The Great Lakes Geek has always been a fan of Alice in Wonderland - but maybe for different reasons than most. In college I was exposed to the mathematics of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass are loaded with logical puzzles. So are the the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky."
Dodgson was a pretty good mathematician, and not just in logic. He also did good work in geometry and matrix algebra.
This has been around for awhile but it's still really cool. Alan Becker created a flash animation where the animation fights back against the animator.
It takes a few second to load but it's worth a view. I wonder how long it took him to do this.
John Williams’ score for the original 1977 Star Wars movie has been declared the best science fiction movie soundtrack of all time in a poll conducted by popular sci-fi website Totalscifionline.com. The score to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, composed by James Horner, came in second place, while Vangelis’ haunting electro soundtrack for Blade Runner - recently voted the best sci-fi movie of all time - completed the top three.
Matt McAllister, editor of Totalscifionline.com said: “With his score for Star Wars, John Williams created one of the most iconic and unforgettable soundtracks of all time. Most people could identify the movie from just a few bars of the main title music, and Williams’ work across all of the Star Wars movies really does create a palpable sense of intergalactic space battles and galaxy-spanning adventures. For many moviegoers, this is now the definitive sound of science fiction.”
Top Ten:
1) Star Wars (John Williams)
2) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (James Horner)
3) Blade Runner (Vangelis)
4) Star Trek the Motion Picture (Jerry Goldsmith)
5) Flash Gordon (Queen)
6) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Richard and Johann Strauss, György Ligeti)
7) The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Herrmann)
8) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (John Williams)
9) Aliens (James Horner)
10) Transformers the Movie (Vince DiCola / Stan Bush)
Notice to all employees! Due to the hard economic times and otherwise depressing state of the world today, all personnel will now be required to at least look happy while working. Company-approved supplies will be provided to each employee at little or no cost. Here is the new low-cost, company-approved solution to cope with multiple priorities and assignments! Each employee will be supplied 2 paper clips and rubber bands.
Assemble items as shown
Apply as shown. Enjoy your day. This new office equipment will help you to reach the end of a productive work day with a smile on your face!
How many games in the NCAA tourney? Assuming we don't count the play-in game for the 64th spot you can count up 32+ 16+ 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 and get 63. (add 1 for the play-in game)
It's easy to determine the number of games played to determine a champion in a single elimination tournament. Say there are 64 teams in the tournament. When a team loses they are out so 63 teams must lose to determine the champ. That means 63 games are needed.
In general, if there are N teams in a single elimination tournament, you need to play N-1 games to get a champ.
If you want to make sure you have a perfect bracket you'd need to do every possible combination. With the play-in game, there are 64 games played.
There are two possible outcomes for each game so the possible outcomes are 2 to the 64th power or about 18 quintillion.
What do Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Spirit, Captain Marvel and The Hulk all have in common? If you said they have alter egos, look good in spandex, and helped shape American values, you're right.
Check out Zap! Pow! Bam! The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950 at the Maltz Museum through January 4th. Lots of one-of-a-kind stuff and fun, interactive stuff for kids.
Move your mouse over the screen, and you will have the impression, you are flying over the mountains. Aim the mouse arrow at a mountain top. Also, try moving it left to right. Get your Dramamine ready!
I wonder how long it took for the people to figure out how much the check was for?
For those of you who are mathematically challenged, 0.002 + e raised to the 2pi power is 535.4936555. The limit of the sum, as n goes to infinity, of 1 over 2 to the n'th power is 1.
So the check is made out for $536.49. But you already knew that, right?
HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam . Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands . HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany . In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.
Take a look at Hema's product page You can't order anything; it's in Dutch, but wait a few seconds and watch what happens.
There’s something about Halloween that brings out the inner geek. Whether you live in a castle or a dungeon, your pals at Psooodough Mart have dug up a wacky list of (mostly) techie toys designed to set the stage for a geeky Halloween experience.
I know all about Black 47. That's the Irish Band named after the most tragic year of the Irish potato famine - 1847. But I had never heard of System 47.
Turns out it is a Star Trek reference as explained at schlock.net: "Midway through Star Trek: The Next Generation, the number 47 began appearing on Star Trek seemingly anywhere the writers needed a number. Shields would drop to 47 percent; 47 people would die in a disaster; 47 minutes would remain until certain death."
So when the guy behind MeWho.com created his Star Trek screen save, he named it System 47.
It's a free download (only 1.3 MB) and you can always uninstall.
Here's two fun websites to test your reaction times. First is a hit the penguin with a bat - go for distance. Click on Bigfoot to start and then again to swing.
Have you heard the buzz about the new ringtone that supposedly only teens can hear?
The story is that some store owners were playing a sound that was supposed to keep mosquitoes away and found that teens could hear it too but not adults. So they started playing it to keep teens from loitering.
But teens can be industrious so someone figured that if they could hear it but not adults, it would make a perfect cellphone ringtone - one that teachers and other adults couldn't hear but their friends could.
The Great Lakes Geek spent too many years with the amps cranked to 11 to hear much of anything anymore but I was still able to detect this sound. Can you?
This is a great reference. Who would have thought that Britney Spears was such an expert in Schrödinger's equation and Quantum Physics. But she must be. It's on the Internet so it must be true, right?
The lessons are actually very good and the Britney connection makes it fun. These guys did a great job with their site.
Maybe you can get your teen son to do his homework now.
This has been around for awhile but it's still really cool. Alan Becker created a flash animation where the animation fights back against the animator. 
