Some Good Ideas

Visiting Europe,
Getting a Eurail Rail Pass
Seeing some germany with a French-Jewish guy from Strasbourg with very strong opinions.
Bringing the American internet standard to Europe, very quickly please.

Bad Idea
not knozing your pqsszord (only the zqy thqt you type the pqsszord) zhen there qre no q,ericqn keyboqrds qround for you to use; using q french keyboqrd in generql see,s to be q rqther bqd ideq:

Henrietta through the ages

Some of you may recall Henrietta, the spooky disembodied head Stacy uses to store her fake hair. This is what she looks like:

This is old news. However, I recently came across The Perception Laboratory's Face Transformer. This cool site will change the age of a person in a picture. So, although we don't know for sure what Henrietta looked like as a baby, here's an idea:Awwww, cute little baby Henrietta.

Here she is as a kid:

And as a teen:

And this is what she'll look like in her old age:

This is her brother, Harryetta (the blue cloth is clearly genetic):

Finally, archaeologists have recently dug up ancient wig heads from the Neanderthals. I am glad to be able to share with you what these archaeo-styrofoam heads looked like:

Rutgers Screw

I have once again been victim to The Rutgers Screw, I have once before been a victim to The Rutgers Screw, you can read about it here, here, and here. I never actual called it by its name in those posts so I will explain The Rutgers Screw, basically TRS means that a Rutgers student got Screwed while trying to get into classes due to Rutgers’s bureaucracy. In my case I needed to register for a summer class that I needed as a pre-requisite for most of my junior year classes. However I the two summer sections for this class where closed, this meant that I now had to apply for special permission to take this class before I would be able to register for spring classes. So, I went and applied for special permission on Friday. When I tried to register for classes on Sunday I got into 20% of the classes I wanted to, this means that I got into one class to make this even better the one class I got into was engineering economics (the one class I most wanted to take next semester). Only, two of the classes I didn’t get into was because of the needed pre-requisite (one of which was closed anyways), the other two where closed. One of which I can apply for special permission now, however the other one is in the math department (which is as we all know the same department that first gave me The Rutgers Screw) this means that I have t wait until the first day of classes next semester to apply for special permission for that class. Today I got an email back regarding the special permission number for the summer class telling me that for the particular class I had to talk to the dean’s office (I received this email after the deans office had already closed). So now tomorrow I must go to the dean’s office, and then after that I must once again contact my department to try and get into all the classes I have to take next semester. If you will excuse me I must try and find a screwdriver that can remove a screw with a big block R for a head.

Where's Yoni?

Yoni is busy gallivanting across Europe at the moment, and probably is without internet access, so this sentence will need to do as a post.

On top of Manhattan

The top of Yeshiva University's Belfer Hall is the highest point in Manhattan. Today I finally got around to exploring the upper levels of the building.
Before you think that I never went to the "top" floor, allow me to explain. The normal passenger elevators go to the 16th floor. How dull. The freight elevator goes to the 17th floor. Eh. The stairs go to the 18th floor and the roof.

The roof of Belfer is quite interesting in its own right. Since it's the tallest point, there are lots of antennas, communications equipment and bits of the Titanic on it.

But more interesting than smokestacks is, by far, the view. We'll start with straight down:

Then there are the bridges. In order of appearance: The George Washington Bridge to NJ, the Whitestone (R) and Throgs Neck (L) Bridges to Queens, and (believe it or not) the Tappan Zee Bridge:

Last but not least, there's the unparalleled view of Manhattan. Be sure to click here to see it full-size [1.7MB].

The Great Flood

This Sunday the east coast was hit by an enormous northeasterner, over six inches of water fell in the area around my house, it was a lot of rain. Sunday evening I went down into my basement as I walked across the floor I was almost slipped on some water, this was very surprising. I looked down and saw water on the floor; I looked a little closer and saw a lot of water on the floor. I yelled for my family to come down and began trying to figure out where the water was coming from. I realized very quickly that the water was coming up from under a part of the floor where I new there was a hole and an access point to my houses sewer system. I realized that it was not the sewer overflowing, it was simply due to the rising water table. My father and I quickly began to bail out the hole as my mother and Yoni began to clean up the water that had already spilled over the edge. After this my father, mother and Yoni began to clear everything damageable from off the floor of the basement. Over the next three hours we cleared the bottom shelves in the basement from books photo albums and other things. While this was happening I was taking about two trips a minute back and forth from the hole to the basement sink with a four gallon bucket of water, I was able to go for about 2:30 hours until I began to get blisters and Yoni had to take over. At this point the rain had slowed down and now was only coming down at a drizzle, we where able to take fewer runs to stop the water overflowing. We realized that at some point we would have to slop and just let the basement flood. After we had finished clearing everything that would be destroyed by the water, we decided to relax and go fishing.

