from this eBay search will be loved forever.

The problem is to draw two straight lines on the clock face so that the sums of the numbers in each part are equal.

It took some time, but not as much as I figured, and I was able to get an answer.  Hopefully it’s correct.

The Olympics are over, man, was that a good 17 days.  The Winter Olympics are really the one sport I love to watch. Every sport in it.  I watched almost every event.  Yes that includes curling, which I watched every (women’s) match.  There were some good ones, and some sad ones, but the Gold Medal game was up there for my second favorite.

All in all I watched countless hours of video.  Often times having 2 events going on at once.  One being streamed on NBColympics.com, one watching on TV.  Once I watched 3, that was alittle too much, mostly because I had to constantly mute them when they went to commercials (more on that, and NBColympics.com in general below).

Total though, I streamed gigabytes of data to my computer.  Don’t believe me, take a look at these beautiful graphics:

That’s the stats recorded by my router.  The highest day as you can see was the 23rd, with 33.8 GB.  The reason for that.  Curling.  There were alot of curling matches that day, only one of my favorite Russian team, but still at least 3 different matches which I watched live, and another 5 or 6 that I streamed throughout the rest of the day.

And to back it up, here is a shot of my Windows Task Manager:

The number of bytes received is: 238,385,189,425  that equals 222.013 GB.  That’s alot.  And, all of that came from Olympic coverage, as I restarted my computer the Friday of Opening day.

Yes, I’m crazy for watching so much.  But let me ask you this.  Am I more crazy for recording it all, and then being excited about all of it?  I don’t know, personally I think they’re both pretty bad.

Now.  Onto my favorite sports, and my favorite moments, and my favorite people.

Curling

I watched curling back in 2002, didn’t understand it, and forgot about it right away almost.  I didn’t watch it at all in 2006, but in 2010, I got addicted.

I’m pretty sure I got so involved in curling for 2 reasons:

1. there were dozens of games on every day.  That and hockey were the only things streamed live on NBColympics.com.
2. The Russian women’s Curling Team

Mostly that second point.

How can you not like that smile of Anna Sidorvoa?  With Liudmala Privivkova behind in the background also with a gorgeous smile.  Beautiful picture credit goes to Flickr user RyAwesome.

But I’ve grown to understand the sport, and am going so far as to actually go try playing it this weekend.

Hockey

I love hockey.  It’s really the only sport that I really truly love.  It’s the one sport that I can get into and just forget I spent 20 minutes watching.  Anyway, there were alot of hockey games, and, I tried to watch all of them, (This time the men’s cause women’s hockey isn’t as interesting as men’s (no checking)).  But both were equally enjoyable.  Of all the goals though, 2 stand out in my head as just memorable:

1. The breakaway goal by Kristaps Sotnieks (number 5 on this list) that’s just textbook awesome right there
2. Jocelyne Lamoureux’s against China, watch this, just watch it.  Even if you don’t like hockey, or don’t get the sport, you will realize that this goal was good

Of course the two final games bronze medal and gold medal in men’s hockey were just phenomenal.  For a minute it looked like

Speed Skating

I’m not much of a speed skating fan, but I like to watch it just cause of crazy awesome wipe-outs like this.  And it’s really not a wipe-out as much as the most unique way to win.

In the women’s pursuit Anni Friesinger just stumbled and ran out of energy on the last couple hundred feet of the race, and she swam across the finish line.  The look on her face was priceless as it changed from sorry, distress and anger to sheer joy and happiness.

Snowboarding

Ok.  I watched no snowboarding.  I just don’t like the sport.  Not much else to say about that.  But I did have various things streaming constantly, and one snowboarding event caught my eye.  That’s Callan Chythlook-Sifsof willpower to continue her race, even though she fell.  That right there, that’s what the Olympics are all about.  And in 4 years Morgan Freeman will be narrating a Visa commercial with that clip in it.

Like this one:

Figure Skating

I watch figure skating, but I don’t follow it, and don’t really understand the difference between all the different jumps, and crazy things they do.  But that being said, I watch it cause it’s fun.  And Elene Gedevanishvili made her Ladies’ short program great.  I think she performed flawlessly, but I’m no Official Olympic judge.  The smile on her face when she finished alone would have been enough for me to give her a medal.  Doesn’t matter which, but she should have had one.

NBCOlympics.com

Oh how I loved you, and hated you, and enjoyed you, and cursed at you.  You provided me with (in theory) uninterrupted live HD coverage of each and every curling match, and very soon HD coverage of every other event.

Here’s the problem though, you had alot of problems!

In order to watch full replays you had to perform some weird connection to prove that you actually get Cable to your house.  Or something.  I don’t know cause I checked off Cablevision, and then the whole thing just refreshed and I was able to watch everything.  Multiple other people though said they had to actually loginto their various cable provider accounts.  A.  Why did I not have to do anything (I bet it’s cause Cablevision is awesome, cause it is).  B. Why do you have to do it to begin with?

Advertisements, you had alot of them.  And there was no rhyme or reason to them either.  Some events (most notably the full event replays of ski jumping, and downhill) had no interruptions at all, just 2 hours of straight uncommentated skiing.   That was great cause I was able to have those open in one window, and do work, or watch something else at the same time.

