Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Also, this is kind of fun: http://www.google.com/santatracker/

The end of the world (again!)

I really can't keep from laughing at the end of the world predictions, as they are really often quite ridiculous. (This is what, the third time this year?) For example, if the Mayan calender ends the 21st, at let's say 22:00, what happens when you move to a different time zone?! On that topic, this was rather amusing:

Project London

Project London is now on Kickstarter!

Haven't heard of Project London? Click here, or watch the trailer below!

Project London: Official Trailer from Phil McCoy on Vimeo.
(made with blender)

It's really amazing how this was made, and the graphics and sound effects are amazing!
Here is the speech from the screening: http://projectlondonmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/PhilsProjectLondonCastCrewScreening-speech.pdf

Here is the kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/philmccoy/project-london-help-us-release-this-movie

And here is the official website: http://projectlondonmovie.com/

More chemistry...

Here's a normal comment from my chemistry course...

"The equation seems to suggest that the rate constant, 'k', is dimensionless since activation energy over the boltzmann constant times temperature is joules over joules in dimension. However, this problem and the book indicate that it's in inverse seconds. And all of this is confusing me in my calculations. Could someone clarify this for me? - saturnianalien

("All this is confusing me" -You're not alone!)

Someone responds...

"The dimension of k is 1/s. the exponential function is dimensionless (both EA and kB*T have the dimension of energies, but k0 has the dimension 1/s."

Also, zeroth is a word (It's in my textbook)

1000 Views!

My blog now has over 1000 pageviews! 

(Made in Blender, some textures from spiral graphics)

Thanks to all the readers of this blog :)

Here are some miscellaneous stats from this blog: 

I always like to see statistics for websites. It's also interesting to note how many views are from Russia. Someone over there is keeping tabs on things...

I really like that chart on the left :D Keep it coming!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

What better way to celebrate the LORD's goodness than to gather together and thank him?

After church in the morning, we had our grandparents over. It appears that was a common idea, because this is what our street looked like!

YouTube view counter

This is a really well liked video...

I wonder when YouTube is going to fix their view counter problem?

(Really awesome video by the way)

Even more impressive is that they filmed it in less than 24 hours!

Molecules...

This was in my homework, and it's kind of neat, so I thought I'd embed it here:


Your browser may notify you that this has insecure content. (especially if using Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), but it is being hosted by Amazon, and is being used by MIT, so it should be fairly secure.

--Edit-- Take a look at this too:

The elements...

While on the topic of chemistry...



And, more recently, something like I would love to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cbgAELAX18

I do not like chemistry!

And this is why I should not be taking the chemistry class I'm in right now:

"...assuming that you know the F-F homonuclear bond energy is 154.8 kJ/mole. Express your answer in kJ/mole."

Right...just assuming I know that sort of thing.

The Story of a Shared Gmail Chat...

{3:17 PM John: We have not lost our power yet, but it has been flickering. Glad to hear yours is back. Kristie

3:18 PM me: I hope yours stays on. Do you have a generator?

 John: yup

3:19 PM me: That's good, we don't but our neighbor does. Right now I'm watching my Harvard computer lectures.

3:20 PM John: Good you can get school done when the power's on!

3:21 PM I did my BB work this morning which is good.

  Edit: BB computer work

 me: Actually, I downloaded the lectures to the laptop, so as long as I have battery left I can watch the lectures, which is nice.

3:22 PM I'm glad you were able to work on the Bible bee

  What computer work?

 John: Yeah. Battery on my laptop stinks. It has like a 6 minute life.

  Oh, I am typing all my cross references into quizlet

3:23 PM me: I added a external battery pack to this laptop, so I get a lifetime in the hours, which is great.

  Have you tried Anki? That's what I have to use for latin.

3:26 PM By the way, if you discharge a laptop battery below 40% it damages it.

 John: Translation please...

 me: for...?

3:27 PM John: last thing you typed.

  x-(

3:28 PM me: Most laptops have a battery status indicator. If is says 40% battery remaining (or less) than you are damaging the battery.

  Is that any help?

3:29 PM John: anki looks like it might be good, but since I already have typed 700 some crs into quizlet I think I'll stick to that.

  okay. that's what I thought you meant. So you should plug your computer in if it is at 40%?

 me: O.K. I like it because it's cross-platform, and you can share quiz sets

  yes

3:30 PM John: got to go. by

  cross-platform? shared across computers

 me: O.K., bye

 John: that was Mark

  ~Amy

 me: Who am I typing to ???

 John: Jessie

3:31 PM me: I'm starting to wonder here...

 John: nonono

  Kristie. truly

  Amy is telling you silly things.

  DONT LISTEN TO HER!!!!!!

  just we have 3 computers with gmail up and I'm trying to control Mark ~Amy

 me: O.K....

 John: I should get back to work now.

  Kristie

3:32 PM me: Me too, 73.