Here I am fishing, you can see my tackle box, my fish bucket, and the hole I have cut into the floor.

Don't think me and Yoni where alone in our fun, here you can clearly see my father planting pengiuns (in his hand) and evil ducks in the fishing hole (special bonus points if you can remember what other post also had the ducks in it).

I had to let old time fisherman Yoni take his turn (note ducks, and pengiuns).

Of course where would you be without a nice cruise out on TLS (The Lumps Ship) Omicron.

In the end the water began to reced at around 2:30 AM we never really flooded, however we did bail out somwhere around 2000 gallons of water.

To answer my last questions at the end of my last post. 1) Edgar Allan Poe had six great nephews who played for the 1899 Princeton football team. 2) The man's "Mountain of Jupiter" or a woman's "Girdle of Venus" are located on the palm of the hand (some sort of palm reading thing).

Leicester Littering

I haven't a lot of time now with packing to get to and all, but heres an old photo from Leicester. Some people hand out fliers right there and in case you can't tell, many people drop the papers rather soon after they are given them. This is funny because the poster on the fence describes a 50 pound fine for littering.


Oh and a tip, when deciding between a big and less-big pack for a trip in a few days, buy both and return whichever doesn't fit all your stuff in it.* I decided it would be better not to learn this the hard way.

*Due to recent comments, I must mention that this is only a good idea if you have a mother who loves you enough to return the other one while your on your way.

The Gettysburg Address: More Fun with Google

This is part three of the continuing series of Gettysburg Address posts (see here and here). I came across a nifty little online tool [link] which automatically searches Google. You type a few words into a box and "the system will search for this sentence at Google, find the next word and print that. Then it will remove the first word of the search string, add the found word and repeat." I wanted to see how good Google is at finding the Gettysburg Address.
Google is actually pretty bad at it. Although it always gets "four score and seven years ago," but then rapidly decays into gibberish. Part of the problem is a Christian rock band called Relient K and their album "Five Score and Seven Years Ago." Typically after the word "ago" "k" appears, and that blows it apart.
Thus, if you start with the feeder phrase "four score and seven years ago our" things pick up. It is able to accurately reproduce the first sentence of the speech. Then it gets distracted by the Declaration of Independence. And then goes on to produce lots of gibberish:

four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a NEW nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal That_ they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness: in the Workplace. is a serious problem, A Human nature Repair manual. by Dennis Prager Paperback, Jan ISBN

However, tack on "fathers" and you still get the Declaration, however, you also get political commentary, advertisements and cooking advice. And, of course, Gibberish:

four score and seven Years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a NEW nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal That_ they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness: The Pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you ll never get Rich DVD You Stupid Man DVD- NEW SEALED HOFFMAN DUSTIN. promo. did did did did did you see the words_ Home Page in the Internet zone and the Trusted zone to Medium and add the onion and cook stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and cook for minutes, Add tomatoes with juice) and the Fox s Friends The most important thing in life is to be feared. that the same thing that is a* bit of a Do: k MJnd uæ st~

You can also get it going in an amusing loop, such as repeating instructions. Try some of the first sentence up to, and not including "our." Or just try "did did," for example. Or try your own favorite speech. I'm looking forward to seeing your results in the comments!

NJIT Survey of Computer Usage

Back in America now, nothing that interesting is going on so its a good time to pull out some old statistics. The NJIT login system is always polling the NJIT community. I could have guessed the outcome of this one.

Pre-Pesach Excitement

These things always happen right before Pesach. Saturday night, while busily cleaning, I went to the emergency room. My foot had developed what turned out to be an infection. I'll spare you the details and the pictures, but around midnight we went to an ER in the heart of Harlem - Columbia Presbyterian. There were a few people with their own personal police officers, a number of people who clearly were high on something, etc. Anyway, the doctor who examined my foot prescribed me an antibiotic. I thought I'd share part of my prescription slip (doctor's name censored to protect the 'innocent,' but otherwise unaltered [by me]):
I have no idea why she felt the need to write in "MD."
And by the end of Sunday the apartment was cleaner than ever (and these pics are from before we mopped...):

Warrant of Execution

I picked up a very informative and helpfull packet from the her majesty's courts in Leicester the other day.


Oh and since you probably all think I'm kidding, I'm dead serious. Even the Brits are suprised at how easy the process is to obtain a warrant of exection. Anyway I'm back safe now in America for a bit with my right to remain silent among others.