Well, one of the many Wii locator websites suggested that area Target stores might get them in today, but alas: it was not to be (bii?). It’s just as well. I came up with the following top ten reasons I don’t need a Wii.

1. No need to setup protective batting cage around the plasma TV.



2. No annoying explanations to the cops that you didn’t beat your wife, you just clocked her in the eye with the Wiimote while you were drunk and playing Zelda.
3. No Wii tennis elbow.
4. Eighty hours of life that would have been spent playing Twilight Princess recovered for more productive use.
5. Would not want to depress Sony and Microsoft over the Christmas holiday.
6. The Wii doesn’t have all the latest expensive hardware in it. Think of all the people at Intel who are working hard at developing faster processors, which the Wii simply turns its nose at.
7. No Mario game at launch. No Starfox. No Metroid.
8. Other game consoles generate enough heat to keep your game room warm during these long winter nights. Wii doesn’t make a very good space heater.
9. All that flailing around looks a lot like exercise. I want to play video games, not exercise!
10. The name. Need I say more?

Okay, I know, it’s just sour grapes, but still.

[tags]Nintendo,Wii[/tags]

I must admit, I haven’t been a particularly active ham (in fact, I’ve been completely inactive for a number of years), but I was still pleased to see that the FCC swept aside the Morse Code requirement for all radio amateur licenses on the 12/15.

FCC Eliminates Code Requirements for Amateur Licenses

No doubt a great number of old timers will be moaning and groaning that this represents the end of ham radio. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is ham radio has been dying for at least two decades, in nearly direct proportion to the rise in the Internet. It used to be that the apex of electronics experimentation occurred with ham radio, but the combination of cheap compute power, cheap bandwidth, inexpensive part 15 wireless equipment and no barriers to entry have made the Internet the place where most technically minded people choose to learn and play.

That’s not to say that ham radio has nothing to offer. I’m fascinated by QRP operation, particularly narrow band modes like PSK31, or even old fashioned modes like RTTY and slow scan television, and being able to experiment in the HF bands is certainly a bonus. But Morse code has been a kind of hazing ritual for at least 30 years, long ago having any practical place in ham radio operation regulation. It will undoubtably continue to be practiced by reasonably large numbers of hams who actually enjoy it, but it is alltogether a very good thing that it is removed as a requirement.

[tags]Amateur Radio, Morse Code[/tags]

My mom has had a tough week. Send some good thoughts her way. Send any extras to my brother. Send the left overs to the rest of my family.

This is just my way of saying I love you Mom, and I’m thinking of you. Feel better soon.

Addendum: Mom is still in the hospital but seems to be doing better. We are cautiously optimistic that she will recover fully. Thanks for all your good thoughts.

Google has a patent search now.

You can use it to find my sole issued patent.

Or you could look up the Slinky Dog patent.

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Frankly, I think it far more likely that Charles VI is a pale imitation of me.

For some reason, I find this hilarious.

[tags]Humor,Funny,Google Earth[/tags]

As part of Pixar’s exhibition at the NYC MoMa, we created a rather large zoetrope of some of our Toy Story characters. You can see a movie of the thing in action here. It’s really very cool and nifty.

Don’t know what a Zoetrope is? Wikipedia does, and is happy to tell you..

The figurines in this animation were all designed using our regular animation system, and then “printed” using a 3D rapid prototyping machine (I wasn’t really involved with the project, so I have few details on the machine itself). Such machines are very, very cool, but are well beyond the means of ordinary humans like myself to buy. It is then with some interest that I heard about the Fab@Home project, which is an attempt to create an open source design for such a rapid protoyping machine that individuals can build themselves.

Fab @ Home

Too cool not to think about.

Recursivity: The Prime Game

Ask a friend to write down a prime number. Bet them that you can always strike out 0 or more digits to get one of the following 26 primes:

2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 19, 41, 61, 89, 409, 449, 499, 881, 991, 6469, 6949, 9001, 9049, 9649, 9949, 60649, 666649, 946669, 60000049, 66000049, 66600049

A very cool bit of mathematics.

[tags]Mathematics,Prime Numbers[/tags]

MIT Technology Expert in Coma in Vietnam – New York Times

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor emeritus Seymour Papert, 78, was among more than 100 international experts from 30 countries who had gathered in Hanoi this week for conference on teaching mathematics with digital technology. He was struck by a motorbike while crossing a busy street near his hotel Tuesday, said Hoang Xuan Lan, an administrator at Hanoi Technology University, which is hosting the conference.

Vo Van Ban, deputy director of the French Hospital in Hanoi, said that Papert underwent brain surgery on Wednesday morning and remains in a coma.

