Eyelashes

Apparently I have long eyelashes.  I've been told that by a few people.  All women interestingly enough, probably because they spend much more time on them than men and would notice that sort of thing.  I had actually never noticed this or thought about it until I had heard this a couple times.  From my own everyday observations it seems like eyelashes always stay at a set length and I don't notice them grow.  Obviously they do grow, so I was curious about the differences between eyelashes and other hair.

Apparently eyelashes are very sensitive and are used for protecting the eye from debris and insects that might get too close to the eye.  Things that do come too close and brush against the eyelashes can cause the eyelid to reflexively close.  They take about six to eight weeks to completely regrow if they're plucked or fall out naturally.  Eyelash and eyebrow hairs grow in cycles which is different from hair on other parts of the body.  This is why they never seem to increase much in length and don't continually grow longer like the hair on the scalp.

Women often use cosmetics to enhance the look or length (or both) of eyelashes.  Mascara, eyelash extensions and eyelash curlers are all foreign concepts to me but are commonly used.  They may be jealous of Stuart Muller who apparently has an eyelash that is 6.99cm long!  Maybe a little bit excessive and I think it's only a single eyelash...

Bees, Wasps and the like

Somewhat recently I was randomly stung by a bee.  I've been stung a couple times before but this one was quite strange.  I had just finished some golfing and we had been driving for a few minutes with the windows down when I felt a sharp prick on my neck.  Somehow I had brought along an unhappy guest and he had been biding his time before he decided to sting me!  I quickly swatted it away and it died shortly after but it had me thinking about the differences between our stinging (usually non) friends.

Most people have probably heard that bees can only sting you once before dying and I found that apparently this is true.  Wasps on the other hand often are able to sting multiple times.  The insects that are commonly known as hornets and yellow jackets actually fall under the category of wasps.  I learned that there are actually several categories and many different species of wasps.

In general the way to tell the difference between a bee and a wasp is that bees are often hairy (though some aren't) whereas wasps are mostly hairless.  Wasps also usually have more elongated bodies.  Bees collect pollen from flowers and have a diet of nectar and pollen.  Yellow jackets are the ones that tend to be the most annoying to humans as they'll show up around people eating food outside and around garbage.

Some other random facts I learned.  Only females can sting because apparently the stinger is "a modified egg laying apparatus".  Some wasps primarily feed on other insects.  Parasitic wasps lay their eggs in/on other insects, killing the host as the offspring develop.

Traffic Light Meanings

The other day I was driving and came upon a flashing yellow light which I had never actually seen before.  I had a memory of it being in my new driver's manual but since I hadn't had to use that knowledge it had slipped from my memory.  I slowed down and "proceeded with caution" which when I looked it up later was apparently what I was supposed to do.  While looking it up I started reading the Wikipedia page on traffic light signalling and found out a lot of things I didn't know.

The first most general thing I learned is that traffic lights across the world can be very different!  I haven't done any driving outside of North America so it was interesting to read about the quirks of different traffic light schemes.  There are various ways to indicate turning, different circumstances where flashing lights are used and a few ways to indicate a changing light.  If it interests you I'd recommend just reading through the Wikipedia page, but I'll list some of the things I found interesting.

Flashing green lights mean different things in different places which can be dangerous in some situations.  In parts of Canada a flashing green light, also called an advanced green, means that you have permission to make a left turn and that the opposing traffic has a red light.  In BC however it means that the traffic light is pedestrian controlled and other than that is the same as a normal green light!  For people driving in BC from other parts of Canada this could definitely cause some confusion.  In some parts of China flashing green means "reduce speed now".

Apparently in Tianjin, China they have a horizontal bar traffic light system.  The bar is green, yellow or red and shrinks to indicate the time remaining for that colour.  A disadvantage of this system is that color blind people will have trouble differentiating between the colours, although apparently people who are colour blind are not allowed to have a license in China!

One other thing that I wasn't aware of was what's called the "yellow trap".  It occurs when a driver is waiting at a green light for a left turn and the light facing them turns yellow but the opposing light remains green.  The driver may expect that the oncoming traffic will be stopping shortly and begin to make a left turn possibly resulting in an accident.  I actually didn't know that some lights in opposite directions weren't timed to switch to yellow and then red at the same time.  From the article, "Some of this stems from difficulties programming older traffic signal control software to prevent the yellow trap, but much stems from traffic engineers or technicians not understanding the yellow trap hazard, or believing it is not a serious problem."

Apostrophes and Years

I had never really paid much attention to it before, but I've noticed that sometimes people will write 1600's or 1970's and include an apostrophe while other times it would be omitted (1970s).  Thinking about it logically it doesn't really make sense to have an apostrophe since it usually denotes possession.  In the sentence "The 1970's were a great decade.", neither the year 1970 nor the decade is owning anything.  Interestingly the Chrome spellchecker is flagging the 1970s as an error and the version with an apostrophe as ok.  Changing the setting between US English and British English doesn't seem to make a difference.

After doing some reading it appears that the answer is not completely straightforward.  It seems that in general it's a matter of style.  So if you decide to use an apostrophe then be consistent and use it all the time.  The same goes for if you decide not to.  It also seems that the apostrophe may be more prevalent in American English than British English.  I found some mentions that there is a convention to use an apostrophe for plural acronyms and words that don't have a natural plural, though I'm not completely convinced of this.

It seems like there could be some ambiguity with using an apostrophe.  For example "1970's hottest month was July."  In this case the individual year 1970 does own a hottest month, and this does not refer to the decade.  I suppose you would be able to figure it out from the context though.  Overall the message seems to be do what feels right and stick to your choice.

Leaves

Fall (or autumn if you prefer) has been here for quite some time already, and with it the changing of the leaves.  I realized that I don't actually know why the leaves on some trees change colours, though I felt like I should.

Most people can remember from school that leaves have their green colour because of chlorophyll which is used for photosynthesis.  However as summer ends the days begin to get shorter, so the trees don't have as much sunlight and they begin to start storing more nutrients in their roots.  As the chlorophyll leaves the leaves (hah) other pigments (yellow, orange, red) become much more prominent.

