steve's alternative recursion

thieves like us

I think i like this song/band, but its getting hard to tell what i like, rather than what amuses me… its like the difference between laughing at someone or with ‘em (or myself) is becomming blurry…

regardless: 2thumbs^

¿i need a new laptop? update:added lenovo x300

i had high expectations for apples new ultra-portable laptop, considering apple seems to be one of the few companies that puts the extra effort into designing their PCs.

and here it is, the macbook air:

it seems everyone thinks its a new gift from god, after the iphone…

but lets actually take a step back and notice there are non-apple products out there…

issues with the air:

uses old 65nm cpu… what about penryn?

ram is almost free, yet its impossible to upgrade the air to 4GB

only 1 usb, no gigabit ethernet, no sd-card slot…

1.8″ IDE hard disk, so not possible to install a 7200rpm drive.

thin and light, sure… but a big footprint footprint, could have less unused space around the screen and keyboard.

A technically bigger laptop like the R500 will actually seem to be smaller in person since it’s more compact.

question: does it use UEFI 2.0 so one could install vista64SP1? other macbooks do not.

I think I’ll wait for penryn sff, and frankly the macbook air seemed large in person… thin yes, but has a large footprint, a 13.3″ display with a significant border around the screen.

I might go for another 12.1 like the toshiba R500, but again, I’ll wait for penryn.

mystery buggish thing

spotted by me and a friend a year ago:

photographed in the mountain forests here:

blind incest

bbc:

Twins in the UK seperated at birth Learn of their relation inadvertantly after marrying each other.

me:

One might think the same exact birthday, similar apperance and the fact they both were adopted might make them curious before he buys the ring.

optical.illusion.freaky.friday.fun

I have no idea why, but the dots non-adjacent to the one i’m looking at seem to blink black.

empty class

We have all seen graphs similar to this, but i think most of us tend to view our consumption as necessary, or at least useful.

Gasoline lawn mowers pollute roughly as much in an hour as a car does in 100 miles, not to mention all of the pollution and resources wasted in the machines themselves. (granted; lawn-mowing gas consumption is less than 1% of consumption by passenger vehicles in net)

environmentilists say to use push mowers.

I’m going to go one step further, the last step, and say why have a “lawn”?

Is nature such an eyesore?

Does the fact that you put effort and resources into your yard impress the neighbors?

Is someone who’s impressed with resources and efforts spent on your yard worth impressing?

Is it practical to specifically plant something and set up some sort of psuedo-ecosystem on your land that requires external maintanance?

Yes i realize people do this to get respect and essentially gain socio-economic class in the local scene, as is probably all consumption if you think about it enough.

But lawn upkeep is one of the class-climbing things that seems easy to cross off the list without any real loss, especially now days when playing the environmental card can bump you up more than what little a well kept lawn ever could.

puzzle.2b

draw 7 points on a plane

such that exactly 3 lines can be drawn which contain only 2 points.

Puzzle.2a

for all n larger than 5:

how can you arrange n points (not all in the same plane),

such that the plane of any 3 points contains at least four?

Puzzle.1b

Exactly how big is the smallest circle which can contain 3 non-overlapping coins with radii ‘r’ ?

solutions and/or hints may appear in the comments.

optical illusion of the day

freaky:

puzzle.1a

Exactly how big is the smallest (in area) triangle which can contain 3 non-overlapping coins with radii of ‘r’?

solutions and/or hints may appear in the comments.