Category: Old

Archival posts from offline journals or other blog services.

"Well, it's my birthday too, yeah"

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday! Now for some SCIENCE!

Let’s see here… if the circumference of the Earth’s orbit is about 2Ï€r, and the radius is 1 Astronomical Unit, and 1 AU = 149,597,870.691 kilometers (it’s a little screwy to assume that the Earth’s orbit is a perfect circle, but since the difference between perehelion and aphelion is only about 3%, I think it will work for my purposes), multiplied by 23 revolutions, then by tomorrow I’ll have traveled approximately 21,618,876,291.554 km around the Sun.

I also heard that I share a birthday with Britney Spears. Happy 24th Britney (I’m not too sore that she’s got 939,951,143.111 km on me)! If I cared about celebrities, I would probably make some comment about relationships or pregnancies or scandals or something, but I honestly hardly know anything about Britney Spears. Is that Mouseketeer bit still working out okay for her?

Cylinders Make The World Go 'Round!

Whether you’re a fan of cylinders, or just casually acquainted with the notion, check out the UCSB‘s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. They’ve got over 5,000 recordings ranging from the 1890’s to 1920’s transferred from Edison cylinders, all available for download in MP3 (cleaned up) and WAV (uncompressed, but also not touched up, so they’re pretty staticy) format. Pretty hot stuff, considering it’s all free to download (from what I understand, Edison cylinder recordings are all in the public domain). Get going!

OBSERVE ALL-CAPS DAY AT THE CHURCH OF YOUR CHOICE

IT’S THE SECOND WEDNESDAY OF NOVEMBER. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS: WHENEVER YOU HAVE THE OCCASION TO WRITE OR TYPE SOMETHING, DO IT IN ALL-CAPS!

OKAY, A LOT OF PEOPLE PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW THAT AT ALL, SINCE ALL-CAPS DAY WAS ONLY STARTED LAST YEAR BY STEF AND I, FOR KICKS, AMIDST OUR FORUM FRIENDS. BUT STILL… ALL-CAPS! START YOUR LIVEJOURNALS!

Helena Bonham Carter is made of clay

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride was thoroughly awesome. I will give mad props to the first person who throws together a convincing Emily costume, complete with skeletal limbs. And don’t cheat by wearing some kind of full-body costume, I’m talking blue paint and fake holes in your skin all over the place!

So who wants some mad props? I’m waaaaaaaaitiiiiiiiiing…

"He does it, he says, to raise awareness of suffering children."

My boss came in a few minutes ago to ask a question, and overheard the music a-comin’ out of my iTunes. The song was “Corsair” by Boards of Canada. She told me it sounded awful.

I’ve never made any disparaging remarks regarding the choir music or Christian standards she plays in her iPod! Her musical preference is her own, and I would never apply some kind of higher-than-thou stance if I didn’t care for her tunes.

I don’t know, that just bugs me. I like ambient music! It makes for nice music to play in the background as I get work done. I guess I’ll just have to respect her opinion, but there are nicer ways of saying you don’t care for something.

"1.21 JIGAWATTS!"

The iTunes phone isn’t for me. I’ve looked over the specs, read some of the reviews, and just decided the phone lacked a certain panache that $250 ought to buy you. So after a bit of research regarding iSync compatibility (mostly by way of random Mac forums and the reviews on Mac ‘n’ Cell) and other various doodad features, I think the Sony Ericsson S710a is the phone for me. $50 less (when bought from Cingular), and it’s a much more slick gadget. Slick is an important selling factor, y’see Rudy.

You probably want me to stop yammering about geeky phone stuff. I probably will not.