Other times though you had 10 minutes of commercials.  And you didn’t even jumble them up.  If P & G and Audi were the sponsors for this event, those are the only commercials shown.  I liked the commercial, but come on.  Watching it 5 times in a row, and then watching the spinning NBC Olympics Icon for a further 2 minutes is just annoying.

Now, if you had Progressive as a sponsor, I wouldn’t mind watching Flo 7 or 8 hundred times.

Silverlight needs to die.  Sure, it was nice watching HD coverage in full screen and not using 100% of my processor.  But the system hangs, the ammount of RAM used, and various other problems I discovered about it are too much to be worth it.  Here’s just a list of things wrong.

Spacebar does not pause/play the video.  I don’t know what it does.  Sometimes it goes full screen/not full screen, sometimes it does nothing.  The spacebar is to pause or resume play of the video/audio.  That is one of the oldest standards in video.  I don’t know if it was Microsoft’s fault for not making it that way, or NBC’s fault for not implementing it in the code, but it must be fixed for 2014.

When in full screen mode there is far too much going on.  For starters, the entire controls stay visible.  They never disappear into the background.  Next there’s a giant ad on the top.  I get it, you want to make money NBC, but that’s just ridiculous.  Also, full screen is not black like it should be, its blue.  That really adds to the distraction of watching it.  Especially since the mouse does not disappear either.  It just stays visible.  That’s another full screen video standard that is not in use here, not sure who’s fault it is, but it must be fixed.

Also, I can’t embed anything.  Why?

I want to share these moments, I have to force people to go to their site, and watch it, that’s the opposite of social NBC.

This last part is just something I want to add, but no one’s fault really.  I’d like playlists.  So I could just queue up some different events, and not have to worry about it.  I can’t, you should fix that.

Hopefully they can get these issues fixed in time for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi Russia.  But what about London in 2012, I don’t watch the Summer games, they are not nearly as fun, or interesting.

Now I think that’s all I wanted to say. about these Olympic games.  I’m probably missing some things, or some awesome things that happened in the games, but whatever, onto other stuff.

Ceiling Cat starts out, and wins the medal for cuteness:

Ok, I like that card. {source}

You win common sense, but not much else.

There’s more to add about nature, and the destructive causes it has to man, so sad {source}

Awesome points go to you:

That looks dangerous, but like almost all things dangerous, I bet it’s awesome too! {source}

Wrongness, clearly wins here:

Easily the scariest bus driver around {source}

You know, I will never look at Bowser the same way again.  {source}

This is a great advertisement, because fires are a great way to hide the body, and if you stop the fire, you prevent a forest fire at the same time! {source}

I’d be afraid of biting off my fingers, but I guess the blood would add to the taste.  Also, since I like my roast beef barely dead, I probably wouldn’t notice any extra, I would probably notice the pain from my finger though. {source}

You should follow this health plan, right now {source}

I’ll have you know I posted this solely for the second pannel, hardcore {source}

The insaneness of this picture just makes it win alot of battles, in fact, the only one it doesn’t win is the Nazi one.

What better representation of the internet is there? {source}

That’s some pretty good reading material there little girl {source}

You win the Nazi award:

I wonder if the above little girl is responsible for this masterpiece? {source}

Sing along, it works well {source}

Who ever steals a bike from in front of a Church deserves this.  {source}

Ok, that is an awesome set up on the desktop there.  I love it {source}

It took me awhile to figure out what was going on here {source}

The above picture of the magnet nail string thing qualifies as this next picture:

Pay special attention to all three of the phrases there, cause that’s what really makes this license plate {source}

To close off we will go to Russia, my current favorite country:

From what I can tell, it looks like that last car was just the same one flipped in Photoshop, but for all I know, that’s still the way they look.  I’ll find out in 4 years though, when I go to the Olympics there. {source}

And that’s it, the winner is Russia, mostly because I am completley biased against all things Russia right now.  Especially Curling. Man, do i like curling.

This door was made out of old Kodachrome slides.  Pretty neat.  I wonder what kind of display it puts on the floor/wall of the room?  I bet it’s awesome.

This makes me want to take some of my old negatives and make a curtain out it it.  Sure the negatives are different then slides, but I think it would still give a pretty cool looking display on my window.

{MAKE | Flickr}

Yes, I did spend all night coming up with a speech to match the President’s speech in Armageddon.

Yes, I do think that movie is one of the best ever made.

Also you should totally watch the Olympics.  I’ve been streaming them non stop to my computer since Saturday.  There’s nothing like live curling action.

I do have one thing to say though, there are far too many commercials on the non-live games.  Its kinda frustrating, but whatever, I have like 3 different events going on at once, I’m crazy I know.

Apparently this gun, the FMG-9 is a prototype from 2008 and nothing’s come of it since.  That’s all fun and games, but really, why do you need it?

{source}

Thanks vic!

Wow, this video is sooooooo early 90s.  But since it’s about the greatest SNES game of all time, it’s worth the watching.  Yea I said it, Donkey Kong Country is the best SNES game, you gonna argue or go download that game and prove to yourself that I was right?  {source}