Archive for the ‘waksman’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A cute geometry problem

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

I came across a cute geom­e­try prob­lem recently and I would like to pass it along.

Problem Statement
Geometry Problem Diagram
If the sides of the square are of unit length and all curves are cir­cu­lar arcs, what is the area of the high­lighted region?

Although sub­stan­tially eas­ier with the use of cal­cu­lus or trigonom­e­try, this prob­lem can be solved entirely with basic geom­e­try (no weird laws you might have for­got­ten since high school are necessary).

I have derived a geo­met­ric solu­tion, which fol­lows, but I highly rec­om­mend try­ing to do it your­self first.

(more…)

Posted in musings, science & technology | 6 Comments »

On some podcasts I like and some I lack

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I have recently taken to lis­ten­ing to audio pod­casts while at work and I find it to be a good com­bi­na­tion of enter­tain­ing and informative.

The set of pod­casts that I am cur­rently lis­ten­ing to is:

For the most part, I’m quite pleased by the set of pod­casts that I lis­ten to and a great many of them are either bal­anced or agenda-free (e.g. The Splendid Table) but oth­ers carry rather strong slants/agendas (e.g. Skeptics’ Guide), which is fine. However, the slants and agen­das that are typ­i­fied in the pod­casts that I lis­ten to are ones that I agree with and, as such, they don’t push me or make me think as hard as I would like. To that end, I am inter­ested in hunt­ing down some high qual­ity pod­casts that I dis­agree with.

I am putting the call out to you, Internet, what are some good con­ser­v­a­tive, lib­er­tar­ian, military-industrial, etc. pod­casts for me to lis­ten to?

Posted in art & culture | 1 Comment »

Palm Pre tagline: a critique

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I keep see­ing the same adver­tise­ment for the Palm Pre on the sides of buses; the adver­tise­ment says: “Life moves fast. Don’t miss a thing.”

I under­stand what they are try­ing to say and it is a very good tagline for what they are try­ing to mar­ket but, when­ever I see it, I can’t help but think that it speaks to a sad fact of our cur­rent culture.

I wish that I could say one thing to every­one that this tagline appeals to: Not every­thing mat­ters. Relax.

Posted in musings | No Comments »

Barefooting for the win

Monday, February 1st, 2010

A cou­ple months ago, I bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes, specif­i­cally a pair of KSOs. I’ve been wear­ing the shoes pretty reg­u­larly and, to be entirely hon­est, they are prob­a­bly the most com­fort­able shoes that I have ever worn. The shoes don’t pro­vide sup­port in the way typ­i­cal shoes do so it takes some get­ting used to and rebuild­ing strength in mus­cles that have been under-utilized since child­hood. Once your feet get used to the FiveFingers, it becomes a truly fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence to redis­cover walk­ing, jog­ging, sprint­ing, and the like.

Additionally, recent research shows that bare­foot run­ning is low impact in a way that shod run­ning is not. Apparently, run­ning bare­foot changes your gait, which I can anec­do­tally confirm.

Worth not­ing, in the neg­a­tives col­umn, you can­not wear tra­di­tional socks with FiveFingers and they will start to smell if you wear them reg­u­larly with­out socks. FiveFingers shoes are machine wash­able, which is an option, or one can pur­chase toe socks from Injini (or oth­ers), which is the solu­tion that I’ve cho­sen. Sadly, the toe socks solu­tion is some­what expen­sive but, for me, I’m suf­fi­ciently hooked on my FiveFingers that it’s worth it to me.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »

Well, there go the aughts

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

I guess that we’ve fin­ished a decade and moved into a new one. On account of pre­dic­tions are fun, I’ll give you a few that are all but guar­an­teed to come true in the fol­low­ing decade:

  • We’ll all get per­sonal jetpacks.
  • Hoverboards will make it to market.
  • Everyone will start dri­ving fly­ing cars.
  • Jesus Christ will return to us.
  • Skynet will be born.
  • We will reach the singularity.

This is just a few of the won­der­ful things that are going to hap­pen within the next decade; I’m really look­ing for­ward to all the fun.

Happy new decade!

Posted in waksman | No Comments »

Woods Hole, MIT, Virgin America; it’s a small world

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Yesterday, in return­ing from a week long, Christmas related stint in my home state of Massachusetts, I had a par­tic­u­larly intrigu­ing synchronicity.