The yellow colours of leaves are always there, however they're normally overpowered by the green chlorophyll in the summer.  It's only when the chlorophyll is receding that the yellow colours start to become visible on the leaves.  So yellow is always there, but what about red?  Well not all trees produce red leaves, and the weather can have an effect on their brightness.

It turns out that some trees are able to tolerate direct sunlight better than others.  When nutrients are being transferred away from the leaves the trees are more susceptible to sunlight.  The red pigments in leaves help to protect the leaves and give the trees more time to absorb nutrients.

Why do balloons deflate?

When I was younger I was into circusy things and received a balloon pump, several balloons and a balloon animal book as a gift so that I could practice my craft.  Recently I discovered the pump and some leftover old balloons and decided to try my hand at it again.  One thing that I quickly found out is that old balloons pop very easily when you're trying to inflate or bend them...

Of the few that I was able to successfully inflate and shape, I noticed that over the next few days the air would slowly leak out of them.  Obviously I had noticed this before, but I had never thought too hard about it.  I figured there are probably small holes that the air leaks out of, but I had never actually looked it up.

Upon closer inspection I learned that balloons are "not perfectly air-tight".  So the air molecules can slowly go through the surface.  However you might be thinking, "If they can go out why can't they go back in?  Shouldn't it be about equal?".  Well the pressure is slightly higher inside the balloon and so to equalize it the molecules are pushed outwards.

Apparently Mylar balloons have smaller "holes" than latex balloons, so they will leak slower.  Also helium balloons will leak faster than regular balloons because the helium does not interact very much with anything else and so will be smaller than the entire molecules of air.  Since they're smaller they'll have an easier time escaping.  Apparently you can also get your helium balloons coated so that they stay inflated for a longer amount of time!

Raising a few eyebrows

I've always been jealous of people who can raise one eyebrow at a time.  Although there aren't any lucrative ways of using this talent (that I know of), I think it adds a little something extra to almost any facial expression.  Since I'm not able to move my eyebrows independently and I know people that "just can", I was curious if this was only genetic or could be a learned skill.

After some searching it seems as if some people just have the ability to individually move their eyebrows naturally, while others have taken a lot of time to learn how to do it through practice.  People also report only being able to raise either the left or right eyebrow by itself but not the other one!  It also doesn't seem to correspond with their handedness (funny word).

Supposedly anyone can learn to do it with enough practice.  For those who don't naturally have the skill, it takes time to learn how to separate the control of the muscles.  Spending some time each day for a few months and you too could be the proud owner of dexterous eyebrows.  Some people do it by holding one eyebrow down or even taping it to get a feel for what the muscles are doing.  Mentally you should focus on moving just one of them, at first maybe only slightly.  It can help to do this in front of a mirror so you can see how your face looks when you use your muscles in a certain way.

I'm probably not going to end up spending the time to learn how to do this but it could be a good activity if you find yourself bored at times in the day.  Maybe try to learn on the bus ride you take each day, as long as you don't mind a few people smirking in your direction.

Hockey Tape

I've played hockey quite a bit, though only roller and floor hockey, never ice.  Throughout this time I've taped my hockey sticks.  On the blades and on the top of the shaft.  I knew that taping the shaft would give you a better grip and the knob on the end can make it easier to hold onto.  But I'm embarrassed to say that I never really thought about why people tape the blade of the stick.

I guess it makes sense that since taping the shaft of the stick can give you a better grip on it that taping the blade can give you a better grip on the puck (or ball I suppose) and allow better stick handling.  Apparently taping the blade helps to protect against impact as well as water damage during game play.  If the tape is black (like the puck) it can help to distract the goalie or if it's on the goalie's stick then I believe I've seen it make it more difficult to tell if the puck crossed the line in some cases.

Less functional reasons include giving the stick a unique appearance or style or simply doing it out of superstition.  Also since taping the stick is simple and methodical it can help to distract the mind before a big game.

O hi

I was watching a Breaking Bad episode recently where the character Jesse is talking about possums.

Possum. Big, freaky, lookin' bitch. Since when did they change it to opossum? When I was comin' up it was just possum. Opossum makes it sound like he's irish or something. Why do they gotta go changing everything?

Now I've never actually seen a possum, or an opossum or whatever but I knew of the animal and had heard people say it both ways, so I too was curious.

The short version of the story is that the animal that lives in North America is called an opossum and possums are marsupials that live in Australia and some of the surrounding islands.  Apparently opossums were given their name back in the 1600s and in the late 1700s the Australian animal was named a possum because it looked like the American opossum.

However in the US, opossum is often shorted to just 'possum or possum which has created the confusion.  Visibly the two species are fairly different, though they are both marsupials.  For example possums have a furry tail while opossums have a hairless tail.  They are however both nocturnal omnivores that will "play possum" when under threat.

Opossum

Possum

Navel gazing

From time to time I notice that I have lint in my belly button.  I've always presumed it somehow got there from my clothes and I may have even considered collecting it at some point (never got around to it).  Fortunately for me others have also wondered this (and collected it!).

The general consensus seems to be that the lint is "an accumulation of cloth fibers that are scraped by body hair".  It also contains dust, fat, protein and sweat!  Believe it or not some scientists have done studies on this subject and have found that hair around the navel seems to correlate with more lint, although there were still a few hair free women that ended up with some.  This explains why it seems to affect men more than women, maybe also because men are more willing to talk about it!  The theory is that the hair around the belly button scrapes off clothing fibers and channels the lint to the belly button.

The colour of the lint tends to correlate with the colour of the clothing the person is wearing, with a common bluish-grey colour being the average of the colours of most clothes.  This is similar to what you would see with dryer lint.  Apparently belly button piercings seem to be effective at combating the lint.  There is also an alternative explanation.

My favourite part of looking into this was reading the website of the Guinness world record holder for the biggest collection of navel lint.  It's an amusing read and some of the comments he's received are quite funny as well.  He's been collecting his own lint since 1984 with an average of 3.03 milligrams per day.

By Design

I've been using iPads quite a bit lately at work and though I've never really been much of an "Apple guy" I find that the hardware is quite nice and overall I like the touch interface.  Some of the times products have tiny features that you don't really notice until they're missing, or working incorrectly.  One nice little touch I like on the iPad has to do with the volume button.  Now remember I'm not an Apple guy so this may have been around for a while and other products probably have done it first.

