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P = later y'all
Thursday, September 22, 2011
if, while, &&, ==, ||
So. Another school year has started, and I am mostly enjoying school once again. I'm currently taking a diploma course for web development and design, because I am sick of university. It is a pleasant and nicely paced change. The instructors know my name, I have friends that are in every single one of my classes, and I am actually learning practical, real-life skills that I will be able to utilize when I begin to work in the field. One of the biggest changes is that I once more am able to engage the artistic side of my brain… something that I have been neglecting for the last six years. Another change is the difference between the type of people in technical school as compared to university… this breed is much less well dressed, not nearly as well groomed, and they don't quite have a grasp on the meaning of such words as "shower", "deodorant", and "razor". In my spare time (also when I am bored during a lecture), I have taken to sketching whatever thing comes to mind. Now my mind is not a place for anyone valuing their sanity to venture, and the things that come out on paper, more often than not, lack even a hope of basic comprehension. However, once in a while I do have some sort of theme in mind before I begin drawing, this piece is one such item. It both conveys the (over-)generalized physical appearance of many students, as well as my personal feelings towards the more outspoken ones who choose to disregard the standards of interaction within a 'normal' social situation. I need to have more grace.
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P = later y'all
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P = later y'all
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
I Didn't Know This Existed
Where have you been all my life?
Dave Barnes - Until You.
Let's just take our time
Dave Barnes - Until You.
Let's just take our time
There's nothing else to do
What better way to spend the night than wasting it with you
The moon has won the war
The daylight waits to end
Stay here by my side
We'll watch the struggle start again
I need you now and forever so stay right here with me
Don't ever leave
Love was kept from me like a secret
And I swore that I was through until you
Until you
The city settles down
I watch you as you sleep
There's a silent celebration for every breath you breathe
Now this all makes sense
With you as company I left all I knew and found a better part of me
Yeah
Yeah
I need you now and forever so stay right here with me
Don't ever leave
Love was kept from me like a secret
And I swore that I was through until you
Until you
The time it took to find you
I would wait again my baby
The feelings that I feel with you now
Yeah
Yeah
I need you now and forever so stay right here with me
Don't ever leave
Love was kept from me like a secret
And I swore that I was through until you
Until you
Until you
Until you
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Ah! The Snowfall.
I like winter. As a matter of fact, I like whatever season the big man decides to send our way. What I don't like is driving in the snow... and we have plenty of it. It does look very beautiful...
Dear City of Edmonton:
Thank you for putting the snow removal crews on shifts to be running 24 hours until residential streets are cleared. This is what our tax dollars pay for. The side streets were, and mostly still are, horrendous to drive on. It's like driving on an potholed gravel road without any struts or shocks, whilst not having much control over the steering of the motor vehicle, but rather giving in to the guidance of the semi-permanent ruts that are like mini-Grand Canyons lining the middle of our streets.
Anyways, as I was saying… thank you. However, when you do decide to clear a street, some prior notice would be much appreciated. Especially when the aforementioned activity is performed at two o'clock in the morning. Reason: my little Civic handles the weather and the snow conditions pretty decently, it however, is not a 4x4, and does not sport a lift package with hydraulics or off-road tires, it is a basic 'old-man' looking Civic. Therefore (as any common sense or logic would suggest), my car is completely unable to scale, drive over, jump, run up, or otherwise surpass an embankment measuring approximately 1.5 feet high by 2 feet wide.
Now I know that the snow removal crews are busy (obviously), but I can not help but feel that this was some spiteful stunt to force me to spend 40 minutes of my evening chipping away at, and relocating said embankment. Not cool.
I am generally OK with the idea of shovelling the sidewalk (after all, it is where people walk). What I'm not OK with is shovelling the street… by hand. Not fun.
To all the courteous citizens of this drab Northern city:
Thank you for being patient and courteous to the other drivers on the road, for being cautious when someone temporarily has a lapse in control of their vehicle, for moving over to allow someone to pass on the narrowed side streets, and for lending a hand when it comes to helping push someone out of a rut. You are part of a vast minority. Much appreciated.
