Archive for November, 2006

Trivia

Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Ben and I both know how much cash you get from the “Bank Error In Your Favor” card in Monopoly. We don’t know how we can possibly actually know that.

Paul on compliments

Wednesday, November 29th, 2006

Paul: I defer to Joe on that [Japanese language], because he's way awesomer at the language than I am.
Joe: No...
Paul: Yeah, he's even got the whole cultural thing down where he can't accept a compliment.
Joe: No... I got that from you!!
Paul: No...

Ben on bus errors

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

As my program walks cheerfully off the end of an array and blows up yet again

Joe, stop taking the lemming approach to memory access

Ryan on difficulty settings

Friday, November 24th, 2006

Starting our inaugural game of Wii Golf
<Jeff> Expert!!
<Ryan> I would consider no other difficulty.

Dad on conglomerates

Friday, November 24th, 2006

Mom and Dad discuss how Tia Rosa-branded bread is actually made by Sara Lee.
<Dad> Who's Thomas'?
<Mom> Thomas' is Thomas'.
<Dad> Ahh, nothin' is nothin' anymore!

DJ on weekend boundaries

Monday, November 20th, 2006

3:05am
<krel> why the heck is everyone else awake?
<DJCapelis> because while I'm awake it's still the weekend but the moment I go to sleep it's monday again.

2.05 upgrade killed my brackets

Sunday, November 19th, 2006

I’ve used & lt; and & gt; to create angle-brackets around speaker names in many of my quote posts. I upgraded to 2.05 the other day, and since then it seems Wordpress has been over-interpreting entities. I now have to use & amp;lt; and & amp;gt; to get the brackets to show up in browsers. The WP edit box shows the same as it used to; the change is in the processing between database and client. Anybody else seen this?

Eric on targetted advertising

Sunday, November 5th, 2006

<eric> you know how sometimes there are pop-up advertisements that know where you are logged on from in the world?
» like "Meet hot girls in San Diego"
» which now for me say "Meet hot girls in Tokyo"
» So if you log in from Vatican City, does it say "Meet barely legal girls in Vatican City TONIGHT!" ?

Mechanics and electromagnetism, together at last in neurobiochemistry

Sunday, November 5th, 2006

Potassium, sodium, chlorine, and calcium ions in nerve cells have osmotic and electrostatic forces acting on them. Normally they can’t cross the cell membrane, but when ion channels open they rush into/out of the cell trying to reach osmotic equilibrium, and carrying their charge with them. This changes the cell’s voltage with respect to the environment; this is how the neuron fires.

The tendency of these ions to flow is actually a chemical effect, not an electrical one: osmosis is the primary driver. But the tendency to flow in this way can be quantified and calculated exactly like a voltage difference across very high resistance. Even though the ions want to flow to equalize this so-called voltage differential, ordinarily they can’t.

It’s potential potential, in the fullest physics sense of both words.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love cognitive science.

upd 8 nov: revised first para, sorry for bumping everyone’s rss feeds

Ben on ASL

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

<kelsey> You know how you say "heart" in sign language?
<ben> Very quietly?