Assorted Ramblings

Something to Smile About

This comes from DDMD who is an Air Force dentist and therefore has an interest in seeing people smile.

Smiles are good. Smiles can change a day around. Giving someone a reason to smile is a gift and then some.
Using anything you can, any way you can, through the power of the comment box, make me smile. Look at my interests, past entries, anything, pictures, fanfic, facts, links, drabbles or even just a cool word, anything to pass on a flash of a smile!
Post this in your own journal so I can pass on the favor 🙂

So… What Makes You Smile?

Fandom

Farewell to Arthur C. Clarke

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Between the two of them, Da-Cap and Da-Simon pointed out that the Hubble Space Telescope was reported to have found precursors of life (signatures of the necessary chemicals) in another solar system at just about the same time that Arthur C. Clarke passed away.
John posted a neat bit pointing out that when you look at the dates involved, it turns out that the man who gave us both 2001: A Space Odyssey and the geosynchronous communications satellite also managed to time travel.
The Joy of Tech presented two commemorative cartoons featuring both HAL and Arthur. As well as some older cartoons, one about the idea of a space elevator, and another about the Tycho Monolith.
For myself, I’ve never been able to listen to “Blue Danube” or “Thus Spake Zarathustra” without thinking of O’Neill colonies and proto-humans flinging jawbones into the air.
If the purpose of books is to entertain and provoke thought, then Arthur C. Clarke certainly succeeded.

Silliness, Stories

Beware the Kangaroos

I first heard the story of the “heavily armed” Kangaroos back in 1999 and although it sounds somewhat apocryphal, it’s still quite entertaining. Going through some old emails last night, I ran across it again:

The reuse of some object-oriented code had caused tactical headaches for Australia’s armed forces. As virtual reality simulators assume larger roles in helicopter combat training, programmers have gone to great lengths to increase the realism of their scenarios, including detailed landscapes and — in the case of the Northern Territory’s Operation Phoenix — herds of kangaroos (since disturbed animals might well give away a helicopter’s position).
The head of the Defence Science & Technology Organization’s Land Operations/Simulation division reportedly instructed developers to model the local marsupials’ movements and reactions to helicopters. Being efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code originally used to model infantry detachment reactions under the same stimuli, changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a kangaroo, and increased the figures’ speed of movement.
Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting American pilots, the hotshot Aussies “buzzed” the virtual kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the visiting Americans nodded appreciatively….then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of Stinger missiles at the helpless helicopter. (Apparently the programmers had forgotten to remove THAT part of the infantry coding.)
The lesson? Objects are defined with certain attributes, and any new object defined in terms of an old one inherits all the attributes. The embarrassed programmers had learned to be careful when reusing object-oriented code, and the Yanks left with a newfound respect for Australian wildlife.
Simulator supervisors report that pilots from that point onward have strictly avoided kangaroos, just as they were meant to.

Over time, I’ve learned more often than not, any story you find online which sounds that good is more than likely bogus. The story about the guy who attached solid rocket boosters to his Chevy Impala is one such example. It’s a fantastic story, but it’s complete bunk.
So after coming across the Kangaroo story again last night, I decided to check whether it was real. By the time I first ran across it, many of the details had been greatly exaggerated. But to my surprise, it turns out that the underlying story is true!
Doing some more digging, I found a first hand version of the story. Even without the embellishments, it’s still a good laugh.
And the official word from Australia is that (as of eight years ago anyhow) the Kangaroos are no longer armed.

Photos, Silliness

St. Patricks Day

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, here’s a pair of leprechauns from Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Parade. That’s Leprechaun-Claire on the left and Leprechaun-Ron at the right.
Leprechaun-Claire and Leprechaun-Ron
And now, Leprechaun-Claire will demonstrate how to retrieve helium balloons which have drifted up to a high ceiling.

Assorted Ramblings

Growing Corn Chips

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At the moment, my yard looks and smells like a giant corn chip. I haven’t tried it (nor do I intend to), but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that my yard tastes like a corn chip too. There’s plenty of good reason for my yard to look, smell and (probably) taste like a corn chip. After all, I just got done covering the yard with a fine-layer of corn.
The weather’s been getting warmer the past few weeks and before much longer, the flowers will be in full-bloom. And once that happens, along with my allergies kicking into gear, the weeds will start to grow.
I used the Scotts company lawn care regimen for a few years; fertilizer and pre-emergent weed-killer in the early spring, fertilizer in early summer, and winterizer fertilizer in the fall. It worked wonderfully too — the weeds disappeared and the grass grew so thick and high that you could lose a dog in it. A few years back though, I read the warnings on the bag about how you shouldn’t use that stuff in the garden. That got me to thinking about how anything I used on the grass was eventually going to end up in the garden. Not only is the garden in middle of the yard, it’s also on the downhill side, so when it rains, the runoff is going straight into the garden.
So for the past few years I haven’t used any sort of lawn treatment. As a result, these days, I probably have just as much grass as weeds.
After reading a recent column on lawn care, I decided to try something new this year. Instead of putting down any sort of traditional weed preventative, I went out to a local garden center this afternoon and bought a 50 lb sack of Corn Gluten Meal. Spreading it was a familiar enough process, but this stuff comes out of the spreader in billows of yellow.
And so help me, it leaves the yard looking and smelling like a big ol’ corn chip.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see how well it works.

Assorted Ramblings

The Calendars of Penzance

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Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance begins with Frederic parting company with the pirates upon reaching the age of 21. In a subsequent plot twist, it turns out that the terms of his apprenticeship are that he will serve with the pirates not until he reaches the age of 21, but until his 21st birthday. Normally, this would be one and the same, but the specific plot twist is that Frederick was born on a leap day and won’t reach his 21st birthday until 1940. (Evidently the decision to release him from his apprenticeship based on his age instead of birthday was one of those pesky clerical errors)
This means:

  1. The musical takes place in March. For some reason it seems to me like more of a summer thing.
  2. If Frederick won’t have his 21st birthday until 1940 (at which point he’ll be 84 years old), then he must have been born in 1856 and the events in the story take place in 1877. (According to Wikipedia, the musical premiered in 1879)

I don’t know why, but every time I’ve seen the play or listened to the soundtrack, I’ve found myself thinking about the dates involved. Today I finally sat down and figured out what they were.

Silliness

Mathematics

I tend to forget about this every year until someone reminds me, so before I forget for another year…
Happy Pi Day
If I were a little more on the ball, I would have posted this at 1:59:26
Thanks to Z. for reminding me this year.