Sunday, July 30, 2006
Big Bear Lake Solar Observatory
The Observatory Website
How cool!
Spotted this on the hike.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Non-post
Also, even though Aryeh beat me to it, here's a picture of our newly tovelled lab glassware (disclaimer: fear ye not, some of the pieces in the picture have not yet been dunked, and hence can still sport their price tags):What Aryeh failed to mention was that these things cost 99 cents a each, while they typically go for much more. And, for all similarly crazy people, you can find them (while they last) at Amazing Savings.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
The Quest For The Perfect Dihydrogen Monoxide Storage Utensil
Sunday, July 23, 2006
O' Gazoods of Wiggling Piles!
It has come to my attention that there is a pile of 3 words that are each far under-used, sometimes even used incorrectly,
I list the words here with their proper meaning:
- piles (describes/replaces any object)
- wiggle (replaces any verb) [wiggling wiggled . . .]
- gazood (abnormally large amount) [plural: gazoods]
Now I'm not sure why were picking on such a serious and well though out speech to wiggle about on this blog (with gazoods of material out there); but here is a short example of proper usage by the great linguist Abraham Lincoln:
Gazoods of years ago our fathers wiggled on this continent, a pile of states, wiggled in Liberty, and wiggling to the proposition that all piles of men wiggle equally.
Now we are wiggling in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any pile so conceived and so dedicated, can long wiggle. We are wiggling on a great pile of that war. We have come to wiggle gazoods of that field, as a pile for those . . .
And as long as were talking about language: the word "prominent" should never ever be used to describe a person.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Beware of flying crows
University of BridgeportFirst of all, note that the nearest bank branch is over twenty-six miles away!
221 University Avenue
Bridgeport, CT 06604
Second, for those of you unfamiliar with the geography of the area, here is a map:I live by the red arrow (note the particle accelerator ring), and Bridgeport (green arrow) is across Long Island Sound. Granted, I could take the Port Jefferson ferry, but still, 102 miles on roads is a bit much.
Fortunately, I was able to find a bank branch that didn't involve such a trek.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Golf Statistics
Sunday, July 16, 2006
San Fran Panoramas
The pictures here are a bit small for some reason but I think you get the effect.
Sunset as the fog rolled in.
I think it makes the redwoods look taller.
The Bay area.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
17th of Tammuz
If you've been reading the news recently, you know that Israel is on the brink of war. Again. On this day the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans, leading to the destruction of the Second Temple. Once again, our walls have been breached.
Today is a fast day. Hopefully our prayers and actions today will lead to a different outcome than that of 1936 years ago.
And let us merit to see the time that Zechariah spoke of, when "the fast of the fourth month [17 Tammuz] and the fast of the fifth month [9 Av]...will be to the house of Judah [days of] joy and happiness and good occasions" (3:19).
כה אמר יהוה צבאות, צום הרביעי וצום החמישי וצום השביעי וצום העשירי יהיה לבית יהודה לששון ולשמחה, ולמעדים טובים...
זכריה ג:יט
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Mirror, Mirror, on The Wall
Sunday, July 09, 2006
San Fransisco
This is me standing on some artistic Arrow thing. I was impressed. Thanks Garwin for taking a great picture.
I used to think that pyramid building didn't exist since I only saw it in those Bank Ads.
Next week I'll post a panorama shot of the bay area.
They just happened to be doing a Lion Dance when we visited chinatown, no fireworks but they set off a 30 ft chain of firecrackers (notice the smoke).
Redwoods are amazing.
Next week I'll post some Redwood panoramics.
this cop was nice enough to pose for me with his dorky club.
We went to the top of some tall Hotel and I asked this guard if we could see a view. He takes us to this restricted roof area. Moral: It doesn't hurt to ask.
The farmers market near the capital building.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
My computer is cooler than your computer
But the computer system I am using this summer beats the socks off any others that I've used.
I am using the RCF (RHIC [Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider] Computing Facility). This system "provides the bulk of the dedicated computer processing, storage and analysis resources." It's a pretty darn impressive system:
It has 8 petabyes of storage space (8,388,608 GB) as well as a 14 TFLOPS processing farm (over 4000 processors). That means it's roughly 14,000 times faster than any current desktop computer and has over 9,300 times the storage space of my computer.
You can check out some cool pictures and more information about the system here.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Ready, Aim, Fire, Fail, Miss, and the Works
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Free California Food
(Yoni had some text here, which I accidentally deleted. This is a poor attempt to reconstruct it:)Some fruits are not ripe yet, but the tomatoes are.