The tiny thing I noticed is that when I'm pressing and holding the up button on the volume it will go up one notch at a time.  However when I'm holding down it will go down a couple notches and then automatically go to zero, muting it.  Tiny, tiny feature, but I really appreciated the thought that went into it.  If someone is holding down the volume button for over a second they probably do want to mute the iPad and this gives them a nice shortcut.  However sometimes a feature is actually pretty great, but unfortunately is most noticeable when it doesn't work.

On my new Android phone I attempt to type too fast.  Most of the time the autocorrection feature fixes my fat fingering mistakes and automatically gives me the word I want, but when it fails I notice it right away and it annoys me.  I've thought about it and I'm quite sure it's a net gain, but the human brain seems to remember the few bad times and forget about the 90% of the time that it does work.  Unfortunately for me this means I need to double check my messages and if I don't I can say some silly things.  For example goos corrects to goosebumps and not good??  Fortunately there's a way to add your own custom corrections!

One final design feature that I have a love hate relationship with is when holding the backspace button on my phone to delete something it will start deleting words very quickly after about a second.  Similar to the iPad's volume button but it's annoying when I delete more than I want to and feel like I have to be careful or I'll delete all of the text!

Semi-coherent rant aside, it's interesting to think about all of the micro-design decisions that are made in software and hardware.  Presumably it all goes through some sort of usability testing before being released to the general public (thought it doesn't always seem that way).  Making the right decisions is important no matter how small, and when added together can make a product feel polished or clumsy.

Why do fish jump?

I've seen fish jump out of the water in a lake and it wasn't immediately obvious to me why it would be necessary.  Maybe some of them like the air, like some people like water?  Maybe they just like to jump for fun?  Regardless, I was interested in seeing if there was an actual reason why a fish might decide to jump.

From reading around it seemed like there wasn't an exact consensus but there were a few things that seemed to be repeated.  One reason is that some fish feed on insects that are at or hovering near the surface of the water, so they'll jump out to eat them.  Or the fish might be trying to escape a predator and hope to throw them off by leaving the water temporarily.  Since air is much less dense than water a fish can move much quicker through it.  Some think it could be an attempt to remove parasites, though others think it's unlikely.

The size of the body of water doesn't seem to matter.  Fish may jump out of the ocean or even garden ponds.  One explanation for the garden pond was high ammonia levels causing burns on the fish!  The one somewhat unique (and rambley) explanation was that fish just jump for the fun of it.  I've jumped or ran around for fun so even though it may not be the only reason fish jump, it at least seems plausible.

Chocolate Lab

Most people have probably heard that dogs shouldn't eat chocolate.  Out of those "most people" most of them at least wonder why this is the case and sometimes "common knowledge" can be a common misconception.  However in this case it is correct.

The problem occurs because of the chemical theobromine that is naturally found in cocoa beans.  It affects the central nervous system and the heart and can be poisonous to dogs in certain quantities.  Dogs metabolize it slower than humans which is why chocolate is safe for humans to consume (in less than obscene amounts).  Smaller dogs are also more susceptible because a lower amount is required to be toxic (it generally goes by body weight).

Different types of chocolates contain more or less theobromine and so are correspondingly more or less toxic to dogs.  White chocolate has the least amount of theobromine, so it is unlikely to cause too many issues for a dog.  Darker chocolates tend to have higher amounts of it, with baker's chocolate having the most, over 400 times as much as white chocolate!

Initial symptoms after a dog has eaten chocolate include vomiting, diarrhea and increased urination.  Over time there is an increase in the dog's heart rate, possibly causing hyperactivity and eventually leading to seizures, a coma or death!  Apparently cats are also at risk for this, but lacking sweetness receptors, they generally don't go after sweet food.

Why do some smaller boats have very tall masts?

So I was looking at a dock with several boats and noticed that many of them had very tall masts.  I don't know very much about boats, but was a bit confused about why it was necessary that they even have masts at all because wouldn't they have motors?

At first I found out about vestigial masts on larger ships.  For example warships nowadays are probably not using sails but apparently some still have masts to mount radar and other antennae.  On a smaller scale, but still fairly large, 50+ foot yachts may have forward masts to mount lights.

In my attempt to wade through the boating information I quickly discovered that there are many terms I don't know... 

Keep in mind though, that as you reduce the tack angle below 90 degrees (making the clew to luff horizontal distance shorter than the foot length) you often wind up having to install jacklines along the lower luff which ease the slugs or slides off just to be able to raise, lower or reef the sail.

What the what.  At times I was a bit over my head.

Without being able to find much information I came to the conclusion that I was probably asking the wrong question.  Thinking about it some more, sails and motors didn't have to be mutually exclusive.  It probably made sense that a sail boat with a large mast would also have a motor to help out when the winds weren't very strong or for ease in undocking.

Searching a bit more it seems like it's not uncommon for sailboats to have a motor as well for the reasons I thought of above.  So I was probably just looking at a bunch of sailboats... doh.

Onomatopoeia

A few of my joints crack at certain times.  I can crack my fingers every so often by pressing them together.  I can crack my knees my crouching down.  My neck kind of cracks a bit if I move it around in certain ways.  Obviously I'd considered that these may not be good signs for the health of my body and I should probably determine if this is normal or harmful.

Talking to other people I didn't really come to a general consensus.  Common sense seems to dictate that it wouldn't be completely harmless.  To the internet of course!  What I found was that if the joint cracking was accompanied by pain it's not a good thing.  Dehydration and vitamin and mineral deficiencies can cause cause these problems.  Fortunately for me my joint cracking isn't painful.

I found that the more benign reason that joints seem to crack has to do with air trapped within the joints.  When bending occurs in them then the air can be forced out, causing a cracking noise.  This is still not completely confirmed but it's the best theory.  And in this case the joint cracking or popping is considered fairly harmless and should not lead to arthritis!  I think I feel a bit better now.

Crows vs Ravens

Sometimes things will come up in discussion or I'll just wonder about something and then never actually take the time to look into it.  The differences between crows and ravens was one of those things; but no more.  Without reading anything my thoughts basically were that ravens were bigger.  And probably less annoying.

I haven't exactly had positive experiences with crows.  On a certain section of the walk to my high school there were some trees where crows liked to hang out.  Occasionally while walking to school I could tell they were extra agitated with their intense cawing.  Then when I wasn't looking a crow would swoop down close enough to brush against my hair.  I discovered that if I faced the crows they wouldn't swoop at me, so I would walk that section backwards if I felt threatened by them.  Ravens couldn't be any worse than that.

It appears I was not incorrect.  Apparently a raven weighs about four times as much as a crow and is noticeably larger.  Ravens make a less annoying lower pitched sound.  They also have a curved bill and more wedge-shaped tail.  Crows are more social than ravens which allows them to do better in an urban environment.  I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen a raven but they sound cool enough to me.  This video goes into more detail on the differences.

10,000

I learn new words from listening to other people speak but mostly from reading.  One word whose use slightly confused me for some time was "myriad".  Years ago I read something like "there are myriad uses for the glockenspiel".  From the context I determined that it meant something like many.  For whatever reason though, its use as an adjective made me feel slightly uneasy.

I also encountered myriad parading around as a noun!  "There are a myriad of noses on the jabberwocky".  This felt a bit more natural to me, like "a bunch of".  After reading both versions several times in different locations I determined that either way was probably acceptable.  Now years later I finally took the time to look it up (so I could write this).

Apparently myriad is a Greek word for the number ten thousand.  So some people believe that if you just think of replacing myriad with 10,000 you can tell if the usage is correct.  Following that logic, it doesn't make sense to say "there are a ten thousand of okapis living on Mars".  However apparently the use of myriad as a noun in English dates back to the 16th century; before it was used as an adjective.

So everyone can rest easy now.  We're both right.

Peri·

The greenish coloured gem peridot is the birthstone for the month of August.  Looking at this word I feel slightly uncomfortable.  It's one of those words that I've never actually heard anyone say out loud and the pronunciation isn't immediately obvious.  My first instinct is to pronounce it the "French way" that would be something like pear-a-doe, but there also seems to be an equally valid looking pronunciation, pear-a-dot.  For some reason the "dot" ending seems a bit harsh but if that's the correct way to pronounce peridot then I'm not going to argue.

Obviously it's time to enlist the help of the internet for what I thought would give me a consensus.  The first result is a YouTube video that gives the pronunciation of pear-a-dot.  Well that was simple enough.  Then I continued to scroll down to the comments (not always the safest thing to do without losing a few IQ points) and found the people there disagreeing, with some preferring the pear-a-doe pronunciation.  It appeared I had some more work to do.

Wikipedia lists both pronunciations and looking to see if there was some more information I headed to the talk page.  Now I don't normally frequent Wikipedia talk pages, but what I found could be called the polar opposite of YouTube comment threads.  There was a fairly long and verbose discussion about the pronunciation of peridot which was strangely amusing to read.  After reading through it all I determined that both pronunciations are acceptable and it can depend on where you live or if you're a gem tradesman.

If you would like to trust what was posted near the top of the talk page,

Many dictionaries put the "pear-a-dot" pronunciation first, before "pear-a-doe". Some only have the "pear-a-dot" listed, for example "Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language" is very definite and lists only one form, "per' i dot'".  Most gem and jewelery tradesmen use "pear-a-doe", and some are very definite in calling the "-dot" form as incorrect. If you believe dictionaries and encyclopedias, however, you have to conclude they are being near-sighted.  Peridot was first mined in quantity in the U.S. in the area of Peridot, Arizona. The name of that town is pronounced "pear-a-dot".

 Cool I guess.

The Scunthorpe Problem

You may have run into this problem sometime while on the internet where you typed the word "class" on a forum and it was automatically changed to "cl***".  Very naive filters like that don't seem to be as common as they were on the early internet but the occasion can still arise.

The name of this problem comes from back in 1996 when residents of Scunthorpe, England were unable to create AOL accounts because their town name included the word "cunt" and was blocked by AOL's filters.  Penistone, Lightwater and Cliterhoe (coincidentally all in England) have also had issues online.

Some other similar amusing cases include the Communauté urbaine de Montréal (CUM) having their website (www.cum.qc.ca) blocked because of the acronym.  The Canadian magazine "The Beaver" was being blocked by some filters and finally changed it's name in 2010 after being around for 90 years.  The Horniman Museum (in England of course) failing to receive their emails.  And emails with "specialist" being blocked because they contained the name of the drug cialis.

Hilarity can also ensue when "bad" words are replaced with a less offensive alternative; for example ass -> butt.  This lead to an article on the sprinter Tyson Gay being changed to Tyson Homosexual.  I think my favourite though is assassinate being changed to buttbuttinate.

Criss Cross Applesauce

With my last batch of cookies just finished it was time to create some more.  Thinking that I was sufficiently prepared with ingredients I set off on my adventure.  Little did I know that it would not be so easy...

I was making peanut butter cookies.  I suppose it was a healthier recipe or something because it called for applesauce instead of sugar.  I had bought a jar of applesauce probably over a month ago and had used it in this recipe before.  However it had been sitting in my fridge all that time after opening it and as I was about to find out applesauce goes bad fairly quickly.

Upon opening the jar I was surprised to be greeted by several pinkish splotches all over the applesauce.  It's a bit difficult to see them in the picture so I've include a digitally enhanced version.

I then smelled the jar and it was a strange, maybe fermented, bitter appley smell that wasn't very pleasant.  Panicking (not really), I went online to check out the fridge time of applesauce.  It was well before the listed expiration date so I had come to the conclusion that that was actually it's unopened shelf time.

My suspicions were confirmed after doing a bit of searching.  Apparently applesauce is supposed to last only a week or two in the fridge after being opened and mine had been there for well over a month...  Hoping I could make use of it by just scooping the pink splotches off and using the rest I quickly came upon a site that read my mind.  Basically saying don't do it you can get sick!  I also found out that apparently applesauce is usually written as one word, not two!

I'm not a very experienced baker so I'm not very good at improvising a recipe.  However I came to the conclusion that the applesauce was taking the place of sugar so I added a bunch of brown sugar in its place and hoped for the best.  Finally it came time to add the peanut butter and I discovered there was only about 3/4 of a cup left.  Oh well, close enough.

