Random
catdynamics | February 5, 2010Newish super trendy band out of Iceland.
Jazzy math music with touch of heavy rock.
Or so I was told.
Album is "Lightbulb Universe"
Eyes of a Cloud Catcher at the Weird Girls Project
Above These City Lights
live - yup, they also rock
You can fan them on facebook
catdynamics | February 1, 2010been a while since l looked to see what is out there, but here is a smattering of recent blog stuff that caught my attention
'cause linking is good
The Spirit of XKCD - admit it, you cried!
Systemic looks at the Kepler planets announced at AAS
Milky Way mapped in the style of the London Underground - simple, yet elegant
Daglegt líf í NASA
Brin's - Science Fiction That Teaches
Astro Dyke looks behind the scenes at the Rumour Mill
Academic Shopping Around and The Silence of the Adviser - Wise is the Female Science Professor
Carnival of Space #137
Carnival of Space #139
hm, I seem to be missing…
catdynamics | January 22, 2010The buzz is on - the New Apple Mega Must-Have is to be announced next friday,
and we exclusively reveal:
the iSlap!
The App that gives instant feedback to your blog commenters.
Developed after desperate physics sciencebloggers triggered their highly trained social networks as the Two Culture debate broke its frame.
inspired by Cory Doctorow's "Markets"
catdynamics | January 20, 2010why are there no cats in Middle Earth?
No, the nine cats of Queen Berúthiel don't count
why are there no household or companion cats in the primary texts?
Hrmph.
rallain | January 20, 2010It is not exactly finished, but I have moved over all of my old posts from my previous site. If you want to browse, feel free to look at the archives. Some of those are not too interesting, so I will just list the pages with the most views (but I will leave out my 12 reposts from Christmas).
The physics of Michael Jackson's moon walk
Development of the atomic model
Mythbusters: bringing on the bullet drop
Giant water slide jump
Physics of the water rocket guy
That should be enough to hold you over for a little bit. I still have not fixed all my tags for these posts, but that will come with…
rallain | January 19, 2010Today is show-n-tell day (at least for this blog). Our department (Chemistry and Physics) has recently been focusing on increasing our undergraduate enrollment. One of the steps we have taken is to have the following video created. I think it is pretty good.
Southeastern Louisiana University Chemistry and Physics from SELU Chem and Phys on Vimeo.
If you are a chemist, the first thing you are going to say is "what is up with the green bubbling liquid?" You are right, that is fake. Sometimes these video people want stuff that looks cool.
catdynamics | January 17, 2010hey y'all - where have the Hubble Fellowships gone?
Einstein has announced (congratulations to the winners)
- the Hubble committee met, I'm told
so where are the offers?
Inquiring minds gots to know.
the rumour mill is grinding and needs some grist
catdynamics | January 12, 2010Apple offers a "login picture", and on many of my accounts I have a selection of astronomical pictures to choose from, rather than the default set.
Mostly HST images, natch.
So... one evening, sitting on the sofa cuddled up with the laptop, the Dynamic Wife leans over and says: "what's that then?".
"My login picture" says I.
"And what is it?" she asks rhetorically.
"er, a supernova..." says I.
She looks at me.
There is silence.
So, now my login picture is a globular cluster...
one of the nice old Messier ones.
rallain | January 12, 2010I hate to be left out. ScienceBlogs, Starts with Bang has started a fitness theme that we are encouraged to participate in. I like to participate. I even had some good ideas. Here is what I was thinking:
Look at the physics of Wii-fit (actually, this one is good, I should come back to it someday)
Energy and forces involved in a push-up
Blogging push-up challenge - where I do a push-up for every 10 visits to my blog each day for a week (my estimation is that this could end up being dangerous - or maybe safe)
The physics of the gymnastics kip move. This one IS on my todo list since my two…
rallain | December 31, 2009My brother started blogging. I encourage this kind of behavior. His blog (bluerope.org) is mostly about cocoa programming (which he seems to be fairly competent at). Anyway, I wrote this comment on his first post.
"I applaud your effort to begin a blog again. If everyone had a blog, this world (the internet) would be a better place. Just remember, the first person you are writing for is yourself. Even if no one else ever looks at this, it should still be useful to you. The next person you are writing for is that one person that has a particular problem that you just solved.
I still don't…
catdynamics | December 24, 2009King's College Choir
I miss the live version.
Good singing that.
King's College Choir - get the live CDs online.
catdynamics | December 24, 2009Not as intense as the original, but at least you can finally hear the lyrics...
bonus: original version (live)
catdynamics | December 13, 2009Magnificent Seven Theme
pipe and drum version
To the Coffee Skate Club - nice routine.
Just one thing - real Scots cowboys don't wear boxers under the kilt!
Even not, nay, especially not on ice!
catdynamics | December 6, 2009so here I am, catching up on stuff on the laptop, and being mildly distracted by the television
and I notice my duty cycle of glancing at the television is very low, and I ponder why
the bandwidth of the ears is only about 10 kbaud, and auditory input is rarely near maximum throughput
in contrast the eyes have several megapixels, with scan rate of about 10 Hz, and even allowing for compression and redundancies, the bandwidth has to be 1-10 megabaud,
and 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the ears
so therefore a lot of TV programming, uses static, uniform colour slabs as part of their…
catdynamics | November 30, 2009history is but a recapitulation of ancient themes
after flipper
came skippy!
Much more better.
still no flying car though...
Done travelling for a bit.
Now to catch up.
rallain | November 25, 2009
I feel like a just came to a new school, or a new place. Well, I have migrated servers before, so this shouldn't be too bad. It really is nice to be here at ScienceBlogs. If you are unfamiliar with what I do, basically I can summarize:
Analyze stuff I see. This is usually from a TV show or a movie. I often will use video analysis and/or numerical calculations with python.
Explanation of basic physics concepts. I like to include diagrams.
Teaching and learning stuff. I like to teach, I like to learn. It is only natural that I talk about teaching and learning.
Science, the nature of…
catdynamics | November 23, 2009more assorted linky goodness
Astronomy Portraits (UK) - these are very good, take a look.
From e-Astronomer
XKCD - Pure Genius
Wait, Chad wrote a book? Who knew...
I now have this insane desire to explain lightcones in term of pet post-surgery collars...
I know how to push peoples' buttons
Carnival of Space: 128 at AARTScope, 129 at Tiny Manntras and 130 at Chandra Blog
OMG, like so harsh - don't know if it is true, but it ought to be.
we hates them, yes we do
Real Estate Crash - An Engineering Analysis
Ooops, almost forgot this classic from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis