Category: Miscellaneous

I didn’t even remember to spell-check it, but a few minutes ago I entered the Blogger SAT challenge.

We’re especially interested in finding out if bloggers, because of their regular practice in short-form writing, might be able to perform well on the test. On the blogger’s side, they’re used to cranking out pointless rants on a moment’s notice. But highschoolers are well-practiced at responding to their teachers’ inane writing prompts. Bloggers get to choose their topics, so blogging may not transfer well to the SAT’s writing prompt. Who can perform better on the SAT test? There’s only one way to find out.

So, without further ado, we present the Blogger SAT Challenge. We’ve prepared a (relatively) controlled environment where our victims volunteers can respond to a sample SAT question.

I just want to mention that 21 minutes goes REALLY fast when the pressure is on.

Depending on my “grade”, I’ll decide in the future whether this particular essay ever sees the light of day.

Flight Patterns by Aaron Koblin is an amazing air travel visualization video.

[The flight pattern visualizations] are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment.

(via)

WHO ACTUALLY USES THE CAPS LOCK KEY ANYWAY? Oops, I mean who actually uses the caps lock key anyway? People who like to shout, that’s who. But having spent upwards of 3 minutes contemplating the usefulness of the caps lock key, I for one agree, it’s time to do away with caps lock.

I should also mention that it’s high time we get rid of comic sans and while we’re at it let’s give the planet Pluto a demotion. Can you hear me? DEMOTE PLUTO NOW!

Upon further consideration caps lock is kind of handy for easy yelling. KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

Most of the readers here will have already seen the all three movies, but for a bit of nastalgia, check out the Lord of the Rings Trilogy movie trailer (640×272 MOV) created as if the three parts were one.

My new favourite tool to go along with Flickr is the Flickr Map GeoCoding Bookmarklet. It’s a Google Maps/flickr mashup that let’s you easily add geocoding information to your picture and/or see where other people’s geocoded images were taken. Also it’s so easy to use that even my parents could do it.

[The bookmarklet] enables mapping, geocoding and (of course) geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page. It works with all common browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera), so you do not need to install any extension to run it!

Once you’ve got it saved check out my collection of geotagged images.

The next big thing in alternative fuels might be biofuel grown in farmers fields instead of taken from ancient oil reserves. Wired News writes about Biobutonal: The Next Alt Fuel.

BP and Dupont today announced that they will begin selling Biobutanol in the United Kingdom next year. The companies co-developed a fuel that can be combined with gasoline and ethanol. Biobutanol is superior to ethanol because it has a higher energy value and is less water soluble and evaporative than ethanol, so it is safe to transport via existing gasoline pipelines.

The other day I went kayaking with a masters student that works out at the research station near my house in Lethbridge. He works with a gene gun doing experiments on more efficient means to create genetically modified foods.

We were talking about the possibilities for biofuels to take over as the leading alternative fuel source, and, he added, there is a strong possibility that once it’s in use, researchers could genetically modify corn so that it yields higher and higher amounts of usable energy. Genetically engineering crops for food consumption entails a lot of government restrictions to make sure that new plants are safe to eat but given that these fuel based crops won’t be showing up on our dinner tables ever, the time it takes to produce such plants would be greatly reduced.

On the topic of genetically modified foods, he talked about how scientists have come along way in understanding how genes can be turned on and off under certain conditions. He also told me that there are certain genes that when a chemical is added to the plants can react with the plant creating interesting results. One idea was a kind of corn that when it needs watering, will activates a glow gene—the same gene we see in fireflies—so that a farmer could theoretically look out at his field at night and if it shines, he knows he needs to water.

I think it’s safe to say, nothing would turn people off genetically modified foods more than this particular modification. Still it’s a pretty neat idea.

I don’t know why it is, but some people just hate Crocks, those strange looking sandals with the holes in them. I don’t have a pair myself so I don’t really have an opinion, however, my sister and her husband both love them (though she agrees they are not the most attractive shoes in the world).

Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce) and her husband, Jon, each have strong opinions on the subject. Things began to escalate until it looked as though Jon may never see his shoes again. In a stunning turn of events, final victoryhas been declared in the Clog Wars.

It’s the summer solstice today, the first day of summer, and the longest day of the year (for those of us living in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere). The actual solstice is the moment the Earth’s tilt faces directly toward or away from the Sun.

I used to really dig the idea that the druids, or whoever it was that built Stonehenge, did it in such a way that certain shadows hit certain places on specific times of the year. I also liked books that used the changing of the seasons as magical days where mysteries were revealed or secret doors could be opened.

I once went into a church on top of Mt. Taber in Israel that when the solstice sun’s light hit the stained glass, it would paint a gorgeous image of Jesus’s transfiguration across the chapel floor matching up with the mosaic tiling. Of course I wasn’t there to actually see it, but the stain glass itself was nice and it sounded interesting all the same.

There are a lot of superstitions around the solstice, but maybe if you feel something special in the air tonight, perhaps it’s the cosmos trying to communicate with you, perhaps there is some mysterious force that you are on the verge of channeling, or perhaps you’ve just gotten too much sun.

Yay for summer! It’s all down hill from here.

The Make Blog has a link to the nice step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade the value of your router by 10 times! I’ll have to try this when I get back from my sister’s place.

Some of the features available after the upgrade include boosting your wireless signal and throttling your bandwidth by program.

Update: I just hopped downstairs and found that the particular model of Linksys router that I have isn’t on the list of supported routers. Too bad, I would have liked to try this.