 John: FEAZLE DORP

  I enjoyed having this chat session. signed Kristie

  KRISTIE'S THE PROBLEM

  ~Amy

  Every weird thing stated is Mark aka Feazle dorp

  Its Amy

3:33 PM believe me

  Mark, quit!!!

  BY ~Mark

  Finally Marks off!!!

3:34 PM He is so annoying

 me: O.K., this was the most interesting chat I've had in a long time.

 John: that was Mark too.

 me: That's what I thought

 John: I am not off!!!!!

3:35 PM me: By the way, if you have three people typing to me, I have three people (Beth, Ethan and me watching this :D)

 John: next time dont fix Mark's copter. he keeps flying it into my head! x-(

3:36 PM me: So sorry, I taught him how to fix it on Sunday!

3:37 PM John: HEY I never flew it into your head!!!

 me: Wait.. is that how it got broken?

 John: as you can see, Mark easily gets bottled energy that he exudes on his sisters as they peacefully are walking through life.

  I didnt!!1

3:38 PM me: Oh yes, we don't have anything like that around here! ;)

3:39 PM John: That;s because Ethan's hair was sticking up last night!

  I might call Beth soon - Mark

  DONT LISTEN TO MARK

 me: You know he's watching this, right?

3:40 PM John: That is so off topic.

  ugh, Mark is making this all up himself. If you want to get any school done you might want to just close gmail completely except that you might find this too amusing. ~ actual Amy

  THAT IS NOT OFF TOPIC

 me: Who is off topic?!!!

 John: HER

  HIM

  Mark and Ethan of course.

  Kristie

  HER

  HEr

  HER

  Her

3:41 PM NOT ME

  Obviously the all caps things are Mark.

  her

  her

  her

  not me

  that is actual real live Amy

3:42 PM me: This has afforded quite a bit of amusement, but I really have to finish my Harvard computer class (next class: how to hack Google chat! ;), so goodbye.

 John: bye. Kristie

  BYYYYYYYYYYYYY

  Kristie's off

#include

{ 

Printf("

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, let that serve as an example to you!

By the way, a couple of notes: I changed all the names. I did some minor spelling/format corrections (I left 

most of it as typed), and, I was just kidding about the hacking as you can see from the ;). (Though I am taking CS50)

Also, the responses don't always line up with the questions, because I can only type so fast.

Enjoy!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

\n");

return 0;

}

Oops, sorry, too much C programming ;P

2 KW motherboard

A while back I posted about a ridiculously large computer power supply. Alas, it was posted on April 1st.

This however was not posted on April first, and is really rather amazing.

This sort of marketing I enjoy;

I can possibly appreciate this somewhat more than most, having done a certain amount with electronics.

At around 2 volts, the percent of voltage drop can be appreciable, and with it comes heat. 

By the way, at the time of this post the motherboard has not been released. When it is, I think it likely the price tag may unfortunately scale with the power handling. It may not to a great degree, but I think it likely.

Some of my more interesting pictures...

Here's a general collection of pictures (not necessarily photos) that I liked for one reason or another. Some were chosen for quality, others for content, (such as humor), and many for both.
Enjoy!

View all

Get your own

The photos were all taken with a Canon PowerShot G10 except for a few early ones that were taken with a PowerShot G7, and the fireworks photos, which I took with my father's 5D MK II.

If you do not have shockwave flash, click the link below: 

https://picasaweb.google.com/103231218926673265377/Highlights?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIPsjPXZkcuoOQ&feat=directlink

Western Night

For Labor Day this year we went over to a friends' house for a western themed evening. We had a great time, and it was enjoyed by everyone. Here are some photos, starting off with a group photo and some photos of what people were wearing:

This was me for a total of about two minutes...

This is what I looked like for the rest of the evening.
(By the way, I seem to be in a disproportionate number of photos in this post,
but, on the other hand, I usually don't have any of me, because I'm taking the photos,
so maybe it will average out all right)

Dinner was excellent, and western themed as well, with a sprinkling of green jalapeño peppers, which was appreciated by some more than others ;) Some photos from dinner:

Everybody smile!

That's me!

And plenty of humor, fellowship, and good fun to go around.

Though for some more than others

A little girl from the prairie...

And last, but certainly not least, the dancing:

As will happen when you have people different heights, we had  the occasional height mismatch...

But, the dancing was enjoyed by all, (except perhaps two boys who became invisible at the first possible opportunity!)

(I won't say who)

Apologies for the (out of focus) video, this was the next to last dance, and people were getting tired and hot, but this gives a better idea of how the dance goes than the photos.

And, winding up, a final group photo.

Fake or Foto?

Here's a fun challenge to test your critique skills:

http://area.autodesk.com/fakeorfoto/challenge

I scored 9 out of 12 my first time, but I couldn't view one of the images full size, so I had to guess off the thumbnail.

The current presidency

When you do a Google search for "Obama is a ", here are Google's top suggestions:

Might that say anything about our current president?
Conversely, a search for "Ron Paul is ", has "Ron Paul is winning" as the top suggestion.

Somewhat interesting...

First week of swim practice...

