Fun Is Where You Find It
jfiore | November 27, 2008Much has been written on the Refuge regarding what might be termed fine motor co-ordination experiments. That, and something to do with playing the drums in a manner that most drummers don't, you know, like backwards. Some might ask "What is the point of practicing a double paradiddle on a bunch of left-side mounted toms for a right handed drummer?" I guess one could be philosophical and say "Because it's there" but ultimately, doing something musical is what matters, at least to this little bonobo. Exercising your brain to perform unusual patterns at will simply gives the musician a larger…
bushwells | October 29, 2008Yeah, yeah, so you've seen this before. I still found it amusing. Hat tip to a dedicated Bertie fan in Ireland.
My favorite:
(Intelligently designed by Patrick Quigley and submitted to Inkling Magazine's Design Your Own Darwin Fish.)
jfiore | October 10, 2008Do your best to find a good caption for this picture. What is it about these blue and white signs?
Hmmm, let me think...let me think....
There's a theme here....
Yes, the first thought into my head was "Ah, this must be the Fantasy Corner."
You betcha!
bushwells | September 3, 2008So Spawn the Elder (my son) is an avid gamer in such milieus as World of Warcraft, Halo, Civilization, and Lord of the Rings Online, the latter of which, errr, I might have indulged in a few times -- I'm pretty hopeless with gaming so my foray into Middle-earth was an unmitigated disaster. So the elder Spawn was pretty excited to nab the Spore Creature Creator this summer, but he is really jazzed with the prospect of getting his nerdsome hands on the full-fledged game to be released on Friday.
Erstwhile Science Blogger Carl Zimmer covered the impending release of Spore in his excellent NYT…
jfiore | August 22, 2008A very entertaining article in The Times today regarding Olympians and sex. The author, former Olympian Matthew Syed, discusses just what goes on behind closed doors (and sometimes on rooftops) at the Olympic village. He offers the usual bag of "reasons why" (testosterone, being away from home, etc.) but it's presented in a light and humorous manner, a good read. Consider the opener:
I am often asked if the Olympic village - the vast restaurant and housing conglomeration that hosts the world's top athletes for the duration of the Games - is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be. My answer is…
jfiore | July 29, 2008I visit certain message boards from time to time, including one called vdrums.com, a site dedicated to electronic drumming. While there's a lot of useful info there and a bunch of friendly and helpful folks, there are also some entertaining end-of-message signatures that folks use. Here are a few examples:
Some people are like slinkies,
They don't really have a purpose,
But they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.
I have a mind like a steel trap: rusty and illegal in most countries....
"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire,…
jfiore | January 30, 2008The other day I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine about politics. And of course, what mixes better with politics than religion? There was a mention of the stances of various presidential candidates with regards to homosexuality, and I said that in Leviticus it states that if a man lies with another man as he lies with a woman, it is an abomination and he should be stoned to death.
It turns out that I was wrong...
Being the naturally curious (if not compulsive) character that I am, I went and looked it up. Here is the actual quote from LEV 20:13 (King James Version):
"If a man…
jfiore | January 8, 2008If you're like many regulars to ScienceBlogs you probably found the cool Purple Nurple optical illusion over at Omni Brain. I don't really understand why a static object appears as though it's pulsing, but I do enjoy the effect. Did you ever wonder how much an optical illusion can be distorted and still maintain the illusion? Mighty Optical Illusions has a bunch of items similar in effect to Purple Nurple. I grabbed the one below (it reminds me of a bunch of almonds). It has a very cool wavy effect.
(much more fun below the fold)
The fun begins when we start to manipulate it. For this…
bushwells | December 17, 2007This past weekend found a denizen of the Chimp Refuge brachiating, feeding and feeding yet again, grooming, being groomed and otherwise socializing in the home of its grizzled old matriarch. The photo below the fold illustrates one way in which godless atheists (and bonobos) celebrate Christmas - or Saturnalia or whatever one wishes to call the holiday surrounding the solstice; Festivus works, too. Yes, they decorate a Christmas tree. Here is erstwhile co-blogger Kevin fondling Betty Boop's butt.
