I was working on a new Unity tutorial today that involved multiple light sources. I find it amazing that I can use a piece of software to just create different levels and hues of light and the physics within the application takes care of smoothing it across the object/s. That's an amazing amount of power to wield with almost no programmatic effort (on my part).
Here's a main light, rim light, and fill light, all bouncing off my main object with varying intensities, hues, and positions. It mostly came down to copy and paste.
It reminded me of this cover from the Science magazines my parents ordered for me when I was younger. There was one cover where they showed several pool balls rendered by a computer. In 1984, this was freaking magic to me. The fact that it was difficult to even find the covers tells you how early in popular computing 1984 was. I couldn't find the correct magazine searching on line, but Kyle tracked it down. It's the one in the upper right corner. But searching around for the right cover let me see all the issues that I remember. There isn't a single issue of this magazine I didn't cherish and read and reread and there wasn't a single cover that I didn't immediately remember. Between those and Gaming magazine, that was a huge part of my teenage reading (well, and Mack Bolin books at $0.10 each from the flea market, but that was altogether different). That 20 discoveries that changed our lives issue I carried around with me for weeks; maybe even months.
There was one on sharks (I believe that was early on, Science 81) that had me obsessed with the critters. As well as this one about undersea exploration from the same year that was so cool.
And this one, a larger version of one of those in the montage above, which is a beautiful cover. There's a wikipedia article on the magazine, but it's short and no associated covers. Probably worth fixing were I so inclined. The article includes this sad bit, that I remember well because I hated the format of Discover compared to Science ##, "Science was purchased in 1986 by Time Inc. and folded into Discover, the last issue being July 1986. A few issues of Discover after the merger feature a stamp noting "Now including Science 86", but this quickly disappeared. This claim was somewhat suspect, however, as all of the Science staff was immediately laid off after the takeover."
I was reading a few articles about the near earth object passing between us and the moon (98 feet,2014 DX110) and one article referenced Purdue's Impact: Earth! Flash application. I played around with rocky and iron meteors, slamming them into the ocean and land, and positioning myself various distances from ground zero and checking out the effects like tidal waves, cratering, wind speed, and thermal radiation (where'd my clothes go!?). That's a fun app for pondering global apocalypse. Someone should make one for zombies. Number of plague sites. Starting city/cities. Day of the week. Infection rate. Zombie speed.
Eryn really liked the movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice. She's watched it a few times - in the theater, via Red Box in Montana when we were staying in the trailer, and on Netflix streaming. She's also a big fan of Mythbusters (she's still mad Pooteewheet got to see them in person, albeit from a distance, in Washington, D.C.), so as soon as she'd first watched Sorcerer's Apprentice, we talked about whether you could really make a tesla coil sing and whether that might be a question for the guys on Mythbusters. The question is now moot as not only is there a video of tesla coils playing the theme from Doctor Who, but Adam Savage is dead center in the Faraday Cage, dancing along.
I read about using Gallium spoons to mess with science students in a book yesterday. Apparently you can buy your own at disappearingspoons.com. I'd be worried about someone drinking one. But it sounds as though ingesting gallium might not be as dangerous as say, a spoon of mercury.
While we were enjoying the spoon video, we noticed this video of mercury eating into aluminum. Fun to watch (and short - they compressed the two hours to 40 seconds).
Eryn got a Mythbusters' explorer kit for some holiday in the past, the Forces of Flight kit. On the left you can see Jaime and Adam preparing to defy danger with a rocket pack and a beret. The kit comes with a number of experiments, including a pull-string, plastic toy helicopter. To launch the helicopter, you mount it on its stick, yank the pull string, and it takes off across the room (or yard), demonstrating how rotors work. That's what should happen. But usually what happens is all the blades go flinging off in different directions, and you have to listen very carefully to hear where they land so you can retrieve them from under the refrigerator, behind the cupboards, under the recycling, etc. Unless they hit your wife in the head. Then they're really easy to find, because they're right there, on the floor, under the red welt. The truism that all good science experiments can benefit from safety glasses holds with experiments around torque and Bernoulli's Principle.
I'm not sure how obvious it is in this picture, but it was incredibly obvious in person.
The TED talks on the iPad (or web, I prefer to watch them on the iPad) are one of my favorite features to use on the iPad. I can queue up a dozen ten to twenty minute talks on the iPad's storage and watch them at my convenience. When Pooteewheet flew to Washington, D.C. to see the Rally for Sanity, she watched them on the plane (gotta love the iPad battery life). Mary Roach's 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm is a hilarious example, with bits about Danes sexually stimulating pigs and nine other anecdotes. I'm now halfway through her book Bonk as a result of the TED talk, although there are plenty of other talks on the social web, astronomy, and a variety of other topics. You can even look for those specifically comedic or irreverent if you dig through the topology of themes. If you like short chunks of science, give TED a tour.
If you haven't seen this video (linked via Boing Boing) that shows the discovery of asteroids and Near Earth Objects, it's really worth several minutes. Make sure to read the associated text, as it talks about why you're seeing the new finds appear in a cone radiating from Earth (if it's not obvious).
Our second day in Chicago, we hit the Museum of Science and Industry. We've been there before, but Eryn hadn't been on the U-boat since she was really little and couldn't remember it. It was a timely trip as we went to see Indiana Jones at the Trylon last weekend, so we could talk about U boats. Just a random observation, while we were sitting in the food court at the museum, I asked Pooteewheet, do you see any black people here who aren't working here? We eventually noticed a family, but there were virtually none. The reason it was strange was that we had just come from The Original Pancake House only a few blocks away, where we were definitely a minority. So at least on the day we were there, it seemed as though the museum was a favorite of tourists, and not of the people in the neighborhood. Maybe it's just because we weren't there on a school day. But the contrast between breakfast (delicious, by the way) and the museum was a bit dramatic.
