`Is it maths time?' = True

I wonder if I can post Latex equations?



Looks like I can. Sweeet!

Well, that's it. Now I'm ramping this blog up to `maths' status. It's numbers time here at Empty Nest. I'm bringing on the science. (As you can probably tell, I'm missing my thesis.)

special X-mas post

At your family meal together this christmas, mentally go through this list and match up with various family members and friends. If you play this game with a partner, to forget to scream out `BINGO!' when you finish.

Not about washing machines.

For those who like sounds, this is fun. And for those who like design, or wine, this is pretty (though, it's true, Alex, that it won't help a hangover).

And for those who like to have a little fun on the web, chew through your download and 15 minutes of your life with this little beauty from an advertising company.

Washing machines and bliss

This is a blog which has been a long time coming.

It's time we talk about washing machines.

We all know what they are. Most competent adults are comfortable with using them (or at least they should be). And they are part of a weekly process we all go through, without much thought, and probably with more than a little resigned resentment.

However, I believe they are magic. Not magic in a literal sense. But they are wonderful pieces of modern technology, that can seemingly perform miracles on a daily basis. And subtly, we have learnt to take them, and their miracles, for granted. You see, they can take everyday normal objects i.e. items of clothing, and transform them from grotty, disgusting articles of wear into something you can literally pick up and inhale the scent of freshness on.

Imagine a night out on the town. Traipsing through the mud, oil on your jeans from riding your bike. You dine and smoke and drink, spilling all sorts of rubbish on your 501s, then spend the evening in the bar, dragging your apparel over the urine-covered floors. You crap your pants, vomit on your jeans, then head home to peal them off in the laundry to clean tomorrow.

And tomorrow is when the magic occurs. You chuck these filthy, reeking jeans in the washing machine, along with a whole bunch of other less-filthy cloth, add some powder, and then press the button. And 45 minutes later, they're clean. Just water and powder. No x-rays, no high temperature process, no steam cleaning. The things are just clean. It's like you dipped them in bowl of cold water, sprinkled with a little fairy dust a.k.a washing powder, and pulled them out without a single bacterial piece in sight.

And after you hang them up, or chuck them in the dryer, they're fresh and clean. Like they were never drawn through that awful process of the night before. As I said before, you can stick your nose in them and smell the freshness.

It's madness. How is this filthy piece of clothing transformed into something you can dip in to your coffee and suck on? We don't really question this process, it just happens, but to me this process is modern magic.

And that's why I love washing machines.

Post-election excitement

I was looking through some old blogs, and found some interesting posts. Like a conservative backing Obama. Also, it shits me when people jump on the Obama bandwagon too late.

But this beautiful site seems to explain quite well how a 6% difference in popular vote can be considered an overwhelming landslide. Awesome.

Erdos patience

I don't deal too well with a situation where it seems to me that someone should know something that they don't. Like a physicist not knowing what a Hilbert space is, or a scientist unaware of an Erdos number. So strange.

I worked out today that I have an Erdos number of at most 8. This is a little tenuous, but goes as follows:

Erdos (0) -> Ernst Gabour Straus (1) -> Albert Einstein (2) -> John Archibald Wheeler (3) -> Kip Thorne (4) -> Carlton Morris Caves (5) -> Gerard Milburn (6) -> Cassius D'Helon (7) -> Stuart Wilson (8)

I need to check the Wheeler/Thorne connection, though it's gotta be strong. Perhaps there is a more direct route.

Workin'.

I spend alot of my spare time writing. Though the process of writing often involves reading.

In some of my spare time this last week I've been reading David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, a story about infinity and it's history.
Tis a darn good read, `specially given my vaguely mathematical background. I find the idea of infinity interesting, and it turns out to be an important, almost crucial, to the analysis I often find myself doing. Historical perspective and contextual understanding really helps. Hence, I'm taking lots of notes, and am hoping to write up a review at some stage.

I'd like to add that the Prime Ministry Obama having a sense of humour only adds to his appeal. Though he is probably an Arab.

Not much to say really...

Who would have thought so much time could pass and so little could happen? Well, I jest, but in all honestly very little has changed in a while.

• I got a job pulling coffees in a cafe in Kingston, and I'm enjoying it way too much. I wonder when I get to officially call myself a barista?
• I missed my good friend's birthday. When I get a chance, I'll send a package. And write a letter to another old, dear friend. And another for the first one.
• Dan's gone overseas, on a trip with his father to Spain. I'm envious, but then again I get to go sailing with my father and tell lewd jokes over a few VBs. I'll send his partner-left-behind a postcard.
• I lost a flatmate to Mongolia, so we need to start a new search. I'm wondering who the next one will be?

So, who would have thought Matt Damon could inspire a Disney movie? Some people may say she was asking for it.

And I'm fascinated by the idea of a Republican government bailing out a flailing, failing capitalist economic system. Should an old broken system be propped up and supported, or should it be allowed to dissolve, even though many innocents (?) will suffer, so that a new system can be started? It will probably be a compromise of a bailout with caveats, but how does one negotiate appropriate pay for the entire company structure, when at some level the company (responsibility of CEOs) has failed?

Ach, I gotta work tomorrow and it's a long ride to the coffee-parlour.

Erupting into movement.

Holy crap.

Sometimes...

• Sometimes giving up the comfy chair means your back is straighter.
• `I can be assertive, if you'd like me too....'
• `Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently.' - Still Life with Woodpecker
• Here are is one of a list of really, really good ideas for job applications. Good for a laugh out loud, good for the soul. Ties in with the accusation recently that I'm `what's gotta change with the Engineering department's culture', regarding positive discrimination. Whatta riot.
  
• A description of 60 seconds in the life of commuters was that `I laughed so hard coffee came out of my nose'. Keep some tissues handy.
• Jefferson Airplane is my new love. Well, one of.
  

These days.

Sometimes I wonder whether ironic events are a sign of God, but often enough they're provided by a lexicographer with a wicked sense of humour. For example, note the Oxford English Dictionary's`word of the day', on a day when Hillary didn't quite make it across the line. (Click on the picture below if it's hard to see..)


For all of our librarian friends out there, an in-joke for you:
" I Y 020.5 ".

And while you're at it, give Roy a quick lookie.

"Now with GPS!"

Some random ideas to boost the mind

So I'm the 3rd person on tonight, and so to prepare me mentally for my presentation this evening I've found some interesting things to read and watch.

Firstly, someone get this Nobel-dude an O.J. Second, in 1957 spaghetti DID grow on trees. And finally, if you're going to drive in N.Y.C, this may not be the best car for it.