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March is all Mathy

Apparently today is Square Root Day (3 * 3 = 9), tomorrow is World Math (or Maths) Day, and soon it will be Pi Day (3.14).
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What a Coincidence

This morning I was reading a book my boyfriend got for Christmas about Minnesota Highway 61. In it, there was a mention of Tobie's Restaurant, which is famous for it's caramel rolls. Then I get to work and a coworker is telling me about how he stopped there on the way home from Duluth yesterday. Weird.

Last Friday I read an old AskMe post about flexagons, which I found under the crafts tag. I made a few out of paper, and then two out of fabric. Now today I find this post on Make:Blog on how to make a hexaflexagon. Weird.

Edit: And I was just thinking about the Seinfeld episode where Elaine gets ink on Mr Pitt and he gets it on his upper lip like a mustache. Then later he is speaking and looks like Hitler when he talks about annexing Poland. I get home and that exact episode is on TV.

Gmail tip for finding archived items with no label

I have a Gmail account with over 50K messages (my rss feeds) and I sometimes read it via Gmail mobile. So, I end up with messages that have been archived but not labeled (oh no!)

To find them, search this:
"-label:inbox -label:blog -label:comp ..."

You have to add a -label:tag for each tag, so it can take a while to write. But bookmark it and you never have to write it again! I found the idea at the bottom of this thread.

The World in a Spreadsheet

The default Microsoft Excel worksheet has 256 columns and 65,536 rows. This gives us 16,777,216 individual cells. The current world population is estimated to be 6.684 billion people. So, to fit the whole world in a spreadsheet, you have to put 398.4 people in each cell.

Linux

Linux
Originally uploaded by soelo

Is getting ready for a night on the town.
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Local Openings

Grizzly Coast opens June 7th at the Minnesota Zoo

Several Sonics will be opening in Elk River, Savage in August and on Suburban Ave in St Paul in 5 days!

The Star Wars exhibit runs from June 13th to August 24th at the Science Museum.

Four More Years

Yesterday was my fourth anniversary playing KOL. Back then I didn't even know there was a difference between Bugbears and Saucerors. Boy was I silly.

A Dream DVR

I often recap my dreams here, if I can remember them clearly enough. What I really would like is a way to record and watch them when I wake up. Even if it was just the video portion with no audio.

Well, that could theoretically happen. Scientists are working on a way to use MRI scans to guess what your brain is seeing. You have to retrain the software for each person, but that is still quite cool. They can't do video yet, only still images, but I'm sure they'll get there.

Microsoft approves of me

Yay, I passed my Excel 2003 Certification today.

Read this

This month's Rake Magazine has one of the best short stories I've read in a long time, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth. It's by Cory Doctorow of boingboing fame and I don't know if it would appeal to a nongeek or not, but I couldn't put it down.

I haven't slipped into another dimension

Ignore that last post (now removed) entitled 'misc blog entry material'. It's just a list I started a long time ago of things I should blog about. I usually save it as a draft, but I hit the publish button by mistake.

I have found two new online games to satiate my KOL thirst: Muffins and Cities.

Muffins is a direct KOL rip-off - which they freely admit - that I have been playing for about a week.

I just started playing Cities today, which I found due to a strange, twisted webtrail starting with the party stunt/game Snaps. Cities seems like a standard RPG so far where you have equipment, adventures and quests.

Have I mentioned here before that my niece and I got into some Trading Card games a few months ago? She had been collecting Lord of the Rings cards for a while, but we bought a starter kit for Harry Potter and then we flew down the slippery slope from there. We play two different Star Wars ones now as well. I have a few random cards from other games that I want to combine into one huge, geeky deck and figure out a way to play a game using it.

My Geek Code

GM/B$ d- s:+ a- C++ PS+ PE- Y+ t+ X-- R+ tv++ b+ DI++ G e h- r- x?

What is yours?

Webtracks

City Pages' annual Best of edition has pixel art by Eboy, which I dig.

I found this quote on a coaster at a bar, but I like it anyway:
"We do not remember days. we remember moments." -Cesare Pavese
I also like this one: "If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears."

Ever been mistaken for an employee while shopping? I have and it is hilarious.

Myspace is not just for 14-21 year olds - it's for me too.

Trader Joe's is "coming soon" to Minnesota, before the end of May hopefully. I was 100% wrong about the location. I forgot all about Excelsior Boulevard. Could they have built any closer to Whole Foods?

Also, the new library downtown opens May 20th, or for $250 (or more!!) you can attend the benefit on the night of the 19th. This includes a progressive dinner, and I really need to attend something like that.

Attention Everyone I Know:

We are now playing The Game

Random

Now this is a Funny Picture.

I got cable installed yesterday, along with a DVR and 6 months of HBO and Showtime. I hope to catch Love Actually this month, since it's a holiday movie.

My last Drawing class was on Monday, and I think I did pretty well. Next up is Environmental History and Modernism (a literature class). Maybe I should decide on a major soon. I will only have 2 generals left after those two classes.

I am trying to get 'organized' while I have some time off of school and a small amount of time off of work. What that means, I am not really sure... some weird combination of FlyLady, GTD and my own systems, I guess.