The rest of the recipe and mixing went off without incident.  I put the cookies in the oven and hoped for the best.  After taking them out and doing a cursory inspection it appeared that the cookies were similar in appearance to the ones I had made before.  An experimental taste confirmed by initial hypothesis and I deemed the cookies a success.

 Above are the cookies and my awesome cookie jar.

Novorolsky

I have an old phone.  I've had it for around 5 or 6 years and somehow it's still in very good shape.  I've kind of been waiting for my phone to die so that I would be forced to upgrade, however it appears that it's hardy enough to last any period of time and so I've decided I will likely upgrade very soon.  With that back story behind us, now let's get on to the main purpose of this post.

Since my phone is quite old and the screen is quite small I don't have a newfangled touch screen keyboard.  Instead I have to use a standard telephone keypad where each number corresponds to three or four letters.  This means that when typing text messages I make use of the predictive text feature that helps to automatically select words based on the numbers I enter and can guess the completed word after only entering the first few letters.

In general this actually works quite well and often I only have to press one button per letter for each word.  More uncommon words, some names and obscure or anything outside of a dictionary is much more difficult to type and is a more manual process one letter at a time.  Sometimes the predictions are unexpected, for example when I was attempting to type the word "novocaine" it predicted "novorolsky"...

What also can be annoying is when two or more words are represented by the same sequence of numbers like home and good (4663).  When I was searching to find out the significance of novorolsky I discovered this forum thread that happens to be associated with one of my favourite web comics.  Someone suggests the term homonums for words like this and then it's discovered that wikipedia already has an article about textonyms!  Regardless, I'm likely switching to a smart phone soon so I won't have to deal with this problem anymore.

Multiple Contractions

A short time ago I came across the word I'd've.  At first I was somewhat taken aback!  I had never seen a word quite like this before.  I had never even considered writing a word with two apostrophes.  It was easy enough to understand as "I would have", but I still wondered whether this type of contractionizing happened often.

After some searching around it seems like my experience has been fairly common.  People agree that it's used somewhat in spoken language, but rarely if ever written down and never in formal writing.

Of course why stop at I'd've?  How about couldn't've or she'd've.  And why stop at double contractions?  How about triple contractions like I'dn't've or you'dn't've!

Fiddle me this

Normally I don't think too much about the names of musical instruments, however for some reason it came up in conversation what the difference between a fiddle and a violin was.  Well it turns out the answer is they're really the same thing.  OK looks like we're done here, everyone can go home now...


After looking at several sources the consensus seems to be that the instrument in question is generally referred to as a violin when classical music is being played and a fiddle when folk or other types of music are being played.  Some fiddlers may modify the bridge to play certain rhythms easier but this isn't required.  "Violin" seems to be the choice in more formal settings which is illustrated by the quote, "A violin is kept in a violin case, and a fiddle is kept in a sack."

Of dogs and trucks

I've been writing about random stupid things lately and haven't written about any stories for a while.  So here's a story about how my friends and I almost became internet famous from a strange series of events late one night.

We were coming home from somewhere, I can't remember where, and decided to stop for some midnight pizza.  We parked, went in, got some pizza and were just outside eating our pizza when I noticed a truck camper slowly backing up.  Now this wouldn't normally be strange, however the truck didn't have anyone in front of him so it didn't make sense for him to be backing up.

I watched for a few more seconds and noticed that the truck was starting to angle out into the street.  It was at this point I noticed that sitting in the driver's seat was not a human but a dog!  The truck continued to slowly back up, angled so that it would be entering a large intersection fairly shortly.

I was really confused and yelled at my friends to take a look.  One of them was thinking quickly and took out his phone to record what was happening.  The truck was fairly far away at this point and was starting to cross the intersection.  We ran up to the corner to keep watching.  The  truck continued across the intersection until it was a few feet away from a building on the other corner.

Since it was midnight no other cars were at the intersection, though we were curious how they would have reacted.  Anyway, we suddenly see two people running very quickly across the street and they jumped into the truck just before it hit the building.  We didn't get a great look at the people, but we all agreed that they looked like the couple we had seen a few minutes before that were behind us in line in the pizza place!

If the video was decent we knew that it would go viral and and we would make tons of money from the YouTube ads!  Excitedly we looked at the video and it was incredibly dark!  It was dark enough, and we were far away enough, that you couldn't actually tell that the dog was in the driver's seat :(  You could make out the truck backing up slowly and hear us talking excitedly about "a dog driving the car!" though.

Do people still send chain letters?

Recently I had heard someone mention chain letters and I thought to myself, "I don't think I've received a chain letter in a loooong time".  I wondered, "Do people still send chain letters or have we finally gotten over them?"  Apparently before email, people would send chain letters by mail!  I think I'm a bit too young for that because I don't remember receiving any of those.


I do remember when I was younger that I would receive chain letters through email.  I wouldn't say a large amount, but I definitely would receive them every so often.  I always thought they were stupid (or at least that's what I'd like to think I always thought) and I don't think I passed them on...


How are they going to know that I didn't forward the email!  Who is this outside entity that is going to come suffocate me in the night if I don't forward the email to 10,000 people in the next 20 seconds!?  How is Bill Gates going to know how to send the money to me!  I better forward along my home address!


It might be that the lack of chain emails that I receive now is due to a generation growing up and deciding that they've had enough of them.  Or maybe that's only true of the people I correspond with.  Regardless, it's probably true that "a sucker is born every minute" and that chain emails are alive and well among younger and/or more gullible members of the population.

Cesc Fabregas looks like Mark Ruffalo

A couple years ago while watching the World Cup I noticed that the Spanish soccer (football) player Cesc Fabregas bore a resemblance to actor Mark Ruffalo.  Two years passed and I was reminded of this again while watching Euro 2012.  I decided to go to the internet (where else) to see if anyone else shared my opinion.

After typing "cesc fabregas looks like" into Google the suggestions were "zachary quinto" and "sylar".  Not having watched Heroes, I soon learned that Zachary Quinto plays the character Sylar in the show.  Looking at the pictures I agreed they had a point but I was not deterred.  Filled with confirmation bias I carried on in my quest.