Kevin sends his regards to the Refuge readers. Due to a couple of writing projects that…
jfiore | November 15, 2007There is a fun programming assignment I give to my freshman Python class. I call it curses. An example of it (written in Java, with source) can be found here. Basically, the program generates a series of denunciations, each followed by a somewhat odd curse. For example: "You noisy pile of squashed dog snot- May your TV set gyrate madly!" or "You mindless sponge of rotting spam- May your buttocks emit a loud buzzing noise!" (try it, you might find it entertaining). The purpose of the assignment is to show the students how to use random numbers to access tuples (random array indexing for you…
jfiore | September 9, 2007Sequences, whether it's the colors of the rainbow, the names of the planets, or ages of Earth's geologic past just scream for mnemonic devices such as acronym-sentences. Some of these can be quite entertaining in their own right, and even more entertaining if you make them up yourself. For example, beginning electrical engineering and technology students are faced with the task of memorizing the resistor color code. The code is used to denote the nominal value of resistors with a total of ten colors corresponding to the numerals 0 through 9:
0 Black
1 Brown
2 Red
3 Orange
4 Yellow
5 Green
6…
jfiore | August 31, 2007It's amazing the things you trip over while cruising the 'net. Consider this site. There's some fun stuff here, some good stuff here, and some downright crazy stuff here. For example, go to this page. You'll find the following passage:
What are angels ? According to the Bible they are Gods messengers of light. But what are they really ?
If you look up the words angles and angels you will see they connect to one another. Light comes down to the earth on an angle because of the gravitational pull of celestial bodies it passes.
These angles of light are photons which scientifically are…
jfiore | August 25, 2007Runners have a tendency to track their workout times. This can be both misleading and dangerous if you don't figure in the effect of weather, a trap both newbies and experienced runners can fall into. Consider long runs.
Last week, I went down to the local canal trail for a long run. I ran 16 miles and comfortably averaged about 7:00 minute per mile pace. In fact, my first few miles were a bit easier and I had no problem running the last few in the upper 6's. It was mid 50's F, clear, and low humidity. A downright refreshing and pleasant run.
This morning, my training partner and I ran down…
jfiore | August 3, 2007It's amazing what you can find on the Internet. Yes, it seems that God has written an autobiography. Apparently, God's name is Thomas O'Donnell.
Not really much more I can add to that, except that author O'Donnell also goes by the name Jesus and Satan. Is it a tad presumptuous to pen "autobiographies" of this sort?
In any case, that's what I call a trinity.
jfiore | July 25, 2007This week's NOVA Science NOW on PBS has an interesting piece on the Kryptos sculpture in front of CIA headquarters. The segment does a decent job of showing some of the basic techniques used such as substitution and transposition, in just a few minutes.
I am not a cryptographer but it is an area I have studied a little. It's a great topic to introduce to my first and second year programming students. Some of them really perk up when we start talking about it. Invariably, someone will ask if I can show them how to "crack" protected software. I always tell them that, although I have the…
jfiore | May 30, 2007Today is my second official day of summer vacation. Now that the academic year is complete I get to figure out what to read over the summer. Unfortunately, I didn't get much reading in over the past year as I spent a good deal of time developing and teaching a new course, Science of Sound, along with a bunch of new assessment work (the ISO 9000 of academia). Consequently, many of these books are items that I had intended to read some time ago. Perhaps I'm not going too far out on a limb to suggest that there aren't a lot of people who'd be happy to curl up in an Adirondack cabin on a rainy…
jfiore | May 22, 2007The crossroads of Dada and fun: "Found humor". I love weird typos and the accidental use of words to create something inadvertently rib-tickling. Check out this item from the newsletter of a local running club:
I don't know about you, but I'd like to join this club just so that I can cast a vote as Kashchei from Stravinsky's Firebird.