I was fly­ing Virgin America, which is an excel­lent air­line but that’s an entire dis­cus­sion of its own right. As a mat­ter of good for­tune, I was fly­ing Main Cabin Select, which pro­vides, amongst other things, the option of check­ing in through the First Class line. The reg­u­lar line was pro­ceed­ing rather quickly and a young lady behind me in line made a com­ment to the effect of it seem­ing a mis­take to be in the First Class line. My moti­va­tions being as they are, I took a few moments to chat with this nice young lady but didn’t make it far before it was my turn to go for­ward and check my baggage.

Conversations cut short are unfor­tu­nate but such things hap­pen. I pro­ceeded through secu­rity, got to the gate, waited a while and boarded the plane where who should end up in the seat next to me but the very same young woman who had been behind me in line. This was a pleas­ant coin­ci­dence but not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing inso­far as there are not very many Main Cabin Select seats on any given plane. Shortly after tak­ing her seat, this young woman says to me, “nice ring” and, as I glance over, it turns out that she’s an MIT grad­u­ate as well; there’s a pleas­ant extra level to this coin­ci­dence and a good source for con­ver­sa­tion topics.

As we’re chat­ting about var­i­ous things, this young woman (who I am going to refer to as Margaret because it’s eas­ier than con­tin­u­ing to use qual­i­fied generic nouns), men­tions that she was on the crew team and I men­tioned that I had been on the sail­ing team. Somehow, in dis­cussing sail­ing, I men­tioned spend­ing sum­mers on Cape Cod, which raised the ques­tion of where. My answer, of course, is Woods Hole and, lo and behold, Margaret’s fam­ily also has a place in Woods Hole. I should note that Woods Hole is a very small town and it’s quite rare that I encounter some­one in Woods Hole that I have not met before, espe­cially some­one within 5 years of my own age. As a result, rather unsur­pris­ingly, it turns out that Margaret and I have at least a dozen mutual acquain­tances and friends.

Overall, it was a fan­tas­ti­cally sur­pris­ing coin­ci­dence; so much so that it makes me wish that Mr. Data were on hand to tell me what the odds of the coin­ci­dence were. Certainly there exist cer­tain biases to cor­rect for, which make it such that the coin­ci­dence isn’t purely ran­dom but I am not ter­ri­bly inclined to enu­mer­ate all of the non-random fac­tors that may have con­tributed. Why such a coin­ci­dence hap­pened, I can’t say, but it did, and that’s great. The end result is that I’ve nar­rowed the gap of peo­ple that I don’t know in Woods Hole and made a con­nec­tion with a pleas­ant new per­son in this world.

Posted in travel | 1 Comment »

Avatar: The last film I will see in 3D

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

I saw Avatar last night in RealD 3D and, I have to say, it is a very pretty, rather fun, awe­some to watch movie. The 3D for Avatar was incred­i­bly well done but it gave me such a bad headache and nau­sea that it almost wasn’t worth it. Luckily, I was able to imme­di­ately go home and go to sleep, thus not deal­ing with the dis­com­fort much. Needless to say, I think that I’m going to stick to 2D movies for the fore­see­able future.

Diatribe about 3D aside, Avatar is a pretty great movie. Sure it’s Dances with Wolves in space but Dances with Wolves was a good movie so why not put it in space. Actually, more than that, to me Avatar was Dances with Wolves meets Dinotopia in space. The color palettes of Avatar were vibrant and pretty in much the way that the palettes of Dinotopia were; fur­ther­more, the crea­tures and world were suf­fi­ciently real­ized to make it seem like a place that one might really want to go. In fact, I think Avatar has pro­vided me with the first arti­fi­cial set­ting that I have had a strong desire to visit since Dinotopia.

So, hav­ing dis­cussed the pain (lit­er­ally) of the 3D, the ade­quacy of the story (ade­quate being the right word), and the beauty of the world, let’s talk about the spe­cial effects. For quite a while, I have been adamantly opposed to the use and overuse of CGI in the film indus­try. Certainly, some stu­dios do CGI cor­rectly (Pixar, DreamWorks) but when mixed with live action, I tend to think that the Jurassic Park or Aliens approach of rely­ing pri­mar­ily on live action, pup­pets and robots is a much safer and more visu­ally appeal­ing approach. The clear­est exam­ple of where real is good and CGI is bad is to look at the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­ogy in com­par­i­son to the new Star Wars tril­ogy. Somehow, thank­fully, James Cameron has not fallen in the same way that George Lucas has; Avatar beau­ti­fully mixes the real with the CGI and I did not once feel as though things had fallen into the uncanny val­ley.