The U-505. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside. The tour guide was very enthusiastic. The tour I had of the sub (non-Nazi) in Australia was much better. I liked getting a tour from an actual Aussie bubblehead better than the 25 year old at the museum. Primarily, the U-505 capture is a story about incompetence (failing to throw the plug over the side, etc.). But I did find it enjoyable to see that the submarine had a great big plug in the bottom, just like a bathtub, so that it could be quickly scuttled. It reminded me of people in Monticello that used to claim there was a big red button in the nuclear power plant that could make it explode. Except the plug in the sub was real.
The line before the tour. The perspective is correct. Eryn was playing rock, paper, scissors. The tour guide asked us all where we were from. We said Eagan. The woman next to us said, "China." And the people next to her said, "Right next door." Pooteewheet replied, "To China?" The Chinese woman did not even crack a smile. She didn't seem amused one bit.
There's a ship tagging game in the periscope. Eryn had to wait about ten minutes for a guy to make space, so she made sure to spend some time enjoying it.
She's the right size for a berth.
Submarine simulation. We made it through safe and sound. It's a little less complicated than the Wii, the only options being spin toward each other, spin away from each other, or really get mixed up and do something else.
Engima machines are not little girl friendly. This is why they shouldn't let someone else encode what you get to decode. It was a step up from the drunk guy in our hotel screaming in the hallway at 2:00 a.m. "Your sister's a fucking whore!" Pooteewheet was amused when he was yelling "Don't touch me! Don't fucking touch me!" And someone put a hand over his mouth. "Don't touch me! Don't fucking touch mfphfh!" Security eventually arrived to quiet them down, but not before they left behind a leather trash can full of vomit for the morning cleaning staff. That was a real treat to smell in the hallway as we were checking out. He's probably the guy who left this message for Eryn to decode.
I think I published a picture of this guy a long time ago. I know I'm supposed to be reflective, but he makes me smile. It looks like someone took his puppy or ice cream sandwich. It's the same face Eryn used to make when she was annoyed/sad, except she added a little nostril huff as she made the face.
Eryn and Pooteewheet in the wind tube. Gusts of up to 80 mph. Yet their hair seems strangely unaffected.
Avalanche exhibit. Not really worth watching unless you're trying to hyponotise yourself. Visitors control the spin of the exhibit. The various video games around the hall were more interesting as they encouraged a kid to be a forest fire fighter, fireworks display coordinator, and jet fuel/car fuel creator. They were little adventures with numerous endings and Eryn spent quite a bit of time checking out what a mixture of marshmallows and oxygen would do to a car, and learned that dumping fire retardant near a river is a no-no.
You could control the light mixture in this exhibit. Eryn was fascinated that by changing the colors she could make certain flowers on her shirt disappear.
Train! Gave me flashbacks to the locomotive at the park in Sidney, Montana. I used to play in that thing all the time. I think it has wire around it now because it's not safe for modern children.
SWEET PICTURE OF FATHER AND DAUGHTER ON A COW!
GUY WHO LOOKS LIKE A PERVERT BECAUSE HE'S SITTING ON A FAKE COW ALONE!
Pooteewheet and Eryn in the circus exhibit.
After the museum, we went to Tsuki for dinner. As I mentioned yesterday, Eryn thought she'd prefer Friends Sushi. But when we got to Tsuki they told us Sundays were for kids and their meal was free and available in a bento box. Eryn picked the Hello Kitty bento box. The meal wasn't some kid-sized knock off, but a full chicken meal and free ice cream. They gave her a balloon when she left as well. The chef, the owner, or someone involved in the restaurant really likes kids.
Bubble gum flavored soda. Ugh. There's a little glass ball in the top that comes with many warnings about not trying to extract it.
My food! And Pooteewheet's. The two pieces in the foreground are smoked duck. Yum.
Spicy Pinenut Tuna Maki roll. Delicious. A great mix of crunchy, spicy, and various textures. One of the better rolls I've ever eaten.
"In string theory the number of false vacua is commonly quoted as 10500.[1] The large number of possibilities arises from different choices of Calabi-Yau manifolds and different values of generalized magnetic fluxes over different homology cycles. If one assumes that there is no structure in the space of vacua, the problem of finding one with a sufficiently small cosmological constant is NP complete[2], being a version of the subset sum problem."
It looks like the people from the future managed to get back here and sabotage the CERNcollider before it could create that mini black hole that consumes us five years down the road.
"The world's largest atom smasher which was launched with great fanfare earlier this month has been damaged worse than previously thought and will be out of commission for at least two months, its operators said Saturday." (via Yahoo/AP)
They were very clever to implement the sabotage 36 hours later, rather than right when the collider started up. But then, they know the precise point at which the Earth-eating singularity will be formed, so perhaps they had some leeway. They probably don't get as much adulation as saviors of the planet in the future if they don't stop the problem at the last possible second. Look at the explanation of what went wrong. It certainly sounds like a line from a bad sci fi movie, or that Spock might mutter during one of the Enterprise's forays to the past. Mark my words, we'll be seeing Terminators in the street next.
"It's too early to say precisely what happened, but it seems to be a faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out"
