Homely Scientist

I got a fun link from my good friend Laura over at CFS Stories, throwing hot dogs to calculate Pie.  No, really I’m serious.  I read through the article and it all makes sense.  Now, I’m not too crazy about throwing good food on the floor, so I think using something like a piece of PVC pipe or wooden dowel might be better.
Have I tried this yet?  Are you kidding?  We’re still having the occasional power issues and the water system is still coming online.  Maybe another snowy day.
Tags: Pi, calculating Pi

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So my last post was on the 24th that I made the top five of the CBAs, then nothing.  What happened?  Snow.  10+ in of it, and we lost power at noon on Sunday (the whole freakin’ Island).  Just got power back on about a couple hours ago.  So, when I dig out from about a ga-billion feeds, I’ll start posting again.
Tags: snow, no power

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Wow … I even beat myself by a healthy margin !  That’s what I get for submitting two of my blogs in the same category.  The results are here, you have to scroll down to the bottom to see the SciTech results.  This means that Homely Scientist is in round two!  Yahoo!  Okay, the next round of voting starts tomorrow (Saturday) … so please visit the Canadian Blog Awards and vote (for me)!
Tags: Homely Scientist, Canadian Blog Awards, Tris Hussey

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Talk about a post long overdue (not to mention sitting in my "to write" pile for a long time).  Anyway there was (is?) a meme going around where people are posting this list of Sci Fi books and marking off the ones they’ve read.  After looking at the list, I decided that I’m not going to bother, I haven’t read most of the books … heck I haven’t heard of a lot of them.  There were a few books not on the list that I think (IMHO) should have been there (Stranger in a Strange Land for one which gave …read more

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I found this on Engadget with a link to the source article,  researchers have been working out ways to test theories of evolution with electronic tadpoles that "mate" and product "offspring".  This is all in quotes because there is no actual mating involved the researchers take the traits of the two individuals and make a new bot from them.  The results thus far are interesting nonetheless:

After 10 generations, Long and his colleagues found that as swimming performances improved, stiffer tails evolved.
"One thing vertebrates really brought to scene were large, fast, active animals, and this part of the anatomy has a …read more

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I submitted two of my blogs to the Canadian Blog Awards … they are in the same category, Sci-Tech.  So, A View from the Isle (my bloggy homebase) and Homely Scientist are up there.  While I see now that is was stupid for me to submit both in the same category (I didn’t think both would be accepted), how about this … you, dear readers, choose which one you like and read more and vote for that one.  Haven’t read HS but like VftI, vote VftI (and vice versa).  You can vote more than once, just not more than once …read more

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Actually it doesn’t matter what you think, I know I am a geek.  And frankly, I’m proud of it.  Geeks now hold a pretty interesting position in today’s society.  It’s like we’re the glue that keeps a lot of the behind the scenes stuff running.  And that’s pretty cool.  So for a bit of fun (thanks to Maryam for linking to this) … here’s a geek video for you …

Tags: geeks, geek power

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This has been making the rounds on the tech news circuit today, but I saw it on the BBC first.  This is so amazing that I just had to let it sink in a bit before I could blog it, okay I’ve been busy today too.  Anyway,  this is the way it works:

The answer the team came up with was "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied.
"When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly," Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website.
[snip]
Hence, a …read more

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Hsien-Hsien sent this YouTube video my way last week.  Okay the cuteness factor can be a little much, but the experiment is very cool and shows one of the weird science things that is also fun for kids: corn starch and water.  Here’s the video:

Okay corn starch is just some wild stuff.  In solution is has the property of when hit hard it acts like a solid, when pushed gently a liquid.  You can add more water and make slime (little food colouring makes it even more fun) … I hear a little liquid soap in the mix makes for …read more

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Yes.  Of course it does.  It has too, it is sound after all.  It has been an urban legend for years though that a duck’s quack doesn’t … proof?  Lot’s here …http://buzz.smm.org/buzz/blog/does_a_ducks_quack_echo

SPOILER: Yes, a duck’s quack, like any other sound, echoes. But the WAY a duck quacks, with the long "AAAAAACK" sound at the end of the call, tends to mask echoes, making them hard to hear.

Tags: urban legends

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