HgS

Why are the numbers on a calculator keypad arranged differently than a telephone keypad?

Be sure to check out Human Factors Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushbutton Telephone Sets (PDF) by Bell Laboratories.

What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

The Third-Person-Effect Hypothesis

An explanation for why people perceive bias in the mass media?

Cone Shells

Hunting, stinging, sea molluscs. The detail links are at the very bottom of the page.

Includes video of envenomation! Conotoxins. It’s what’s for breakfast.

Man and Mollusc

Following up on the nudibranch entry, here’s another one for the snail seekers and limpet lovers.

Using DNA to track tree thieves

That’s right. Tree thieves. And it’s tree DNA, not human DNA that’s being used.

Nudibranchs

Silica “Gel”

That stuff that comes in little packets marked “do not eat.” Find it with your new digital camera, or inside medicine bottles.

It appears to have high elasticity. Pour some of the silica beads into a glass and watch them bounce.

Runciation

The Art of Turboing

How to complain to Customer Support at large companies. Also recommended: How to complain and win, 7 ways to win the customer-service game.

Rounding Algorithms

A nice optical illusion

A simple animated image… some interesting perceptual color changes.

The mathematics of flipping a mattress so it wears evenly

Overclocking a 400MHz PowerBook G4

Caution, involves PowerBook surgery. Definitely at your own risk.

Building a battery to charge an iPod via its USB connector

Might be useful for other devices which are able to charge through USB or are powered through USB. At your own risk, of course.

Temporary vs. permanent hard water

Here in Waterloo Moraine region, hard water causes flakes of calcium carbonate in my kettle (because CaCO₃’s solubility decreases with temperature), but makes it easier for me to rinse off soap.

Processes of crystal growth and dissolution show interesting differences of form

Also, see Screw Dislocation growth.

Unusual behaviour of oobleck

Remember playing with cornstarch and water solutions as a kid? It’s liquid, unless you hit it with a lot of force – and then it acts solid. It exibits even odder behaviour when subjected to high-frequency vibration. Note: Macromedia Flash video.

MyPhysicsLab

A GPL’d basic physics framework written in Java.

Joining lines in the vim text editor

In Praise of the Humble Comma

“Punctuation establishes the relations between the people using words … schoolteachers exalt it and lovers defy it”.

Courtesy of snarkish.

Homemade geiger counter

Try the simple one at the bottom of the page.

Møøse from Monty Python

It’s in ISO Latin-1 encoding. You may need to change your browser’s encoding settings.

Squash

More about winter squash. Yum!

The Infinite Cat Project

Tribonacci numbers

One of the places the Tribonacci numbers arise is when calculating the number of strings of length n consisting only of the characters 0 and 1 and that do not contain the substring 000. I am unsure as to the practical use of this, though I suspect that regular expressions rely on this sort of mathematics.

Tribonacci numbers are also important in calculating the snub cube.

The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences

Try looking up 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (you might be surprised by the number of different references). Give it a minute to do the lookup.

Before you look up 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, try to figure out the next number in the sequence. Hints below.

Hint 1: The next three terms are 312211, 13112221, 1113213211.

Hint 2: It’s called the “Look and Say” sequence for a reason.

Lenses

The Walrus and The Carpenter

The Lewis Carroll Society of North America has links to many of his works. He also was interested in logic, math and games.

How to Learn, by Lewis Carroll.

Mathematical Knitting

Perhaps you’d like a möbius band or klein bottle, or a fractal. How about some other topological figures?

And now you, too, can visualize hyperbolic space. Dig that negative curvature. Want to make your own? Or you could just view others’ works. Best, you can violate Euclid’s parallel postulate at home, no equations required.

“Rational Trigonometry”

An interesting-looking way to approach the study of triangles and intersections of lines. Check out the sample chapter.

A nice pattern for knitting a scarf

Yes, it’s by Martha Stewart.

Also, how to design a scarf pattern

Generating permutations

A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices

Classic methods of argument. See also figures of refutation (from figures of speech).

Twenty Special Forms of Rhetoric. Includes “Proof by Hypocritical Intuition” and “Proof by Bifurcation”.

The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, 6th edition

One of the most common arguments against evolution is that Darwin himself admitted that the eye could not evolve. This incorrect argument is based on an out-of-context reading of the section “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication” in chapter 6.

Also, Evolution of the Eye, Evolution for Creationists, Christian Evolutionists.

Dust devils

Saw one like this the other day here in Waterloo, ON, Canada.

More photos.

The Hero’s Journey

Courtesy of jazkharma.

Pinwheels for Peace

Capturing both stdout and stderr separately with tee

(((./cmd | tee stdout.txt) 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3 | tee stderr.txt) 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3)

Redirection is ugly.

An excellent primer on Unicode

Baking tapes to repair squealing

It works on casettes as well as reel to reel.

