Category: Old

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Things 5: Maze, Look Around You, Cats

(Originally sent December 2007)

Special Christmas bumper edition! Kind of.

Next week’s film:
I’m going to see I Am Legend some time after Christmas. Mainly because I have a strange obsession with films about being the last man on earth. I think it might be a metaphorical way to deal with one’s own mortality.
Imdb rating:   7.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 62%

Prognosis:  It’s a big-budget last-man-on-earth film! And he has a dog! I don’t see how this can go wrong.

A Puzzle:
The image below is an incredibly elegant non-abelian maze. It should be pretty self-explanatory. (Click to view printable size).

Answer to last week’s puzzle:
Half way.

A Quote:
My favourite quote of this year is one I overheard on IRC:
[13:22] <ChocoJon> just being nice
[13:22] <ChocoJon> is there something wrong with that?
[13:22] <Norgg> Yes.
[13:22] <Norgg> Nice people killed my parents.

A Link:
I was trying to work out what would be the ultimate link for the Christmas bumper version of this thing, and then I realised it was probably my own meta-site, from where you can find all things that are cool according to me – comics art and videos I’ve made, photobucket with every image I’ve ever needed to share with someone on a forum, and my geocities site with everything I thought that the net needed to know in 1999.
http://tim.mannveille.com

A video:
Look Around You, episode 1: Maths. Episodes of this series are only about 9 minutes long. The first two at least are well worth seeing.

A picture:
For a Christmas bonanza of image fun, I’ve put together my 10 favourite cat-caption pictures from 2007, starting with the cat that inspired the most popular blog on wordpress, I Can Has Cheezburger. You can see them here.

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Things 4: Dog Run, Wire Hang, Cat Herd

(Originally sent December 2007)

This week’s film – one line review
Hitman came close to the so-bad-it’s-good mark, but seemed mainly aimed at those familiar with the game, and so didn’t really work for me.

Next week’s film
I’m going to see  Enchanted some time next week.
Imdb rating:  8.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 94%


Watch Enchanted Trailer in Entertainment |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Prognosis: The trailer made it look somewhat meta-trite and obvious, but the animated parts look beautiful and the reviews are insanely positive, so I guess it must be good.

Puzzle
How far can a dog run into the woods?

Answer to last week’s puzzle
Because once you’ve found it, you stop looking.

Quote
In the vein of the brilliant quotes presented at the Riverside [A recent work-related meeting during which some mixed metaphor quotes had been presented – metatim 25/04/2010]:
Ross [my university flat-mate]: “I wouldn’t trust him with a barge-pole.”

Link
Wire Hang is a beautifully simple and original concept for a 2-minute-distraction kind of game. I’ve never seen what happens beyond the one-block point – does the game end? http://www.220.jp/~d2ac/wirehang/

Video
Another great viral video – if you’ve not seen it before, or in fact even if you have, have fun trying to guess what it’s actually advertising before the end:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MaJDK3VNE


Picture
Below is a photo I took of my best free-running buddy, running into a spot of trouble.

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Old

Things 3: Overheard, Glasses, Illusion

(Originally sent in December 2007)

This week’s film – one line review
The Golden Compass takes very naturally to film and clearly has a lot of talent poured into it; unfortunately the script itself contains the worst screen writing I’ve heard since Eragon.

Next week’s film
I’m going to see Hitman because for some reason I can’t get enough of films about human weapons that end up fighting their creators.
Imdb rating: 6.5
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 14%!

Hitman Trailer

Prognosis: Judging by the Rotten Tomatoes rating, this may well breach the so-bad-it’s-good barrier.

A Puzzle
Why do you always find things in the last place you look?

Answers to previous puzzles
Answer to puzzle from Things 1: A number less than 103. I won’t tell you what it is because it’s too good a puzzle to spoil.
Answer to puzzle from Things 2: 1.

A Quote
Digby, circa 1992: “I had one, right, and then I had another one – funny how they come in ones…”

A Link
Actually, it’s just more quotes.
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/pages/mostpopular.html

A video
My favourite viral. I think I’ve worked out how most of it was done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&v=-prfAENSh2k&gl=GB

A picture
An example of the most powerful optical illusion I know.

Categories
Old

Things 2: Acoustic standing waves, Aurora Sounds, Mammatus Clouds

(Originally sent in November 2007)

This week’s film, one line review
Unfortunately the story in Sleuth (2007) was changed from the original, so it was a bad story badly told.

I also saw the anime film “5 centimeters per second“, which was insanely beautiful.

Next week’s film
I’m going to see The Golden Compass some time next week. It’s too soon for ratings to appear on imdb or rotten tomatoes, although I am keen to see it just to boycott this boycott:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

Golden Compass Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vMmf8YALbc

Prognosis: The weakest of an otherwise amazing trilogy, it’s worth going to see this just to make sure the rest get made.

A Puzzle
If you forget to turn off your away notifier in Outlook and then send an email to someone that also has an away notifier on, does this cause an infinite loop? And if not, why not? Do you get an away notifier if you email yourself?

A Quote
LaPlace: “An intelligence that, at a given instant, could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings that make it up, if moreover it were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, would encompass in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atoms. For such an intelligence nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its eyes.”

A Link
The Golden Compass was called Northern Lights when it was first published.

These days there is not much left in the realm of human experience that science cannot explain, and I find myself extremely fascinated by the few things that are left.

Here’s an interesting link that relates to both of these things:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=923

Perhaps needless to say, there’s a lot of other interesting stuff there.

A video
Continuing the audio science theme, here’s a beautiful demonstration of acoustic standing waves:

A picture
Mammatus clouds are extremely rare. They also look extremely photoshopped. See below and judge for yourself.

There’s lots more over at Dark Roasted Blend.