The bugle emulator is a little depressing. There’s a shortage of bugle players, so they have to use these. Looks like there’s an organization dedicated to aiding the military in this regard.
Bugle Emulator
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Monthly Archives: April 2006
Cooking Carbon Nanotubes
Rhythm of the Night Lyrics by DeBarge
When I was eating “linner” at EVK today at about 5pm, they played this song. It’s really catchy! I looked it up when I came back to my room. Here’s an awesome music video of the song (1985). Continue reading for the lyrics.
Continue reading
Thermal Conductivity Demonstrated by Bickers’ Walk on Burning Coals
Dr. Gene Bickers, Physics professor at USC, today demonstrated thermal conductivity by walking on burning hot coals.
He has become famous for this act. This time it was for the Physics 161 class. This isn’t the best picture, but I really like the uniqueness of it. There were many other cameras there, and quite a few other people too. And yes, the heat was definitely intense. Even behind the caution tape, we could feel it.
They had been burning firewood on the coals all day. I wonder how they removed the wood. Anyway, they sprayed ethanol into the coals right before Bickers walked on them, and it was immediately consumed in flames. Still, it was a short demo, and the Professor hopped across the coals in just a few steps. Even so, if, instead of coals, it had been metal, that would result in an immediate burn. It’s like walking on carpet versus walking on a marble floor, even when the temperatures are the same, t doesn’t feel that way. Also consider a swimming pool and a hot oven.
The aftermath?
I’m sure I’m not the only one blogging this. If I find another post about the event, I’ll link it.
Update: consider the Leidenfrost Effect.
Start my reply before the quote
As a follow up to my USC email post, not that to keep things consistent, it’s necessary to change Thunderbird’s default setting under Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing. Instead of start my reply below the quote, choose start my reply above the quote. This is consistent with Gmail and USC’s web-based email client.
USC Email – Remove from Server
I was using 92% of my USC email storage capacity. They only allow 75 MB to be stored. So I downloaded all my email using the latest version of Mozilla Thunderbird (an excellent email client, by the way), and checked my account. Nope, I still have 70 of 75 MB used. I Googled for “usc email remove from server” and found my answer.
Strangely, the options in Thunderbird seem to do nearly the opposite of what they claim. If you have Leave messages on server unselected (the default), the messages are left of the server, at least with USC’s mailserver. To delete messages that you’ve downloaded, you need to check the option, and also select For at most 2 days and Until I delete or move them from Inbox.
This is under Server Settings. I think the terms they use need to be clarified. Anyway, it’s all good now: my USC email account doesn’t have any email in it (what’s the point of the “2 days” part?) and I’m not hitting my usage quota.
Web 2.0 and what it still needs
I’m just going to summarize on my past hour of web browsing. TechCrunch’s “Companies I’d like to profile (but don’t exist)” has interesting new website ideas for people looking for something to do. Let’s take a look at what progress people are making.
1. Better and Cheaper Online File Storage: box.net
2. Blog/website Email Lists: I couldn’t agree more. Feedblitz makes me sick
3. Portable Reputations: Rapleaf
6. Free Music: recently, I’ve been very impressed with SingingFish. They have something amazing going on there
7. Open Source Yellow Pages: sweet idea
8. Podcast Transcriptions: how are we going to find the podcasters and convince them to pay for this?
9. Decentralized Review Aggregation: yes! I want this! Google doesn’t cut it. Too many commercial sites
10. Build Something Cool with SSE: That’s bidirectional RSS. Nice idea
Rapleaf’s blog: latest post. I’ve decided what Sizzly should be. A competitor for 9rules. Guide on how to get blogged.
Dream or reality?
Last night I dreamt that the Russians (or some other country) thought they could nuke various US cities without retaliation. I’m not sure if it was a video (comedy) or a video game. But they were happy and laughing until, a few minutes after their strike, nukes came raining down on them and destroyed their country. Weird.
Church, SIT, Nick, Natasha’s Recital, Alex, CS, GWA
Talk about putting lots of things into one post. First I went to Evergreen with Michael Stalcup and Theo. It was a very interesting sermon. Personal examples really help to communicate the message. Then I went to SIT (Sophomores-In-Training, I think we’re calling it) at Larissa’s. It’s the very last Spring Training session. Next we’ll be going to the Summer Conference. I’m actually looking forward to it. I’ll need to make sure the date is cleared, and invite friends to come. Nick came to USC for the Admitted Students Reception, and it sounds like he thought it was pretty cool. Hopefully he decides to come.
I went to Natasha’s Junior Recital. We left from the EVK turnout at about 6:15pm, and arrived at the church in Pasadena at about 6:50pm. I was starving. I’ve haven’t been this hungry for months. Luckily, Ian had recently gone to the market, and he gave me an apple. That held me over until about 8:15pm, when the recital ended and they gave us awesome refreshments, including sushi. Natasha was amazingly good. I’d never seen such advanced violin skills. Yeah, it was quite impressive.
I came back to find the news that Alex, a really cool high school friend, decided to attend USC. Awesome! I guess the info and tours that the school did worked. I’m sure he’ll like it here. It’s so amazing that at least one friend from high school will be coming here next year.
Anyway, I worked on my computer science project for a few hours. It’s making serious progress. Mostly what I need to do now is grunt work, defining where all the intersections are, creating the traffic lights, giving them different timers… yeah, I can see how to do it all now, so I just need to put the time in. And then I need to add Frogger and other gimmicks to make it look impressive. Haha. It would also be nice to get EZWindows to work with VC++ so that I can compile a Windows executable to show off to friends.