Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

So, I was pondering the significance of a penny I dropped today and left on the ground as a seepage of cash from the U.S. economy and I thought… how bad would it be if everyone in the US was losing a penny a month:
295,734,134 [people in US] * 12 [pennies / year] = $35,488,096.08 [per year]

So now I see this news (also note: Bush thinks redesigning currency for the blind would cause undue hardship to the vending machine industry now that’s foresight) via bb that the U.S. now has new rules outlawing the melting of pennies (since they are worth more as metal than as coinage, once you get past a certain volume even moreso for nickels). Please note, we live in a world where people get by picking through other people’s garbage, sometimes their neighbor’s garbage, sometimes another country’s garbage…

So back to the point, let’s say you had a scheme to make 12 cents for ever dollar in pennies you melt, off of free energy you get from burning the rubber insulation from thrown out electrical cables. You would have to melt $83,333.34 in pennies to make this crime break even with the maximum fine of $10,000 (this assumes that the 5 year jail time is nothing, because you have crazy time on your hands anyway)… And if you don’t get caught you have $10k. Now I would like to see how this could possibly be true in any way shape or form as it seems that the alloyed center and plated faces of pennies and nickels would be a monster to try and sort out from a stoichiometric standpoint of how do I get a mound of each individual metal in a high enough purity, but at this point you begin to see the absurdity of this legislation in the face of the first monetary guess of the US straight losing $34M in pennies each year.

According to my guesstimate of each man woman and child losing one penny per month in this great country, we have then ~425 people who could do this scheme and perhaps form an underground network of renegade metallurgists starting penny and nickel derived metal suppliers.

Or we could just drop the penny and nickel from currency in general, have their value go up as collectibles in eBayland and we all sit pretty. Or maybe mint a Franklin 18 cent piece for good measure and drop the dime.

Or we could actually get that inflation starts with the whole printing money (in all its various guises) thing that the government likes to do in order to buy stuff on a ‘no money down, no payments till somebody else is in charge’ payment plan that seems to work for just about everyone in the U.S.

Or we could just laugh.

So… first, Scott “Spot” Draves’ work has always enlightened me, but here (google vid) is the first time I’ve seen his work explained for a nearly layman audience… err well a crowd of people who work at Google Inc. So I guess the audience isn’t exactly 1st graders.

Scott Draves first came on my radar with his electric sheep screensaver, which was just so darn cool. His work with Iterated Fractal Systems still blows people’s minds. I see his early images show up on del.icio.us and reddit even though they’re nearly a decade old. His current stuff is higher resolution and even cooler. Watch the video, I think you’ll like it.

Ok, and then, this thing: Miss Russian Army beauty contest which I just stumbled upon randomly looking for a cool mil.ru logo. I could go into depth on the variety of footwear that seems out of place in full combat uniform in the first pic, …but I won’t. I wouldn’t want people thinking I have some sort of fascination with women and guns… … … . Well… uh…

Sometimes, I get myself in a bind and find myself sinking under more and more anxiety as I put things off further and further until there’s no hope and I just have to confront whatever the issue is and deal with it. Usually, in this world, this revolves around anything that could possibly be labeled a responsibility or a nicety. I think generally either a) I spread myself too thin or b) I simply have little skill at finishing what I start.

Now, that reads like a rather glum statement on life, in that, in point of fact as these very binds drive me to the edges of paralyzing anxiousness and possible nervous mania (my own particular vice, or disease, or dis-ease, or disorder, or whatever) I have a whole bunch of other things flying around that I finish on time (or nearly on time or occasionally early) and generally keep up appearances. This sort of feeling has pretty much been with me since around the 3rd grade or so, which might be the point at which teachers start looking at certain students as ‘good’ in comparison to the others. At which point you can try to live up to whatever this goodness standard is in their eyes or just give up, depending on your view of the teacher.

What is surprising is how important that last bit (keeping up appearances) can be, in fact, I figure any future employer will zoom in on this little statement of my own personal foibles and either think well, he’s just like everybody else only he admitted it online or he totally doesn’t have the ability to float in our sink or swim environ. I would bet that most people interested in my skills at handling things would only be worried about the percentage of things I complete and handle in an orderly manner and the number of things that I handle in a disorderly manner. I think generally, I handle everything in my life at about 80/20 but it’s just that the 20% can really kill depending on where it is, checkbook A, class X, research Y, job Z, extracurricular Ω, relationship Q…

So… where am I going with this… what is the title of this post referring to, what stopped?
(more…)

Let’s see, what have I learned these past weeks.

If you have the same RAM, same part number and everything, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the RAM will work. Because the RAM still may have changed between production lines. That said, Kingston is really nice and within driving distance of LA.

Don’t eat a massive tuna-salad sandwich right before going to bed.

The Bangles song “Manic Monday” was written by Prince. More info here on Wikipedia.

A bunch of things about algorithms, which I am hesitant to share, but basically that class’s homework reads like those frightening questions that Google asks when they try to assimilate new hires. (I mean assimilate in the nicest possible way, and in no way would I ever compare Google to a Star Trek the Next Generation entity.)

How to blow out your eardrums in 3D with OpenAL with headphones on. Note that a computer can blow your eardrums much quicker than let’s say a big guitar amp turned up to 11.

I get too much email of no consequence.

The book Infinite Jest is better the second time around.

There are far too many songs with robot in the title, but if you must listen to one, I suggest the one by the studiofix, but you’d have to purchase their album to hear it or check out a live version here.

Ok, I wish everyone happy holiday times. Hang loose.