To all of you who are impatient, uncourteous, disrespectful, drive like it's the friggin' Indy 500, or-you-just-drive-a-large-truck-so-you-think-you-own-the-road: Screw You.
*For those of you who drive a large truck like a complete moron... we all know why you own such a type of vehicle. What I don't understand is why you decide to advertise the fact in such a blatantly obvious manner.
Dear City of Edmonton:
Thank you for putting the snow removal crews on shifts to be running 24 hours until residential streets are cleared. This is what our tax dollars pay for. The side streets were, and mostly still are, horrendous to drive on. It's like driving on an potholed gravel road without any struts or shocks, whilst not having much control over the steering of the motor vehicle, but rather giving in to the guidance of the semi-permanent ruts that are like mini-Grand Canyons lining the middle of our streets.
Anyways, as I was saying… thank you. However, when you do decide to clear a street, some prior notice would be much appreciated. Especially when the aforementioned activity is performed at two o'clock in the morning. Reason: my little Civic handles the weather and the snow conditions pretty decently, it however, is not a 4x4, and does not sport a lift package with hydraulics or off-road tires, it is a basic 'old-man' looking Civic. Therefore (as any common sense or logic would suggest), my car is completely unable to scale, drive over, jump, run up, or otherwise surpass an embankment measuring approximately 1.5 feet high by 2 feet wide.
Now I know that the snow removal crews are busy (obviously), but I can not help but feel that this was some spiteful stunt to force me to spend 40 minutes of my evening chipping away at, and relocating said embankment. Not cool.
I am generally OK with the idea of shovelling the sidewalk (after all, it is where people walk). What I'm not OK with is shovelling the street… by hand. Not fun.
To all the courteous citizens of this drab Northern city:
Thank you for being patient and courteous to the other drivers on the road, for being cautious when someone temporarily has a lapse in control of their vehicle, for moving over to allow someone to pass on the narrowed side streets, and for lending a hand when it comes to helping push someone out of a rut. You are part of a vast minority. Much appreciated.
To all of you who are impatient, uncourteous, disrespectful, drive like it's the friggin' Indy 500, or-you-just-drive-a-large-truck-so-you-think-you-own-the-road: Screw You.
*For those of you who drive a large truck like a complete moron... we all know why you own such a type of vehicle. What I don't understand is why you decide to advertise the fact in such a blatantly obvious manner.
I like music with successfully integrated harmonicas.
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Physics of Christmas
1) No known species of reindeer can fly, but there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18), but since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total - leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different times zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels East to West (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours... plus feeding... etc. That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second: 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purpose of comparison: the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run, top speed, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child get nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the "flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases payload... not even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison: this is four times the weight of the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2.
5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will each absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized in 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.
In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's now dead. (This will be something you can tell your kids someday!)
Yay!
http://www.jimgeary.com/faves/joxe/JOXSCE05.HTM
2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18), but since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total - leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different times zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels East to West (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours... plus feeding... etc. That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second: 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purpose of comparison: the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run, top speed, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child get nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the "flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases payload... not even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison: this is four times the weight of the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2.
5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will each absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized in 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force.
In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's now dead. (This will be something you can tell your kids someday!)
Yay!
http://www.jimgeary.com/faves/joxe/JOXSCE05.HTM
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Ciabatta Wha?
Everytime. It happens everytime.
Thought bubble: *"Mmmm... that ciabatta bread sandwich looks delicious. But, remember last time? It was dry and about as flavourful as cardboard... hmmm..."*
And then I end up getting said sandwich... and it always tastes like cardboard.
Are you a tree?
Thought bubble: *"Mmmm... that ciabatta bread sandwich looks delicious. But, remember last time? It was dry and about as flavourful as cardboard... hmmm..."*
And then I end up getting said sandwich... and it always tastes like cardboard.
Are you a tree?
Monday, October 25, 2010
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