Fears and favorites

My number one fear is sharks (my name is Sarah and I am selachophobic) but some of my favorite marine animals are skates and rays, specifically the order Rajiformes. Imagine my surprise in finding out that Rajiformes are closely related to sharks, yeesch. Well, it's not that surprising, but the main thing that differentiates them in my mind is that most rays have weird little square mouths, not huge gaping jaws with scary knives jutting out of them. I remember being in a zoo in Ohio with my mother and seeing a tank of rays that were trained to slap one of their fins on the water. I don't know what species they were, but I think they were young and about the size of an adult's hand.

It turns out there is another genus called Mobula that have the same general shape, and there are some that leap out of the water. Read about them at The Flying Mobulas of the Sea of Cortez and don't forget to read the last page that talks about the evils of Bycatch (unwanted or unintentional catch) and how one in four marine animals caught in nets are thrown away for various reasons. Remember dolphin-safe tuna? Well there are still many other animals affected by the fishing industry, including whales, birds, turtles and even sharks. As much as I dislike and fear them, I don't think they should be killed.

Riddler - Geosense

Back in 1996 when I thought the net was just for chatting and playing games, one of the first sites I visited on a regular basis was Riddler.com. They still run some of their Classic games, like Drag Race and Scrambler and have added several new ones like Geosense where you race to find the given city on a World map. You can also play Europe and US map versions. For geography nerds like me, it's a dream come true.

Confusing Country Names

While reading the Tales of the City books, I became confused about the country of Guyana in South America. I had always thought it was in Africa, but it turns out I was confusing it with either Ghana or Guinea. That's not the only set of countries with easily confused names:

Angola in Africa and Anguilla in the Caribbean
Angola is a country on Africa's west coast that ended a 27 year civil war in 2002. The war had started in 1975 when they became independent from Portugal and continued until the death of Jonas Savimbi, who had led one of the warring factions.
Anguilla is an island territory of the UK that has been under British rule since 1650 when English settlers from Saint Kitts colonized it.

Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo, both in Africa They border each other in Central Africa and the Democratic Republic (formerly Zaire) is almost 7 times the size of the Republic. More differences between these two are best explained on Wikipedia.

Mauritania and Mauritius, both in Africa
Mauritania is a medium sized country on the west coast of mainland Africa, while Mauritius is a small island in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar. Mauritania had a bloodless coup in August 2005 and the party in power claims to be preparing for genuine democracy. Mauritius has been a democracy since it's independence from the UK in 1968. It also has one of Africa's highest per capita incomes.

Slovakia and Slovenia, both in Europe
Both are former parts of Communist countries that joined NATO and the EU in the Spring of 2004. Slovakia was paired with the Czech Republic to make Czechoslovakia and Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia.

But the most confusing set of Countries have to be these:

Gabon and The Gambia, both in Africa
Both countries are on the Africa's west coast. The Gambia is further north and surrounded by Senegal on all sides but its Atlantic Coast, while Gabon is on the Equator and borders Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Republic of Congo.

They are slightly less confusing than: Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau in Africa; French Guiana and Guyana in South America; and Grenada in the Caribbean because all seven have the G-N-A pattern in their names.

Equatorial Guinea, which is near but not actually on the Equator, is the only country in Africa with Spanish as the official language. Its current leader Obiang took power from his uncle after executing him in 1979.
Ghana is the home country of Kofi Annan, the current Secretary-General of the UN. It's one of the three "tall" countries (along with Togo and Benin) on the southern coast of Africa's northwestern region.
Guinea is also on Africa's northwestern coast and became independent from France in 1958. Since then, there have only been two real leaders of the country that is still struggling economically.
Guinea-Bissau is very small and one of the poorest countries in the world. The citizens have suffered coups, questionable elections and civil war since the early 80's.
French Guiana is on South America's north coast and still belongs to France. As part of France, it's part of the EU and still has a disputed border with it's neighbor, Suriname.
Guyana is also in South America, on the other side of Suriname. It became independent from the UK in 1966, but many of it's citizens still emigrate there, and to the US and Canada, which has caused a population decrease. There are an estimated 500,000 Guyanese living abroad, while the country's current population is only about 750,000.
Grenada is an island nation in the Caribbean, and has been battered by two recent hurricanes, Ivan in September of 2004 and Emily in July of 2005. It is considered a Commonwealth Realm and recognizes Queen Elizabeth as its monarch.

God's Loofah Sponge

Also known as Saturn's moon Hyperion

Puzzles

I am the geek you see sitting in the corner, doing puzzles and eating lunch alone.

Webkitchen London has had some puzzles related posts lately, and I was lucky enough to solve one of the puzzles posted in the comments. Those posts all started from the fish puzzle, which is just like the Logic Problem magazines sitting in a pile behind my couch.

I always get Games magazine, and one of my favorite puzzles is the Paint-by-Numbers which have been recreated on TylerK's PiCross page. One of my other favorites is Soduko, which was featured on the Kare11 Extra.

A Grown-Up Version of Legos

They're called PixelBlocks. "The unique shape allows PixelBlocks to be connected in three versatile ways that enable you to build effortlessly in 2-D or 3-D." And check out the rest of Think Geek while you're there.

A $330 million Demolition Derby

Around 30 minutes ago, NASA launched Deep Impact, a spacecraft that carries an impactor and a telescope. It is scheduled to meet up with Comet Tempel 1 on July 4th and smash a hole in it to examine the comet's insides. Yahoo News has more.

Which File Extension are You?

Which File Extension are You?