Spotlight[Living]: My Walkabout
- Tuesday, November 20 2012 @ 09:36 AM EST
- Contributed by: masodo
- Views: 1,865
Welcome to BlogDogIt Friday, March 29 2024 @ 01:56 AM EDT
Mathmatics is. No thought necessary. It could be argued that mathmatics represents the most elemental force in nature. It is through the unlocking of mathematical secrets that a deeper understanding of our existence may be brought into sharper focus.
In the quest for knowledge, humans have managed to increase the resolution of their understanding. However, despite extreme mathematical advancements we always seem to to be left wanting. Staring at our calculations in an effort to glean a gimps of some previously obscured bit of our existence.
Prime Numbers
prime number n. A positive integer not divisible without a remainder by any positive integer other than itself and one.
Primes < 100: 2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83,89,97
It is reckoned that a list of prime numbers would stretch to infinity. The quest to find the largest prime number is a prime example of how simply understanding is never enough for the human race. We must know. We must posess the knowledge. It is into this eternal quest for knowledge that many are lured. Into the adventure and discovery that awaits all who enter the facinating world of numbers.
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My father loves four things in the world: my mother, my sister, me, and his sailboat. He spent his childhood on the water of Buzzard’s Bay, Massachusetts in dinghies, kayaks, and sailboats, occasionally gaining or losing one with each serious hurricane. It’s fitting, of course, that he proposed to my mom on his sailboat, his first pride and joy. His attempts to teach my sister and I how to sail began as soon as we were finally old enough to swim and strong enough to help pull in the lines.
Every sunny Saturday during the summer, we pile into our green SUV, a large cooler full of turkey sandwiches, iced tea, and fruit wedged in between my sister and me in the back seat. When we arrive at the harbor, I become the first mate of our little inflatable dinghy. After zipping up my puffy, bright orange life jacket, I slide into the seat opposite my dad next to the motor. With a yank of the handle, the motor starts to sputter and the propeller churns up the salty water below.
I rest my tiny hand on the tiller, turning it from left to right to adjust the speed. My dad’s hand always starts out just beside mine to ensure that I have it under control. He uses big words and sailing jargon that have eventually become second nature to me, but at first seemed like a foreign language. “Pull up along the port side,” he instructs as he points to the left side of the sailboat when we approach the mooring. “Tie us up to this cleat – you know, the way I taught you,” he says, gesturing to the little metal appliance on deck and reminding me to wrap twice and then loop the line. “We’re just going to use the jib today; can you help me pull it out?” he asks, handing me a line attached to the sail at the bow of the boat.
Once we leave the channel and let the wind propel us forward, I am my father’s reflection. He sits at the helm with his hand on the gleaming silver wheel, looking out onto the water silently as I sit beside him doing the same. Every so often he lets me take over, directing me which way to turn the wheel with a simple point of his finger. The loud, ceaseless voices of my mom and sister float along with the wind, yet my dad and I remain silent. Sometimes he points to a house on the water and tells me about who grew up there, what their parents were like, and how they used to play football in the middle of the street together. “You know that all the seagulls and cormorants flock to Bird Island because of the dead bodies buried there, right?” he even tries to convince me as we pass the little island with the lighthouse. I know by his gleaming eyes and joking voice to simply roll my eyes at him.
Source: TheRockAtBC
Screen Grab Detail From Site Statistics Page
Thank you for visiting.
A very special thank you to all of the RSS subscribers and recurring visitors. I try not to obsess about statistics - honestly - but this one is hard to miss. Incredible!
Source: IMDB
While we did access the dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) it was primarily via the sneakernet that files where circulated. I would collect whatever random stuff I could get ahold of and save it on my bitchin' 10 Megabyte MFM hard drive until I had enough to fill a floppy disc and these I would call "booty disks." I would duplicate and share them with my 286 posse. They where liable to contain text files, gif images and/or everything in-between.
Pretty early on in my collecting days I came upon a game written in qBasic called "NOMAD by PHLEGM GAMES." As luck would have it I had just converted to DOS v5 and had qBASIC in there waiting for me to figure out what to do with it.
