Streandering Meams

"Yes sir, reports indicate that they have alluring bright lights...."

Almost Biblical in a way: Invasions could be preceded by a plague of insects.

From a friend with quirky shopping habits:

What the heck did I search for on Amazon that produced this recent recommendation???

Be sure to browse the customer reviews.

Every now and then I get bored and want something to do other than read my RSS feeds to delicious or reddit and that is when I try to actually learn something. The following links are the best tutorials that I have found for any particular language. (Note that I haven't actually completed any of them, since I am lazy. A lot of programming books/articles/blogs say that being lazy is a good thing for a programmer (physicists say this too) but they always say this in the introduction, which goes to show that they aren't really writing for the truly lazy. Telling a lazy person that laziness is a virtue at the onset of your book guarantees that said lazybones will put the book down some time before chapter three and never get around to reading the rest. If you really want to teach the lazy, put your twee characterizations in the epilogue.)

Some of the below links are to books, but those books are on-line and free and do have exercises.

I'm always looking for something better, so feel free to set me straight.

Perl Monks -- Tutorials

A Byte of Python

why's (poignant) guide to Ruby

Tcl for Web Nerds

The Scheme Programming Language

Practical Common Lisp

Thinking in C++

About half a year ago, I was avidly reading Mad About Physics: Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities and read factoid #41 "Blowing Hot and Cold" which was my first introduction to the wonderful world of the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube.

I shared my wonderment with Whack Daddy and now I present an edited account of our exchange below.

--J:

Here's the cool (and hot!) physics demonstration that requires no moving parts

W.D:

You wouldn't call a room-sized air compressor a "moving part"?

--J:

Tsk, tsk, you are not thinking like a physicist: The heat exchanger has no moving parts, whoopie! People find this useful, e.g., if you need AC, but you can't afford downtime to fix/replace the exchanger, or you can't easily get to the AC outlet, it would make sense to use a vortex tube and run a pressurized line from it to wherever you have your compressor(s).

Anyway, this page says that anything above a 1HP air compressor should work quite nicely. (Actually, there is a typo in the marketing of the now defunct air compressor ad I originally sent you; it should read, "For use with blow guns, paint sprayers, air brushes, small rammers, impact wrenches, grease guns and Ranque-Hilsch vortex tubes.") Hmmmm, I think that I'll start to work on Mrs. --Jared about how it would be more economical and efficient to use a paint sprayer when painting the house. For $120 I could buy a R-H v.t. and try to pass it off as an attachment ... well, it is....

I apologize for the earlier web site. I wasn't happy with it, but it appeared to be the most complete and the pictures were the best I could find. Now I take that back: This picture (animated!) is the best that I can find (and the info is pretty complete as well). And here are some engineers, almost as crotchety as you about the usefulness of the wonderful Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube ;-)

W.D:

Air knives! The ultimate weapon (at least, until someone installs an Air Detector at the airport).

As for "tsk tsk": you're not thinking like an engineer, in my opinion. But then, I'm neither a physicist nor an engineer so, you know, pass the salt.

Still, it's a very cool (no pun intended) device. Speaking of unintential puns - did you notice the webpage selling the compressor? They're having a "blow-out" sale!

And now for a cheap retort in that I first make it here on a public blog: It does seem like I am thinking like an engineer--an engineer without borders! (Here's a Google search for the same info in case Time magazine closes off the article.)

A while ago I was looking for information concerning the anime movie, Night on the Galactic Railroad when I ran across an interesting article about "The Japanese sensibility". I took the time today to reread it, so perhaps I should blog it: If it piqued my interest, could it pique yours?

The article I orginally read was #3 (Innocence) of a five part series by Roger Purvis, today I went and found them all. I list them by theme as they appeared in chronological order in the Japan Times.


I like it that the Japan Times has left its articles open and on-line for the world to read. I wish more newspapers did that.

The link in the title of this blog article is to the list of recent writings of Roger Purvis and these above articles can be found there as well. They were published in late 2004: 28 Nov. -- 26 Dec.

A friend forwarded this to us. Mrs. --Jared needed a little help from me, but not much. I would have done a lot worse by myself. I guess she loses bragging rights about who was the most repressed nerd of the 80's: I win! I win! I win!

2005 has been declared the World Year of Physics, in honor of the seminal work done by Einstein in 1905 when he published four papers that together have no peer in terms of 20th century scientific impact.

Photoelectric effect
Brownian motion
Special relativity
Matter and energy equivalence

Einstein's theories are being explored and refined even up to today.

Everyone should know a little Einstein. Until the end of the month, you can get two lectures (free!) from The Teaching Company. I don't know how good these lectures are, but I've erred on the side of (free!) instructional videos.

All of these links came from a Slashdot thread on this subject. I had been meaning to do a small blog post on this for a while, but it is so much easier when other people get the good links for me!