Completing the search to be "cesc fabregas looks like mark ruffalo" I discovered that I was not alone!  People had posted Tumblr messages and tweeted about it!  The consensus seemed to be that Ruffalo looks like an older version of Fabregas and my favourite quote was "Cesc Fabregas looks like an I-fucked-your-wife-ier version of Mark Ruffalo".  Check out this comparison to be convinced for sure.

Buzzing

Desperately trying to think of things to write about, I received a spark of inspiration while sitting on the toilet in the bathroom (a decent segue from my last post).  Apparently a fly had been hanging out in the room for a while and then decided to start flying around.  It made the characteristic annoying buzzing sound (while also bashing into the wall and everything else in a futile attempt to escape from the room).  I wondered what the cause of this buzzing was.

A guess would be that the wings flap at such a rate that the disturbances in the air are in the range of human hearing.  Reading around, this seems to be a fairly common explanation, however other places say that this is actually false.  They say it's actually the deformation of the fly's thorax that causes the noise.

Other sources mention the air passing through spiracles, "tiny airways used for respiration".  Apparently bees "buzz by vibrating their wings and bodies and pushing air through spiracles", which is likely similar to flies.  In conclusion I'm still not really sure what the exact correct answer is.

Why do mexican toilets all have garbage cans?

I was in Mexico City for the last week or so and my stomach wasn't feeling all that well a fair amount of the time.  Because of this I frequented the bathrooms often and noticed that all of them contained a small garbage can.

This probably should have caused me to put my used toilet paper in the garbage (what else are you going to put in there) especially after seeing other used pieces in them (ewww).  However I happily kept flushing them down without seeming to cause the toilets to clog, though I was probably messing something else up further down.  Despite this the toilets seemed to function well overall and I can only imagine that at least a few of the other people from the many different countries were doing the same thing as me.

There were no signs indicating that I shouldn't flush the toilet paper because I guess it's just standard practice.  After reading a bit more about this it seems like some Mexican people when they first come to the US have the opposite problem and because of their habits put the dirty toilet paper on the ground in absence of a garbage can!

The colours of noise

Most people have probably heard the term "white noise" before, but apparently there are other colourful designations for different types of noise.  Joining white, but less commonly known, are pink, brown/red, blue, violet and grey.  The noise is classified by how the power changes as the frequency of the noise changes.


White noise, like white light, has a flat frequency spectrum.  So it has equal power at each frequency.  It can be used to mask background noise or even as a random number generator.  


Pink noise falls logarithmically with frequency.  So the amount of energy between 10 and 20 Hz is the same as between 1000 and 2000 Hz.  This is the same as how humans hear so it's often used to test speakers and other audio equipment.


Brown noise falls off more quickly and is the kind of noise produced by Brownian motion.  Blue and violet noise both increase in energy with increasing frequency.  Grey noise has more energy at the top and bottom parts of the spectrum.  The human ear hears each frequency equally loud so grey noise can be used to study hearing loss.


Not to be left out, black, green and orange noise are other unofficial colours.  Check out wikipedia to listen to samples of the different types of noise and read more about them.

Every keyboard tells a story

Nearly eight years ago I started using a program called WhatPulse to track the number of keyboard presses and mouse clicks I did.  Later on they added the ability to track how far you moved your mouse.  Over 102 months I currently have 47,101,737 key presses, 9,186,669 mouse clicks and have moved my mouse 1140.74 km!

You can also locally keep track of which keyboard keys you press the most.  Because of reinstallations I only have the last ~1.3 million presses.  It's still interesting though to look at the frequencies and think about why they are the way they are.  WhatPulse can generate a "heatmap" of your keyboard to get a quick overview of your keypresses.

The letters are probably what you would expect.  The order being eoatsinrlchmdupgwfybvkzjq.  Although it varies, according to some analysis English letter frequency is etaonrishdlfcmugypwbvkxjqz.  Apparently the top eight letters make up about 65% of total usage.  Although in a different order, my top eight letters are the same as on average, with differences starting to occur the farther down you go. The order for numbers is 0129365478.  Not sure what to make of that.

The order for the F keys is 9,5,2,4,6,10,7,8,12,1,11,3.  However looking at the numbers F9 is pressed 18.5 times more than F5, the second most frequent one!  F5 is pressed about 3 more times than the next highest, F2, with the remaining F keys, including 2, being about the same.  It turns out that in the BlackBerry simulators F9 selects things, so when I'm testing an app I'm pressing that key a lot.  I could probably rebind it to something easier to press, but over time I've just gotten used to it.  F5 is probably higher than the others because of the refresh shortcut.

You can see that I never touch my number pad which suggests I'm probably using a laptop.  You can also see something about the frequencies of the buttons that are on the right and left sides of the keyboard.  It looks like right shift, control and alt are pressed much more frequently than their left counterparts.  You might take this to suggest that I'm left handed, however it turns out that it is a combination of an error in the key detector and something a bit random.

According to the data I've pressed left shift a grand total of 7 times while pressing right shift 36,231 times!  I know for a fact this is not the case as I almost always use left shift.  So it appears the key detector has switched these two.  Similarly for right and left alt.  I rarely if ever use right alt and it seems the frequencies have been switched.  Control is actually a bit of a different story.  A little while ago I was having some problems with my left control key and in an attempt to remove the key cap I accidentally snapped it off!  I wasn't able to reattach it and over time I grew accustomed to using right control.  Unfortunately I often would use left control while programming, so now I either use right control or if I place my finger precisely in the middle of the phantom key I can use left control.  I'm not sure why these two keys were detected correctly!

If you try out WhatPulse your keyboard can have a story as well.

Your nose and the shower

Last time mentioning the 1000 awesome things website and this week having a somewhat stuffy nose reminded me of something.  Blowing my nose in the shower feels great!  Blowing your nose the "traditional" way using tissues takes forever and I never really feel 100% clear.  On the contrary, in the shower I can just go for it.


In general I like to keep my hands clean.  If I eat several chicken wings with my hands I prefer to wash them; the napkins never feel like quite enough.  The exception then for the shower is that the water is constantly cleansing, so it's as if my hands are being continually washed.  This fact allows my mind to put up with and even enjoy the temporary messiness that unfolds.


If my nose is stuffed up when I'm taking a shower I make sure to wash myself AFTER blowing my nose.  Don't want any snot accidentally hanging around (yuck).  It's somewhat liberating being able to just blow and blow and then just wash the mess off my hands.  Hmm, maybe don't take the last sentence out of context...


