Two^Sixteen

The third factual Friday! Here come some more facts for you to learn:

• Hedgehogs and porcupines will float in water, as they trap lots of air between their quills. This also insulates them.
• Because the Earths spins eastward, you can throw an object further east than to the west (it spins beneath the object).
• A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
• The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.
• Months that begin with a Sunday will always have a “Friday the 13th.”

There you have it, a bunch more facts. One day you’ll be on QI or something and thank me for these.

Jason

Blu-Ray. Son of a bitch. Sony’s betamax V2 has won, with Toshiba announcing it is dropping HD DVD. The less DRMified and more standard HD disk format.

Possibly because they paid off Toshiba with a fab plant (for making microchips).

So if someone offers you a cheap HD DVD player, there is a reason. It’s obsolete, defunct, only good for playing the few dozen titles released, and upscaling your DVDs.

The future is downloads anyway.

The second factual Friday is here!

• Diamonds are forever. Or are they? Diamonds are made of carbon and can be vaporised with a magnifying glass, leaving nothing but a puff of CO2.
• Nearly all polar bears are left handed
• The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.
• In Australia the $5 to $100 notes are made of plastic. They are more waterproof and are meant to wear better than traditional notes
• An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

Now go out and amaze your friends, befuddle your enemies, but most of all enjoy the weekend!
Jason.

Edit: Damn! Sorry this is late, I even wrote this on Thursday.

Okay, couple of things today.

Saturn

Firstly, an image I took of Saturn through my new telescope.

This was the first image I took. The next night I used a higher magnification and got this one:

I think these are about as good as I can get with the gear I own, the noise being produced by the digital camera or possibly the cheap lenses (waiting on some better ones). But I’ll keep trying.

Source Fource

Microsoft are now producing action figures to promote their products to developers. The Source Fource [msdn.microsoft.com] (yes, Fource.. what are they thinking?), are a  ‘notorious fearsome foursome’.

They look like a cross between lego figures and playmobil, I certainly wouldn’t call them action figures.

Anyway, head over to their website [msdn.microsoft.com] and meet Windows Vista Sensi, Office Master, ISV Super Gal and Virtual Labs Guy (obviously all the cool names were taken). There are a few others too.

This is the first of what I hope will be many Factual Fridays. Here I will share some interesting facts about cultures, holidays, objects, animals.. anything really.

• Girls can propose on February the 29th. Whilst not such a big deal in modern times it used to be that the gender roles were very fixed. A girl wouldn’t have dreamed of proposing to her man normally. So according to the stories, St. Patrick said “Well, alright then how about every fourth year when there is an extra day, they will have their way?” or something along those lines.
• Butter has as much energy in it’s bonds as TNT. But it can’t release it as quickly! This is good otherwise people would explode after eating buttery crumpets…mmmm…
• Thirteen Americans a year are killed when a vending machine falls on them. Guess that stuck Mars Bar was just daring them.
• The most expensive beer in the world is called “Tutankhamen” and is prepared according to a recipe recovered by a group of University of Cambridge archaeologists in Queen Nefertiti’s Temple of the Sun in Egypt. It costs US $52 (about £26) a bottle, and is produced in limited and numbered edition.
• Sloths can turn their heads around 270 degrees.

Have a good weekend =P

I bought a new telescope on Sunday. It arrived today. It looks much more serious than my old one.

Picture of the new telescope

Me with my telescopes

Picture of the telescope with the camera attached.

Well, a new term at University has started and we kicked off with Programming Applications. This module aims to cover more complicated, but more meaningful, programs that use graphics.

I will be uploading my code for the worksheets, but don’t expect to get a free ride. I won’t upload the code until after the deadline. My code for the previous year is also available, in case you need a refresher. All my stuff is heavily commented, but if you need any further explanations drop us an email, or leave a comment. I’ll be placing links in the sidbar too.
Code is located here.

Sorry for the lack of posts (and a missing review friday sunday whatever), I’ve just been a bit busy adjusting to university and work.

I’ll have something new for friday, Factual Friday, a handful of facts that I’ve found interesting, to replace the reviews and I’ll try and make another post a week.

Have a good pancake day!