Hopefully Avatar will end up prof­itable in spite of its truly ludi­crous bud­get (offi­cially $237M + $150M mar­ket­ing) and James Cameron will be allowed to keep mak­ing crazy as heck sci­ence fic­tion stuff (it was at >$232M after its open­ing week­end so odds are pretty good). The out­stand­ing ques­tion now is whether he’s going to make a sequel to Avatar or whether he’s going to make Battle Angel Alita like he’s been talk­ing about for a while.

So yeah, over­all, I am inclined to rec­om­mend the Dances with Wolves meets Dinotopia in space movie, oth­er­wise known as Avatar but I do not rec­om­mend it in 3D unless you’ve got some dra­mamine to take before­hand. Actually, that’s an idea; maybe I’ll pop a cou­ple dra­mamine and try see­ing it again, you know, for science.

Posted in movies & tv | 1 Comment »

Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels: A Script

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

As I just recently sug­gested I might do, I have made a script for auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­at­ing color cycling ani­ma­tions of arbi­trary sizes and speeds.

The script can be used at: http://blog.gwax.com/files/rgbanim.php

The script accepts the para­me­ters height, width, and delay, so it can also be used in more inter­est­ing ways. Feel free to play around (if you crash it, let me know).

Ex.: http://blog.gwax.com/files/rgbanim.php?width=100&height=100&delay=7

Or, bet­ter still:


 - Width
 - Height
 - Delay

For the curi­ous amongst you, the rel­a­tively sim­ple code follows:

< ?php
if(isset($_GET['delay']) && is_numeric($_GET['delay']))
	$delay = max((int)$_GET['delay'], 1);
else
	$delay = 10;
 
if(isset($_GET['width']) && is_numeric($_GET['width']))
	$width = max(min((int)$_GET['width'], 1920), 1);
else
	$width = 320;
 
if(isset($_GET['height']) && is_numeric($_GET['height']))
	$height = max(min((int)$_GET['height'], 1080), 1);
else
	$height = 240;
 
$out = new Imagick();
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#FF0000', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#00FF00', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
$out->newImage($width, $height, '#0000FF', 'gif');
$out->setImageDelay($delay);
 
header('Content-type: image/gif');
echo $out->getImagesBlob();
?>

Posted in progging | 4 Comments »

Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels (Redux)

Friday, December 4th, 2009

My pre­vi­ous arti­cle on Unsticking Stuck LCD Pixels hav­ing been rather a hit and hav­ing been asked for an alter­nate gif image, I fig­ured I should revisit the topic briefly.

The ani­mated gif images were cre­ated with ImageMagick. Having long since for­got­ten how I did it last time, I reac­quainted myself with ImageMagick and have devel­oped this lit­tle one liner:

convert -delay 20 -loop 0 -size 100x100 xc:#FF0000 xc:#00FF00 xc:#0000FF rgbanim.gif

This com­mand will gen­er­ate an ani­mated gif to use in attempt­ing to fix stuck pix­els. Key para­me­ters are:

Image size can be changed by chang­ing the size para­me­ter.
ex.: -size 640x480

Cycling speed can be var­ied by chang­ing the delay para­me­ter.
ex.: -delay 7

So, if my orig­i­nal images don’t serve your pur­poses, go grab a copy of ImageMagick and make one of your own. (If I feel ambi­tious, I might hack together a script to auto-generate these gif images)

UPDATE: Apparently, I was suf­fi­ciently ambi­tious.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »

A post-apocalyptic beginning

Friday, September 25th, 2009

I just came up with what I think is a good first line for a book and a not quite so good sec­ond line:

“Our par­ents used to ask each other if they remem­ber where they were when a man first walked on the moon or when the Berlin Wall fell; we used to ask each other where we were when the World Trade Center fell; now, if we can find any­one to ask, we ask where we were when the world ended.”

“I remem­ber where I was when the world ended; I was in a McDonald’s, and I didn’t even like McDonald’s.”

Posted in compositions | No Comments »

Griffon Sketch

Friday, August 21st, 2009

A sketch of a griffin standing in watch over a savanna

A sketch of a grif­fin stand­ing in watch over a savanna

This is fur­ther art sketched on my N810 while idle in life. I’ve always found griffins (which I appar­ently can’t always spell cor­rectly) to be fan­tas­ti­cally cool myth­i­cal beasts, right up there with hydras, I’d say. This image is of a grif­fin up on high observ­ing its savanna hunt­ing grounds. I kind of feel like griffins, were they to exist, would have been native to Africa; you could say that my land­scape in this image has African savanna influ­ences (ish).