Measuring the speed of light with chocolate

Or you can measure it with cheese, too (Windows Media video link). And then of course there’s faster-than-light cheese. Right.

Laws Affecting Legitimate Amateur Science

From The Society of Amateur Scientists. Also of interest, The Citizen Scientist Forum.

Firewire Dino

Yes, he’s IEEE 1394 compliant and may eat small children.

Heavy metal umlaut

Creating custom OS X keyboard layouts

Handy if you want to add some frequently-used symbols to your keyboard. Maybe you want more information about keyboard layouts? Or you could add some custom key bindings (Emacs-style or otherwise) if you want to be able to move ahead/back by one word, one paragraph, or any other form of cursor movement, deletion, etc. Want to remap your modifier keys (ctrl, option, caps lock, etc.)? Try uControl. And TextExtras lets you change various things about how Cocoa applications handle text. I like the ability to use different double-click rules, such as having a hypen considered a word break for the purposes of double-clicking on words. It’s rather useful for programming. Vruba recommends this keymap.

Black cardamom

Very different from the more common green cardamom. I’d describe it as having a salty tang and pungent earthy flavour, where as green cardamom is sweeter and more aromatic.

UW-Madison lab manual for Nanoscale Science and Technology

Titanium dioxide/raspberry solar cell

Other fruits that contain anthocyanins may also be used.

The complete works of H. P. Lovecraft

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is good. I recommend reading with Tofu if you can.

Cnidaria

I need to spend more time watching intertidal life.

Circulating Librarys and Video Rental Stores

Similarities between video rental stores and libraries in Britain two hundred years ago.

Anthopleura elegantissima

The pretty Aggregating anemone is found in large clustered colonies on rocks all around Victoria, BC. It was a familiar friend in tide pools as I was growing up. Some of the tide pools in the area are fascinating, as is the highly varied marine life. I love the ocean here.

Slugs, Snails and Coffee (PDF)

(scroll down) “Three Hawaiian researchers demonstrated that coffee is a good way to repel slugs and snails. Inspired by their achievement, I have done the reverse experiment. I have shown that slugs and snails are a good way to repel coffee drinkers.”

Snails are faster than ADSL

Or at least they have a higher bandwidth. Picture courtesy of the Annals of Improbable Research.

The Journal of Poor Science

“How many beans make five? Three recent approaches.”

World Jump Day

600 million people jumping to change the Earth’s orbit and solve global warming. Of course, this won’t really work. At the very least, there’s the issue of insufficient magnitude.

Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics

Also recommended: There Are No Electrons (book).

Kinetic Art

All Round Magazine

Fabulous magazine with gorgeous artwork. Sadly not in production now, but there are back issues and a book.

Neat

I take my scotch… (undiluted). Asteroids. Health. Aircraft. Smint and splufty. Boing Boing.

Need to flame someone?

It’s Usually Not Wrong to End a Sentence with a Preposition

As you like. According to the CBC, it’s a myth that sentences shouldn’t be ended with prepositions.

Regarding not ending sentences with prepositions, “this is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” It may not be by Churchill.

In any case, you still may wish to make effective use of prepositions.

Dangers and physiological effects of electric shocks

100-200mA is the most dangerous current range.

Touching up photos using L-a-b channels

Pretty pictures and interesting explanation, courtesy of vruba.

RubyMail

A handy library for parsing email messages, mbox mailboxes, etc.

Sunrise and Sunset times for Canada

In the United States? Try the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Planarity

Fun with graphs. Graphs are good. The seven bridges of Königsberg.

Song lyrics

Interpretation versus translation. The former can be sung to the same melody in English as in Hebrew.

Coal

Interesting things to make with coal. Creosote is that stuff you smell at marine dockyards.

Macaroni and cheese. The real way.

Just reading the description is enjoyable. It also tastes great.

OpenEEG

Plans and software for do-it-yourself electroencephalogram devices.

The Hang

A very interesting sounding instrument I heard tonight. Still rare, and made to order.

Meteor burst communications

Bouncing radio off ionized meteor trails. “Not susceptible to nuclear war side-effects.”

Printable rulers

Print your own king or quee… er, yardstick or meterstick

Goo

“I was afraid an email would get caught by one of your spam filters.” “I don’t have any spam filters.” “Okay. Your spam filter, singular and mental.” “Not so much a filter as an erroneous pile of mental goo.”

Lorem Ipsum Dolor

It’s not exactly grammatical Latin.

Colorado is beautiful

Click to zoom in. Photographs by Aredridel.

Brainful O' Issues. Now with Oedipal marshmallow bits!

The origin of mayonnaise

Under some debate. But it’s definitely an emulsion. Speaking of which, mustard acts as a good emulsifier in salad dressings. Honey might, too. Try making a balsamic vinegar & olive oil dressing with and without honey and mustard, and note the difference when you shake or stir it.