Papert is a fascinating man with a career that spans a half a century. His book Perceptrons is probably solely responsible (through no fault of his own) for delaying research in neural networks for decades. He was fascinated by children and using computers in education, and participated most recently in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project.

Best wishes, and hopes for a quick and full recovery.

This article about a teacher is really, really terrible, and sent Good Math, Bad Math blogger Mark Chu-Carroll into quite a tizzy. It is quite absurd, for basically all the reasons he mentioned, but the thing which I found most disturbing was how illiterate (innumerate?) the comments to this story were on the BBC blog.

One of the most egregious pet peeves: the claim that 1/0 is infinity. This is usually a sloppy restatement of saying that the limit of 1/x as x approaches zero is infinite, but 1/0 is simply undefined. if 1/0 was infinity, it implies that infinity times zero is one, which is, you must admit, a rather absurd result. It is important to realize that infinity (and nullity) are not numbers at all.

Some more absurd comments:

It´s all nonsense because instead of dividing ridiculous numbers people should better come together amd make different kind of stuff. Math is artifical (and boring), not real !

I love all the comments of people complaining that nullity is bull because it’s not on the numberline. Progress comes from thinking outside the box people

Unfortunately, some of the criticism is equally unfounded:

This idiot fails to recognize that anything divided by zero is infinity. We know this allready.

I am sorry Dr Anderson but “nullity” is the same as zero. Look at this; 0*0=0. Dividing by 0 on both sides and you get 0=0/0; zero = “nullity”. Or in words; 2 dolars to be divided equally between two persons, how much will each get? 2/2 = 1. 1 dolar to be divided between one person, how much will each get? 1/1 = 1. 0 dolar to be divided between zero persons, how much will each get? 0/0 = 0 (no one will get anything).

I’m not a mathematician. I fix and program and teach computers, and got into computer to get AWAY from higher math. This is probably flying high away in some ethereal, rarified height of mathematics us mere mortals never see and cannot appreciate. But it seems to me that yes, you can theoretically remove 0 from any given number an infinite number of times…. but if you’re removing 0, are you actually doing anything at all? I can, in theory, write an infinite number of $0.00 checks from my account and send them to everyone on Earth…. but all that would happen is my bank would get very vexed with me. Maybe there will someday be something to do with this wondrous new discovery, just as i is used in electronics somewhere. But until then I think this is just a bag of wind.

Dear Lord, I weep for the children. If my kid was in this guy’s math class, I think I’d go completely nuts. Some idiocy is so extreme I’d just have to punch him.

You can get a paper about this stuff here, and can see the curious idea that ∞^-1 = 0 (axiom T69) which ultimately leads to the absurd result.

[tags]Mathematics,Rants and Raves[/tags]

I found out about the SIGGRAPH site while trying to jog my memory about a paper I remembered reading, but couldn’t remember the title. It’s from the 2006 conference though, so it doesn’t have the presentation online yet, but I did finally remember which paper it was, and thought I’d use my blog to keep a link to it.

Two-scale Tone Management for Photographic Look

[tags]Computer Graphics[/tags]

SIGGRAPH has a nifty website that allows you to watch lots of presentations from the 2004 and 2005 conference, including paper presentations and sketches. Lots of good stuff.

SIGGRAPH Encore

[tags]SIGGRAPH,Computer Graphics[/tags]

If you’re like me, sometimes the pressure of the holidays gets to you, and you end up feeling a bit grumpy. It’s hard to take it easy when somebody elbows you, or uses a coupon to buy one apple at the grocery store, or just is a dick on the highway. You now what helps? Wear a Santa hat. Seriously. Do it.

Put one on and look around. Sure, some people are probably sniggering at you, but they are also probably smiling. And when they are smiling, it’s easier to be nice to them. It’s easier for them to be nice to you too. If you are in line at the grocery store and have a lot of items, let the guy with just two go ahead of you. You know what? You’ll find yourself humming Christmas carols. You’ll find yourself smiling. You’ll find it easier to come up with ideas for that perfect gift for your perfect wife. And you’ll sleep better.

Seriously. Try it.

[tags]Christmas Cheer[/tags]

Well, it’s the holiday season, and that means it is time to decorate the blog for the holidays. More holiday cheer to follow. Just be glad I’m not using the <BLINK> tag or playing music by default…

[tags]Christmas,Holiday[/tags]

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to a nifty video taken from an video camera attached to a fisheye camera. Here is a link to a technical paper describing the system. Total cost was about $3500, including the capture card and computer. Seems like a nifty “possible amateur” project.

[tags]Astronomy[/tags]