Archive for the 'Rememberings' Category
Wait for it 0
8 year old me is extremely pleased.
Begins with an S 0
…and it is not ‘sine wave’.
Click the pick to learn more.
I found that by reading reading this: Earthquake Lake
Because I was a math nerd 0
Why we should love logarithms – nature.com
The notion of a decreasing distance between numbers makes perfect sense once we think about that difference in proportionate terms: 1,001 is clearly more akin to 1,000 than 2 is to 1. We can even quantify those degrees of likeness. If we space numbers along a scale such that the distances between them reflect the proportion by which they increment the previous number, then the distance of a number n from 1 is given by the harmonic series, the sum of 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 and so on up to 1/n. This distance is roughly proportional to the logarithm of n.
This, it is often said, is why life seems to speed up as we get older: each passing year is a smaller proportion of our whole life. In perceptual terms, the clock ticks with an ever faster beat.
Love your logs.
Down memory lane 0
This thread on Fark.com has some pretty good rememberances of Ye Olde Intertron Waypoints.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Remembering Joybubbles 2
From Wikipedia:
A student at the University of South Florida in the late 1960s, he was given the nickname “Whistler,” due to his ability to place free long-distance phone calls with his whistle. He was disciplined by the university early on; but after graduating his studies in philosophy and moving to Tennessee, law enforcement raided his house. He was charged with malicious mischief and given a suspended sentence and quickly abandoned phreaking, although was able to whistle 2600 hertz throughout his life.
…
In the early 1980’s, he ran a phone line called the “Zzzzyzzerrific Funline,” which had the distinction of being the very last entry in the phone book. During the Zzzzyzzerrific Funline days, he would go on various rants about how much he loved Valleyfair amusement park and would also regularly play and discuss “Up With People“.
Joybubbles died of a heart attack on August 8, 2007, in his home in Minneapolis.
I’m sad that this is the first I’ve heard of this man. May his childhood go on.