Cooking eggs. With hydrochloric acid.

Learn the AlefBet

Fish. Barrel. Bang.

Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder

The box with two outsides

Top-level domain names reserved specially for testing

Motion-induced blindness (optical illusion)

Bread doesn’t grow on trees

Security for Torah scrolls

Micro-calligraphy

It’s hard to see, but the pictures are completely formed of very tiny writing.

Correct in grammar, in interpretation, and especially in written form, this phrasing is confusing and barely comprehensible.

How not to structure your sentence for the written word (especially since good alternatives exist).

Treatment, in Portland, OR, for victims of torture

Brought to my attention by vruba.

Raising 2 to a fractional power greater than 1… in x86 assembler

Another old USENET thread of mine.

Capturing video via a soundcard

An old USENET thread I started in 1998, and had forgotten about until I did a search for my name.

The difficulty of dubbing movies

What happens, for instance, when a character who is originally speaking in Spanish is then dubbed into Spanish? Well, if the scene revolves around the idea that other characters can’t understand what he or she is saying, things could potentially get a little weird.

Cat Bordhi: Möbius-based knitting

And she’s from Friday Harbor, too. Close to the home of someone we know.

Klein Bottle Hats

A perfect gift for anyone with a zero-volume head.

Julian Beever: 3d-illusion pavement drawings

Java2K

Java2K is not a deterministic programming language, but a probabilistic one. There is only a certain probability the function will do whatever you intend it to do. Memory is freed when the program exits, or, at random intervals, whichever comes first.

Java2K uses a 11-based number system, which is a very good approximation of the 10-based decimal system for many purposes, including counting up to and including 9.

Programming in Shakespeare

“Thou art as good as the quotient between Romeo and the sum of a small furry animal and a leech.”

Trying to pop when the stack is empty is a sure sign that the author has not yet perfected her storytelling skills, and will severly disappoint the runtime system.

Programming in Malbolge

“Malbolge, although obviously difficult, could be worse. Here are some suggestions for making it even tougher.” “The day that someone writes, in Malbolge, a program that simply copies its input to it’s output, is the day my hair spontaneously turns green.”

The origin of “Hello World”

Try it in CP/M M80 or in Shakespeare. Or how about Malbolge?

The origin of Hello Kitty

Don’t know what I’m talking about?

The origin of “Hello”

Also, The First “Hello!”, parts one and two.

PostSecret

It’s personal, it’s real, often it’s painful. And occasionally I learn something about human nature that I didn’t suspect.

The Law of Small Numbers

Don’t assume there’s a pattern just because it looks like there’s one. Even if you try it 8424432925592889329288197322308900672459420460792432 times and still see the pattern.

Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?

In a group of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two people will share the same birthday. (Note that this is not the same as saying there is a 50% chance that someone else will share my birthday.)

Particle Man… Stylophone version

The Stylophone

The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

There’s a nice song to the last two lines.

Only Human: Tyko’s blog

Clan of the Cats (webcomic)

Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers

The Science of Boiling an Egg

Very good Irish Coffee

I modified the recipe for ingredients I had on hand: A somewhat sweet (not smoky) single malt scotch (a Glenmorangie Port Wood Finish), strongly brewed good regular coffee (not espresso), light cream. I couldn’t get the cream to float without mixing, but the result was still very tasty.

Don’t drink seawater

The eGullet Culinary Institute

Source of the articles on taste and texture.

Science of the Kitchen: Taste and Texture, part 2

Texture! I can’t stand puréed eggplant, such as baba ganoush. I love eggplan in just about any other form, so long as it’s not overly soft, silky, or slimy. Perhaps this is part of the reason I don’t like raw tomatos, either.

Science of the Kitchen: Taste and Texture

Interested in how we actually taste different things, and why adding certain ingredients change flavours in unusual ways? More about tasting than you thought existed.

Potter Puppet Pals

I found Bothering Snape particularly amusing late at night with the sound off.

Nopaste

Handy for showing large amounts of text (especially, but not exclusively, programming code) to other people. Very useful during debugging when someone wants to see the log output of your program.

One of the more balanced articles I’ve read regarding water fluoridation

URI vs. URL

Photos of Elk Island

Near Edmonton, Alberta, Elk Island National Park is home to bison, moose, beavers, and many bird species including double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, black-crowned night-herons, red-necked grebes, northern saw-whet owls, and Barrow’s goldeneyes. I’ve only heard about it, as yet. I hope to visit one day soon.

All you wanted to know about RAID

Cool URIs don’t change

I’m starting to organize my website on this principle. Dated URIs for temporary files or files linked from my blog. Descriptive (but generic as possible) names for permanent files, so that I won’t have to change them later. Lack of file extensions.

A Canadian tradition