Posted in compositions | No Comments »

SkyzCastle Sketch

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Sketch of a mountain top castle under siege from flying machines

Sketch of a moun­tain top cas­tle under siege from fly­ing machines

First off, I have to admit that I don’t know why I decided to give this file a file­name of “SkyzCastle” except that it must have seemed appro­pri­ate at the time that I made it. I’m about a month behind on post­ing images so I really can’t say what my moti­va­tions were at the time. This sketch is, I would say, ok at best, but I am try­ing to adopt a pol­icy of post­ing my art here. In case it isn’t clear, this is a cas­tle on a moun­tain top that is under siege/assault from bal­loons and ornithopters.

Posted in compositions | No Comments »

Lighthouse Sketch

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Sketch of a landscape with lighthouse made on my N810

Sketch of a land­scape with light­house made on my N810

Another image from the depart­ment of sketches that I’ve made on my N810 while pass­ing time *cough*in meetings*cough*. This, as should likely be obvi­ous, is a sketch of a light­house on a cliff above some rocky waters near some rel­a­tively peace­ful ocean waters. Enjoy.

Posted in compositions | No Comments »

Baldr vs. Watermelon

Monday, July 6th, 2009

We’ve been teach­ing Baldr that destroy­ing water­mel­ons is a good thing. “Why?” you might ask and the answer is clear: because Baldr attack­ing water­mel­ons is awe­some. On account of awe­some­ness and the fact that we actu­ally had two water­mel­ons lying around, there are two sets of water­melon destruc­tion involved. Proof follows.

(Matt helped a lit­tle with the sec­ond watermelon)

Posted in animals | No Comments »

Boat Sketch

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Sketch of a small sailboat made on my N810

Sketch of a small sail­boat made on my N810

This is a small sketch of a per­son sail­ing a small boat that I made on my N810’s touch­screen while pass­ing some time recently. I’m rather pleased by this lit­tle sketch so I thought that I’d toss it up here.

Posted in compositions | 1 Comment »

Transformers 2: not good but awesomest

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be con­sid­ered good. Transformers 2 is, how­ever, an awe­some movie in the sense that sum­mer block­busters are designed to be awe­some. It’s pretty typ­i­cal to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is some­what far­ci­cal, in my opinion.

The log­i­cal con­clu­sion to the trend of sum­mer block­busters is that story/plot isn’t actu­ally that impor­tant and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what hap­pens if you reach that log­i­cal con­clu­sion and make a movie that is an open acknowl­edg­ment of the friv­o­lity of plot in sum­mer block­busters? You end up with some­thing that is a gor­geous, shiny, mov­ing piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intel­lec­tu­al­ism; you end up with some­thing that every tra­di­tional movie-watcher will think is ter­ri­ble as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in look­ing for plot and tra­di­tional qual­ity, have failed to see the gor­geous, shiny, sense-satiating, mon­ster of an expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is. The crit­ics made a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence with Speed Racer, which was not very com­pelling but nonethe­less exces­sively beautiful.

In addi­tion to the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is, its qual­ity has also inspired, what is prob­a­bly the finest review of any­thing, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I com­pletely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly got­ten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because peo­ple don’t under­stand that this isn’t a movie, in the con­ven­tional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a bar­rage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You pro­ceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair fol­li­cle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan coun­tries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get over­stim­u­lated; and enjoy the cul­mi­na­tion of all that is the sum­mer blockbuster.

Posted in movies & tv | No Comments »

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Thanks to hunch, I recently dis­cov­ered the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or just Gurren Lagann, which I have really been enjoying.

Gurren Lagann is, at its heart, a mecha anime and, as any­one who knows my love of Transformers and Battletech will under­stand, that is a plus in my book. The art is great and the bat­tle scenes are just awe­some. On top of that, there are some pretty great char­ac­ters in the show; I am espe­cially fond of Kamina. Also, Gurren Lagann has already run its full 27 episode course, which means that I can watch it and enjoy a degree of com­ple­tion, which is a thing that I really enjoy being able to do.

As far as anime series go, Gurren Lagann is the first one that I’ve seen and really enjoyed since Trigun. I wouldn’t say that Gurren Lagann is not Samurai Champloo cal­iber but it’s cer­tainly worth hunt­ing down and giv­ing a shot.

Posted in movies & tv | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »