Category Archives: Video

Mathematics: A visual exploration

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While checking out the latest news on some of the geeky things that interest me, I found a link to this visual walk through of mathematics. The most interesting facet of the Dimensions Math page to me, and what made me think I needed to post about it, is that the 2 hour video that is the visual walkthrough of math was created entirely with the raytracing program POV-Ray. The entire video is available for free online, can be purchased on DVD, and is licensed for distribution under a Creative Commons license.

A film for a wide audience!

Nine chapters, two hours of maths, that take you gradually up to the fourth dimension.
Mathematical vertigo guaranteed! Background information on every
chapter: see “Details“.

Here is the sample video for the visual walk-through:

Watching this, seeing that it was made with POV-Ray, and thinking of the power of legally freely available tools like this makes me feel that I owe my readers a write-up of some of the many free tools and toys I use on my computer at home and for work.

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Fair and Balanced call for Obama assassination

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If you keep up with the political sphere, you’ve already heard this:

Yes, that is a newsperson for the fair and balanced FOX news network calling for Barrack Obama’s assassination.  Clearly Bill O’Reilly is no longer the worst thing that channel has to offer.

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Quick draw

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For my gun enthusiast visitors. I worked with a fellow years ago who claimed to have a rated speed of 0.02 seconds for draw and fire motion of his handgun. I was skeptical, but knew this guy to not be one to brag in general, so I tentatively accepted his claim although I never could imagine it being true. After seeing this video of Bob Munden, I’m not so skeptical any more.

I’m especially impressed with his accurately shooting 2 balloons, tied 8 feet apart, with two shots fired so quickly that it appears to be only a single shot. This looks like a prime candidate for the Time Warp treatment from the folks at the Discovery Channel:

I think it would be awesome to see this quick-shooter filmed at 1800 frames per second or higher. Too bad it looks like Discovery Channel hasn’t taken that show past the first episode. (via Bill at DQ)

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Optimus keyboard

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optimus_maximus.jpgYou can finally order your Optimus keyboard from ThinkGeek for a mere $1600. Well – you can kinda… While checking this to make a post, I noticed it is currently out of stock. But this is a bit of forward movement from the last 2 years of story-without-substance.

Just some of the highlights/features of this keyboard:

  • Revolutionary Keyboard Features a tiny OLED screen on each key. 113 screens total.
  • Play a GIF animation or Quicktime movie on a Key
  • Key sets can be linked to an application, so whenever you open that app the appropriate keys come up
  • Built in USB hub

More features listed on the product page at ThinkGeek. One suggestion I’ve heard is encoding your favorite pr0n and setting it to play across all keys, but honestly that sounds rather infeasible. I *would* like to have one and set it up with animations and key images for the kids when they are playing their games. But I’m going to have to wait until one of these comes out for under $100 before trying anything like that. Probably in 2-3 years, we’ll have that reality, though, right?

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Blogging sweatshops

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Fear not, fair reader – this isn’t going to happen to me.

Seems I can barely muster a few minutes a day to blog here lately.  Maybe I do need to move to New York and join one of these sweatshops.  Think of the useless knowledge I could serve up with 18+ hours a day at this! (via boingboing)

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McCain calls it?

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Folks, I think we’ve all been wondering lately if we’re in a recession or not. Well, we have official word from John McCain (watch the video for the full commentary by McCain):

…the important factor here is that Americans are hurting. Americans are hurting today.

They are sitting around the kitchen table saying ‘Are we going to be able to make our home or our mortgage payments?’

He makes some good comments.  I think things like this will help him with his standing among some of the uncertain right, but doubt it will make any change with those already convinced to support or denounce him.  Of course, it doesn’t take a political genius to figure that out.

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Australian robbery Phailure!

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Here’s what happens when you assume that having a gun in a gun-free state is all you need to successfully rob a bar.  It’s a Phail so bad, we had to spell it with 5 letters.

Note for future robbers – when there are 50+ motorcycles in the parking lot, you might want to check adjoining rooms to see if tonight is the monthly meeting night for the local biker gang.

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