It's amazing how much mucus in in your nose when it's really plugged up.  Sometimes it feels like you're attempting to expel a small creature and it doesn't want to let go.  The quote I really like that exemplifies this somewhat is from 1000 awesome things and says "If you did the job right, your hand should now look like you just squeezed the life out of a baby jellyfish."  Not for the faint of heart.

The smell of oranges

I like the smell of oranges.  Like say a citrusy smell in the air or the smell of an orange itself.  However I don't particularly enjoy the smell and feel on my fingers after peeling and eating an orange.  I wash my hands but it's futile; the smell persists.  

When I mentioned this to someone they asked why I even smell my fingers at all!?  Well, actually I don't know why.  I think it might be to see if the smell has come off so I won't feel like I'm tainting everything that I touch.  If I type on my computer now it has an orange smelling residue.

Now I wasn't sure if I was alone in feeling this way.  I actually had direct evidence that some people not only don't mind but also enjoy it!  Recently when I was at a student leadership conference the closing speaker was Neil Pasricha, author and known for his website http://1000awesomethings.com/.  He had a little part in his speech where he asked everyone to write down something they thought was awesome and then exchange the note with someone else.  I wrote down something like "sleeping until you wake up naturally with no alarm clock".  (Unfortunately the conference had been on Saturday at 8am and I had stayed out a bit too late Friday night...)  Anyways, to my surprise, the girl that I exchanged with had written "the smell on my fingers after peeling an orange"!  To each their own I suppose.

There was one minor success however, so that I didn't feel too alone.  I discovered a Facebook group entitled "When I eat an orange, my fingers smell like it forever.  I hate it".  I feel a bit better knowing that 30 other people agree with me.

Airplanes and Ears

When I fly on a plane and it's ascending or descending I'll always notice the pressure change by the annoying feeling in my ears.  Yawning has always seemed to work for me and apparently chewing gum isn't bad either.  For the first time that I can remember though, I was unable to "pop" one of my ears and had an annoying little ice pick pain in my head as we descended.  Apparently babies and young children have more sensitive ears so this is actually more common for them (and why they're crying).

What was even more weird was that even after we had landed I still wasn't able to pop my ear.  All the forced yawning in the world wasn't helping.  It's a strange feeling not really being able to tell how loud you're speaking.

After a few hours the feeling had relented somewhat but I could tell my hearing in that ear wasn't at 100%.  To the internet!  I read a few things and decided to wait it out a couple days and see if it improved.

Waking up today it was about the same and I've been trying to yawn to improve it.  Funnily enough as I've been typing this (and yawning some more) the ear finally popped!  Fortunately no drastic measures with hydrogen peroxide or doctor's visits for the time being.

One thing I did learn was that the ear is actually connected to the back of the throat by the Eustachian tube, which is why yawning and chewing gum can have an effect and equalize the pressure.  Yay learning!

The Supermoon

This weekend there was a "Super" Moon.  Basically since the Moon's orbit around the Earth is elliptical (not perfectly circular) it will be closer and farther at different parts of its orbit.  On Saturday the Moon was full and it was also at perigee (its closest distance to the Earth) so it appeared slightly bigger.

But how much bigger was it actually?  The biggest difference would be between when the Moon is at apogee (farthest from Earth) and perigee.  According to Wikipedia the Moon has a mean diameter of 3474 km, distance at apogee: 405,410 km, distance at perigee: 362,570 km.  We can use the small angle approximation to say that tanθ ≈ θ and so θ ≈ s/d where d would be the distance to the Moon and s the diameter of the Moon.  θ is angular diameter in radians.

So at perigee: θ = 3474 / 362570 = 0.009582 radians

At apogee: θ = 3474 / 405410 = 0.008569 radians

This makes sense because the angular diameter should be bigger when the Moon is at perigee.  Their ratio is: 0.009582 / 0.008569 = 1.1182 so about 11.8 % bigger.  This is not insubstantial but it's actually very difficult to notice by eye.

Space is Awesome

You may or may not be aware that space is awesome.  Moons, planets, stars,  magnetars, black holes, planetary nebulae, supernovae, galaxies, clusters, superclusters.  Well maybe not so much the "space" itself but the things that are found outside of the Earth in what we refer to as space.  The massive magnetic fields, the crushing gravity and ridiculous amount of energy and distances are nothing like we experience in everyday life.  It's so far removed that we don't even think about it, maybe only briefly when there is the occasional mention in the news.

One thing that is difficult to convey is the scale of space.  "Space... is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is...".  I think this website does a good job at getting a sense of the size of our solar system and how small we actually are.  After looking at that you can watch this and realize just how small the Sun is compared to other stars.  Then remember there are around 300 billion stars in the Milky Way and there are over 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe...

What's cool though is that we can and have sent spacecraft to check out nearby planets, moons and other interesting objects.  Right at this moment there is one orbiting Mercury, a few orbiting the Moon, one roving around Mars, a couple orbiting it and one that's going to land in August, one that's in the asteroid belt, one on it's way to Jupiter, one flying around Saturn and one closing in on Pluto.  We have landed things on the Moon, Venus, Mars and Titan.

For better or for worse (I think for better) the space shuttle program was shut down and people seem to think that NASA must not be doing anything then!  Although it's true that the overall human spaceflight capability is quite crippled right now it's encouraging to see the commercial space industry up and coming with companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.  In fact SpaceX is testing it's space capsule (unmanned for this test) and attempting to dock at the International Space Station within the next week or two.

Although human spaceflight is much more difficult then sending robotic probes I think it is also much more inspiring.  Landing a person on an asteroid or Mars is such a massive undertaking that it would likely require international cooperation and is something that I think the planet as a whole can rally around.  Yes there are problems on Earth and there always will be, but I think humanity is capable of multitasking.

Duotangs

Brightly coloured with those metal fastener things.  I have fond memories of colourful title pages and forcing holes into unpunched pieces of paper.  I was wondering recently, do kids still use duotangs?  I remember using them in elementary school, and I think around high school I switched over to binders so it might just be an elementary school thing where they're alive and well?


After having switched to binders I wonder why anyone would actually want to use duotangs over them!  I'm having trouble remembering exactly, but were you even able to put a new piece of paper anywhere in the middle?  It was also annoying having to open and close all the fasteners every time.  Blegh.  I suppose they're better for compactness.  And they were often quite colourful which could be considered a plus.

One thing I do remember is that each fastener had two separate metal things to fold over to keep the pages in place.  What I noticed was that there was a distinct divide between kids who would fold both of them to the same side and those that folded them in opposite directions.  I tended to do the latter and it always felt wrong to me that there were people out there that would fold them in the same direction!  There are two of them!  Why are you folding them the same way!?!

My new favourite animal

When I was younger people would sometimes ask what my favourite colour was, or what my favourite animal was. I don't know I guess that's just what you ask kids or what kids talk about at school. Anyhow I decided that my favourite colour was green in case anyone ever asked and that my favourite animal was the king cobra. I guess I thought snakes were pretty cool and that they looked awesome when they expanded their hood (or maybe I watched too much rikki-tikki-tavi).

Regardless, I had never spent any time reflecting on this choice and possibly dethroning (har har) the king cobra. Recently though, in one of my classes, the prof showed a short video of a cuttlefish blending into their surroundings. This piqued my interest because I had always liked chameleons and I actually knew very little about cuttlefish aside from this.

I have since learned that besides being able to change colours very quickly to match their environment, cuttlefish:

• have a cuttlebone which allows them to adjust their depth
• can see the polarization of light and can adjust the polarization of light that reflects off of them to communicate with other animals
• have w-shaped eyes
• have three hearts
• have fully developed eyes before they're born and can look around while they're still in the egg
• are the original creators of sepia
  
• have a large brain to body ratio
• have green-blue coloured blood

So after all of this I have decided that cuttlefish are my new favourite animals. It also might be time to reevaluate some of your "favourite" things and see if they've changed since you last made up your mind.

Gray vs Grey

To be quite honest I was having trouble thinking of things to write about and this just kind of popped into my head. TLDR; grAy = America, grEy = England or gray is a color and grey is a colour

Apparently they both have origins in the Old English grǽg but gray started to become the preferred spelling in American English around the 1820s. Somewhat interestingly the word greyhound is always spelled with the letter e and the unit of absorbed radiation dose of ionizing radiation is spelled with an a.

Also apparently the spelling gray was promoted by English lexicographers but grey became commonly accepted anyway. At around the same time in the US the 1867 and 1897 Webster's dictionaries include grey but have it refer to gray. What can we conclude from this? I have no idea. However the Google Ngram Viewer is kind of cool.

Letter Styles

I had recently been wondering about why the letters 'a' and 'g' look different than the way that most people normally write them on paper. The first thing I discovered was that it's a bit annoying to search for phrases with individual letters in them since google often seems to ignore them. However if you click "More search tools" on the left and then select "Verbatim" it becomes a bit easier.

Anyways the way the letters are written seem to have evolved over time (duh) and http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/letters/letters.htm has lots of information about this. The lower case 'a' has the "hook" or "bowl" styles with the bowl also being called the italic style even though many non-italic fonts use this style as well.

'g' has several different shapes, with or without a closed loop (bowl) at the bottom or connecting the bowl on the right or left side of the letter. Apparently the 'g' with the bowl decreases the length of the descender (part that goes below the line) allowing more lines to fit on a page.

If you wanted to go more in depth I'm sure there's lots of information out there about ascenders, descenders, hooks and bowls but I think that's the limit for me.

Pedestrian Fun

Some people like to press the crosswalk button several times just to make sure it goes through. They might think it helps to make the lights change faster or maybe they just do it for fun. Either way it seems like these people get a bit antsy whenever the lights take longer than average to change, especially if they didn't press the button.

I press the button once, maybe twice and then wait. I take the bus most days and there happens to be a pedestrian controlled light near my stop that several people usually go to. If I'm the first one to the crosswalk I'll press the button once and then stand close enough to the button that if someone else wanted to press it they would have to get uncomfortably close to me. I then hope that the light takes a long time to change.

When this works perfectly I can feel their cold stares and I can imagine they think that I'm an idiot who hasn't actually pressed the button. Sometimes people will ask to make sure that I've pressed it and I'll nod. On one occasion someone actually went around and pressed the button even with me in close proximity.

As stupid as this is it brings me a small amount of joy after a long day of classes.

Why does my cat like my headphones?

I'm sitting in my room trying to get some work done on my computer and my cat barges in and starts meowing. After some whining she jumps up on my dresser and makes a beeline towards my earbud headphones that were lying there. She then begins to lick them...

At this point I'm confused. Why is she licking my headphones of all things? The only thing I could think of that was on there was ear wax. After watching for a few more seconds with morbid fascination I had to know if this was common behavior. To the internet!

Apparently it is quite common, as many other people have noticed the same thing. The link I like the best is http://www2.b3ta.com/files/cat-earwax-conundrum.htm (Seriously, read the whole thing it's not that long).

"The principal constituent components of earwax are complex sebaceous fluids and sloughed off dead skin cells. The sebaceous fluids are composed mostly of triglyceride fatty acids, waxes and cholesterol esters."

To cats who don't seem to care about the taste of food that much it sounds like a tasty treat. However the best quote from that page is

"A cat will eat small lumps of plasticine if they're covered in gravy. Try it - it's non-toxic and you can pepper your cat turds with interesting multicoloured lumps." Interesting...

For, err hmm

The other week I decided that I was going to forgo working out in order to rest my sore elbow. For some reason I was thinking about if I told someone this I would say that I for, uh forgoed(?) my workout, or maybe I forwent it? Both of them sounded somewhat wrong or awkward and I don't think I had ever heard someone say the past tense of forgo out loud.

To the internet! It seems that I'm not the only one to wonder about this. Apparently in some places forgoed is used (even though go -> goed doesn't make sense) and in others forwent is more common (also don't get confused with forego and forewent). In the online dictionaries and even this blog spell checker forgoed isn't found and forwent is.

I think the best quote someone had was "Personally, I would work very, very hard to avoid writing either forwent or forewent. I'm not saying either of these is wrong, but I am saying that they are odd, eccentric, alien words." I tend to agree; I skipped my workouts this week.