blogwaffe

So it’s been my theory for several years that the age of twenty-two is officially old. There’s lots of birthdays people look forward to. Ten, thirteen, fourteen (at least back in the day in Idaho), fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen (go Canada), twenty, twenty-one: all good years. But after the age of twenty-one, there’s no more birthdays to joyfully anticipate. Except twenty-five. And lower insurance premiums is a really old person thing to look forward to.

So there it is. Twenty-three. Old. I once explained my rationale to my grandmother, who didn’t seem pleased. “If you’re old, then what am I?” After I explained that, in my view, she was in the same demographic as a twenty-three year old, she seemed to cheer up a bit.

But what brought this on? I’ve been old for a while now.

It all came back to mind after learning two surprising facts in quick succession. The first: one of the head developers for WordPress is only twenty-one. The second: the guy who helped me out with some DNS issues with this site the other day is in High School. He helps run a large DNS server, everydns.net, and he’s in High School.

What did I do in High School? Watched a bunch of movies, mostly. Most of them were even pretty good. But anything useful? Let’s see… nope. Just a typical, burden to society, teenager. I don’t feel jealous or put out; I’m just impressed. More power to them. Plus, it gives me a little confidence that the world really isn’t going to pot. There are people out there (of every age) who are capable of both doing things and getting things done.

While it’s nice to know these people exist. I suppose time will tell if I ever reach an age where I’m one of them.

*vision of a thousand hackels rising on each of a thousand people*

Down the hall from my office is a poster of “Women in Science & Mathematics”. It shows about twenty or so famous women, noting their respective fields of studies: astronaut, theoretical nuclear physicist, geneticist, mathematician, etc. Every time I walk down the hall, I see this poster and I cringe.

Read more…

We arrived at the Paseo at six thirty: precisely the time we were told by our invitation would be the appropriate one. We found ahead of us some several hundred people. People who had cheated. They had read the invitation as well, surely; yet there they were. All queued up and looking behind them (at us) with smug little grins and knowledge that they, certainly, would get in, but we… well it would be best not to harp on it.

But that was all right. We tried to tell ourselves we were having a fine time chatting amongst ourselves (Paul.za, Mom.za, Greg, Heidi, BJ and Adam), and that we might even get free passes to see something else if we were refused entrance. Plus, many more people lined up behind us, so we got to assume smug little grins of our own.

I am, of course, referring to our chance to see a screening of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And we were, of course, wrong; we did not get free passes to see something else when we were refused entrance.

Read more…

Somebody out there is having an excellent time and doesn’t even know it yet.

Greg got a nifty puzzle contraption for Christmas which has been sitting out on the coffee table since he got back. If you could combine one of those giant expanding/collapsing geodesic spheres you see all the time (but can never ignore – they just look too cool) in science museums with a seagull, this puzzle and that Frankenstein monstrosity would move in exactly the same way. And if it were a very colorful seagull, it would look about right too.

Anyway, I was spending a good chunk of time poking at it this evening (the puzzle, not the above affront to God’s creation). I was getting annoyed; the puzzle just wouldn’t line up in the way I expected (or should I say “wanted”). I could not figure out what I was doing incorrectly. As it happens, some evil sadist out there (and it was probably one of you) took advantage of a slight breach of the puzzle’s structural integrity to either swap two pieces or flip one. So whomever you were, congratulate yourself; you got me.

Fourty-five minutes of my life gone, and I want them back.

Moral of the story: parity checks are good.

Everyone has no doubt heard of the Cassini Spacecraft launched in 1997 which last year began a series of flybys of Saturn’s moons. Well, on Christmas day, the Hyugens Probe was released from Cassini and began it’s mission: a closer inspection of the moon of Titan. While the Hyugens Mission is primarily an atmospheric one, it was designed to land on the surface (find it liquid or solid), and take some surface measurements and pictures.

January 14th, Hyugens descended into Titan’s atmosphere and it’s four hour data collection spree began. Four hours for two reasons: (1) the batteries wouldn’t last too much longer, and, more importantly (2) because Hyugens transmits to Cassini, not to Earth. And Cassini wasn’t stopping.

Well, as of 2am this morning, a lot of the data have been analyzed. Except for some awesome pictures, though, little has been released; wait until next week, say.

But, I can say that there is quite a high probability that there exitsts life on Titan.

Read more…

V unq ab vqrn gung EBG13 jnf bevtvanyyl hfrq va HFRARG tebhcf gb boshfpngr fcbvyref naq bssrafvir pbagrag. V nyjnlf gubhtug EBG13 jnf whfg n wbxr (“zl arj 2EBG13 rapelcgvba fpurzr…”) be n gbby va trqnaxra rkcrevzragf (“vs V EBG13 zl svyrf, pbhyq V fhr gur tbireazrag haqre gur QZPN vs gurl fhocbran naq qrpelcg gurz?”).

Ohg ab, vg gheaf bhg _gb_ unir na vagrerfgvat naq hfrshy uvfgbel. V org guvf vf bar bs gubfr guvatf gung nyy vagrearg whaxvrf bire gur ntr bs gjragl-rvtug be fb terj hc jvgu. Naq urer V jnf whfg lrfgreqnl znxvat sha bs frys-nfpevorq 31337 unK0em jub unq cebonoyl arire frra be urneq bs n OOF. Shaal ubj crbcyr ybbx qbja ba bguref sbe fhpu fghcvq ernfbaf yvxr ntr be dhnagvgl bs rfbgrevp xabjyrqtr.

Trrx perq ~ ntr.

Bs pbhefr, rira nsgre guvf frys-ersyrpgvba, V fgvyy guvax guvax fbzr bs gurfr arj xvqf ba gur oybpx ner n ohapu bs c0m3em. V gryy zlfrys vg’f gurve nggvghqr, abg zl ovtbgel. Ohg znlor V’z whfg na nffubyr.

“KrebPbby” zl nff.