I just got this e-mail from my coach...

All:

Just a quick reminder that we start workout on Monday, August 27th at

6:30 a.m. at Audrey Moore.  We will be swimming from 6:30-8:00 a.m.

then you will have 15 minutes to be changed and ready for Cross Fit

training from 8:15-9:00 a.m.  If you are not out of the water, changed

and ready for dryland at 8:15 a.m., you will be running laps for 45

minutes.

Cross Fit instructor is ****.  Any messing around will result

in your removal from the dryland group...and you'll be running laps

the rest of workout.

Make sure you have sneakers, shorts and t-shirt plus refill your water

bottles.  Should be challenging but fun.

Make sure you order / pick up any missing training equipment ASAP.

If you are not familiar with cross fit, you can visit their website

at;  http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html#WOD

Check out the links for some of the exercises listed below (in the

link above) that we will be doing so you are somewhat familiar with

them before we start.  Some of the exercises are done in combinations

of 3 & 4 exercises with even some sprint running in between.  (You're

gonna be sore).  Some exercises are done for time (as many reps as you

can do in X seconds) and others are done as sets of 10-20 reps

Air Squats

Box Jump Variations

Burpee Demo

Dip

Double Unders

Dumbbell Split Lifts

Hand Stand Push-ups (maybe)

Jumping Squats (probably with med ball though)

Knees to elbows

L-sit demo

Medicine Ball Cleans

Overhead squats (with dumbbells or med ball)

Pull-up

Push-up

Wall Ball

Walking Lunges

That should be enough to get you started...

See you Monday.

Audio embedding tracks

Well, I think I've finally figured out how to embed audio well. Here's a test audio track that I made, it's not especially good as I made it up as I went along, but it'll do for a test.

One of the many reasons I don't work in the kitchen

I complimented my sister on her nice smiley faces...

(can't you see them?)

And was soundly berated that it was piping, bunting and drapes!

CPU benchmarking

A while back I posted a video about replacing my CPU cooler and overclocking my CPU. It's currently running at about 3.42 GHz. It was originally a 2.4 GHz CPU, so this is a substantial overclock, especially considering it's using a $20 air cooler! I have been testing it out and having fun with it, I downloaded SuperPi, and ran their benchmarks. Interestingly enough, I had the fastest Intel Core 2 Quad Q6000 series processor!

I ran both the 1M benchmark and the 32 M benchmark, and here's where they came int:

32 M: http://www.superpi.net/Scores/?action=searchScores&test=-12&vendor=&platform=&series=Core+2+Quad+Q6000+series&rpp=20

1 M: http://www.superpi.net/Scores/?action=searchScores&test=-7&vendor=&platform=&series=Core+2+Quad+Q6000+series&rpp=20

On the other hand, people with i7's and i5's are doing it in about half the time mine will, but that's a different matter. I did find it interesting that different CPU's with comparable clock speeds and memory could have such vastly different results. Another interesting thing to note was that my CPU was faster than the fastest AMD CPU! (It was a floating point test)

When we have company over...

When we have company over...

;D

My current 3d models

These are some of my better Blender renders. I created the top two from scratch myself from start to finish, and the asteroid was based off of Andrew Price's tutorial.

Here's a satellite I made in Blender from start to finish. It's for Project 2.6, and this is the current render.

Here's a quick piano render I did one morning. It's not very good, and there's one obvious flaw visible right off! But, overall once I finish it I think it will look nice. 

Below is an asteroid I made in space. At some point I plan to make it collide with the satellite!

Audio system

I'm a bit of an audiophile, and was pretty excited when I got a chance to take home for a day a real honest-to-goodness Mcintosh amplifier! This is my current audio setup:

30 Watt Mcintosh amp

2 Polk monitor 40 speakers in parallel

Close up of the driver tube

Mcintosh amp end view

If you are wondering why the speakers are stacked on top of each other, and in parallel it's because this is a monoblock amplifier, and I only have one :( It still sounds great though. I've got the two eight ohm speakers connected in parallel so I could connect them to the four ohm tap on the amp. This is what I have been working on at my job, and I got to take it home to listen to it once I had fixed it. It had been rewired to some weird design with horrible distortion, and I had to rewire it to the original Mcintosh schematic, which took a while, and then I had to go through and troubleshoot what I did wrong, which took significantly longer!

At any rate, I've run hundreds of audio tracks through it in the short time I've been listening to it, and it sounds great! Now I have to take it back tomorrow...     ; /

Interesting computer

One of the more unusual and coolest computers I've seen in a while:



Click the picture to see more!

End of swim season slideshow

For the end of the Summer swim season team banquet I made a slideshow. I did it a little differently this year, and I like how it came out for the most part. The photos were all taken by me or my father. We showed it with a projector, and I set up my speakers for the sound track. It seemed to be popular, and I enjoyed making it. Here it is:

My submarine...

Many years ago... (well when I was about 8), I thought it would be really neat to have a submarine. So, I of course 'designed' one: