March 31, 2006
So today was my last day of five years at my now former job. It's kind of surreal. Of course, because I'm an idiot, I'm starting the new job on Monday. Why did I not take a bunch of time off in between?
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March 27, 2006
So the "turbo" in TurboTax doesn't apply if you start your taxes at 10:00 PM. I think I'm done, but I'm unbelievably sleepy.
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March 19, 2006
Here is a very long and terrible answer to the question, "Why do airplanes fly?" It's a hopelessly confused mess because it explains the wrong thing. Airplanes stay in the air because they push air downward with exactly enough force to compensate for the weight of the plane. The text linked to above is more of a treatise on how to design a wing that pushes air downward. Only non-answers to questions about curving baseballs are more insanely annoying than this sort of non-answer to questions about how airplanes stay aloft. You should get a copy of The Physics of Baseball and read it before trying to say anything about the physics of baseball. I don't know of a similarly handy text about the aerodynamics of airplanes, but if you can talk about airplanes without saying "Bernoulli Principle" then you're probably on the right track. [Update: Such a text may be See How It Flies. I say "may" because I've only read the very nice part about the balance of forces on a plane. All this stuff from reddit, in the sidebar, by the way.]
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For a guy who's about to go to Vermont to ski next weekend, Mad River closing early is exactly the opposite of what I want to hear. Ugh.
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March 17, 2006
Just noticed that my colleague Thom is the guy with the big PowerBook in the background of this picture. Hi, Thom! [Update: fixed the link.]
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March 15, 2006
The original storyboard for Stimpy's Invention, the happy helmet episode of Ren & Stimpy, by Jon K. himself. I saw this particular cartoon on Thanksgiving of 1992 and then more or less continuously for another year thereafter, until I noticed that there were only about five or six distinct episodes. The storyboard causes the video to run pretty much seamlessly in my mind. It's a disturbingly complete picture—colors, sound effects, the mania—and I'd probably be about fifteen percent smarter if only that gigantic fraction of my brain were available for something other than storing exceptionally detailed reconstructions of classic cartoons, but hey, what can you do?
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March 14, 2006
It's Ides of March Eve, so happy birthday, Lib.
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Non-Mac heads can skip this one. After looking one too many times at the ugly blue wart known as Spotlight that lives in the upper right corner of my iBook's screen I spent 30 minutes tracking down the following excellent set of instructions on turning Spotlight off altogether. Nice. I use QuickSilver anyway.
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March 11, 2006
The lovely wife, after falling asleep (!) about halfway through The Usual Suspects last night, rallied admirably this evening, watching the rest of it from where she left off and then being so impressed that we watched it again straight through. Hooray for replacing extended cable with NetFlix!
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March 07, 2006
Judge cites Billy Madison in denying motion. Snideness and the judiciary: a super funny combination.
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March 04, 2006
Quitting academic physics was probably the smartest move I've ever made, even though I miss it a lot now and then. Here, more succinctly than I have even bothered to write, Phil G. explains why: "With Occam's Razor, we should not need to bring in the FBI to solve the mystery of why there are more men than women who have chosen to stick with the choice that they made at age 18 to be a professor of science or mathematics."
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