At the command prompt I typed "qbasic" and a program opened on my screen that looked remarkably similar to the one that would start if I entered the command "EDIT" and it was not very long before it sunk-in that this was a programming language that was using text for commands and not that funky binary mumbo-jumbo (that nobody in their right mind could make any sense of.)
Navigating the FILE menu I was able to locate the .bas file and upon opening was greeted with the following:
' ' PRESS F5 TO PLAY NOMAD PRESS F5 TO PLAY ' BY PHLEGM GAMES ' P.O.BOX 1575 ' HAILEY, ID 83333 NATE IS COOL ' ' DECLARE SUB MAIN () CALL MAIN ' This here game has many neat little things ' Just try different things ' The object is to get the high score ' All you really need to do that ' Is get into the program ' And change some things ' Around
' The object is to get the high score
' All you really need to do that
' Is get into the program
' And change some things
' Around
Really?? Hmmm...
That is precisely what I set about doing...
Every time I think I’ve posted just the most sensational aurora picture I’ve seen, another one comes along that has me scraping my jaw off the floor. Check out this shot by photographer David Cartier:
[Seriously, click to enbirkelandate.]
I know, right? That spiral shape is fascinating. Aurorae are formed when charged particles from the Sun slam into the Earth’s magnetic field and interact with it. They’re channeled down into our atmosphere, guided by the Earth’s field, and the shape of the aurora reflects the underlying magnetic field lines. They take on fantastic shapes, including spirals like this, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen curled in a way so well-defined and crisp.
If you look carefully at the bigger version, you’ll see some familiar stars like those forming the constellation Auriga in the center, while the Pleiades are visible nestled in the spot right where the aurora starts to wind up. The bright "star" which is also reflected in the water is actually Jupiter. I had a hard time distinguishing it from the bright star Aldebaran in Taurus, but I think that’s lost in the brightest part of the spiral (though you can see it better in the water to the right of the stretched-out Jupiter reflection).
David lives in the Yukon Territory, not far from the southeast corner of Alaska, and I imagine aurorae are a fact of life there. He has quite a few devastating shots of the northern lights in his Flickr stream. Treat yourself and take a look. His shots of atmospheric phenomena are also incredible.
~
Source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
Aren’t amazing Nancy Fouts creations? Her sculptures are designed on paradox and juxtaposition: on expectation of the unexpected. She combines objects and materials, linking ideas and common sense to surrealism and playfulness. She basically recombines the meaning of everyday objects. Nancy Fouts, American born but Londoner for life, has pursued a career in advertising. She is either an image maker and a sharp artist. Surely a provocative and witty discovering.
~
Original Source: http://www.nancyfouts.com/
The Matter | Faded Paper Images
For several years now, Faded Paper Figures has been one of the best kept secrets of indie-electronic music, delivering gorgeous melodies, complex harmonies, and pop-cultural brilliance to a small and devoted fanbase online. With the release of their third album, “The Matter,” the band’s sound has matured into something more powerful and intense. Alternately sparse and epic, harmonic and grinding, pensive and playful, "The Matter” takes FPF beyond their electro-pop beginnings to create something even more sincere, epic, and profound. There are moments in “The Matter” that echo the band’s previous albums “Dynamo” and “New Medium” (all the glorious synth-blips, glitched-out riffs, and heartbreaking harmonies are still there), but a new sound has clearly emerged, with breathtaking orchestral scores, thick, powerful guitars, and more energetic, concentrated synths. Like the previous two albums, the lyrics glide with effortless sophistication through references both ironic and obscure. But there are passages here more intense, immediate, and playful. One moment “The Matter” conjures up images of traffic lights and factories, the next, soaring questions on the vast distances between galaxies--and always the intimate, vivid possibilities of love and pain. Given how powerfully “The Matter” astonishes with its daring energies and thoughtful lyrics, this electro-pop secret is going to be hard to contain in the months ahead.
Click for Stereo Pair.
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