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I happened to see this picture on a news article today:

It’s obviously a picture of a soldier, and the dusty American flag hat might make one think this is a United States solider (although if you know military emblems, you’d know the Eagle with the sword on it is not American).

No, this isn’t an American at all. It’s Prince Harry from England.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have thought if he found out that the son of the Queen of England would one day be fighting in Afghanistan alongside American troops, and that he would put on a cap with the flag of America on it. I actually don’t think this would have surprised the Founding Father’s too much, given the nature of America and the fact that political freedom is ultimately contagious. So perhaps instead I should wonder what King George III would have thought…

Yesterday was, hands down no contest not even close Martha Stewart, the absolute most boring day of my life.

God bless Jury Duty!!!

I show up at 8:30 like I’m supposed to and get to sit in the little hall forever. Around 9:30, the guy who heads the jury procedures at the courthouse shows up and says, “We have over 200 magazines in the back, so that should give you some clue of how long you might be here.” (Hey, at least they were honest.)

Anyway, around 10ish they called the names for who would be on the first jury. I was not selected that time. Then they said one of the judges didn’t need a jury, and that meant there was only one other possible jury selection.

So they put on a movie. It was Alaska, which was apparently filmed in 1379 and consisted of people acting completely stupid around polar bears. I’ve seen worse films.

No wait, I haven’t.

Anyway, around 11:45 they called the names for the second jury…and I was on it. Everyone else was told to go. They told the lovely folks who got chosen: “The judge is delayed and he’s working on his docket. Come back at 1:15.”

I was like, “Great. Almost two hours. That’s just enough time to do absolutely none of the tasks I need accomplished.”

Anyway, got back at noon and killed off the final hour there. Then we got to wait. And watch Ice Age, which was a good movie the first 4937 times I watched it.

And then I got to wait some more. 1:15 became sometime after 3 or so. At which point we were told: “I don’t know what happened, but the judge just called and said he doesn’t need a jury.”

Yup, I spent about seven hours at the courthouse just to be told “Go away.”

Someone tell me why government should be in charge of anything.

Well, the good news is that I won’t have to go in to work first thing tomorrow.

The bad news is that I have jury duty instead. Yup, just called the number. Not only is my number one that has to go, I’m not even one of the “stand by” people. My number was right up front. Whoopee.

Of course I probably won’t have to serve in the end, due to my stupid roommate. In reality, I wouldn’t mind serving (although it’ll mess up my normal work schedule for sure). We shall see what comes of it.

Adam Foote has returned to the Avs!

This means that the original guys from Quebec are back: Sakic (who never left), Forsberg, & Foote!

*w00t*

I’m going to have to learn Base-6 math now….

Here’s a list of all the prime numbers between 1 and 101 (in base 10) listed out in base 6 numbers:

2
3
5
11
15
21
25
31
35
45
51
101
105
111
115
125
135
141
151
155
201
215
225
231
235

See? I SOOOOO hafta learn base-6 now! :-)

UPDATE: I realized I made an error in the first one, but the corrected version should be right now. (See, I told you I need to learn to do base-6 math!)

Forsberg Returns to Avalanche

May the Forsberg be with you.

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

I WANT MY NOBEL!!!!!

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century.

Somehow…someway…this is BUSH’S fault.

This weekend, I picked up Mass Effect which, as the name implies, is a Roman Catholic science project.

Just kidding. Naturally, it’s a video game. When I got it, the salesman told me that it was a game like Halo. I almost didn’t get it for that reason (Halo 2 impressed me so much I still haven’t bought Halo 3, if you catch my drift). However, I decided to go ahead and pick it up, and it’s a good thing I did because Mass Effect is pretty much nothing like Halo.

In fact, if I had paid attention I would have seen that Mass Effect was a BioWare production. And if I had seen that, that fact alone would have told me it was worth getting this game. BioWare sold me when I played Neverwinter Nights, and even their Jade Empire was cool (although too short). But the game that they’ve done that Mass Effect is most like is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

The great thing about BioWare games is that they’re true RPGs. That is, you actually have a story. Halo was just a glorified dungeon hack ‘n slash (you get dropped in a dungeon–even they want to call them “levels” now–and fight your way out with no real plot). Mass Effect actually plays more like you’re in control of a movie.

Of course a lot of this happens at the beginning, and you’re thinking “I bought a game to play not to watch movies” but eventually you do get to go around blasting aliens to little pieces. From that point on, the cinematics usually occur where you want to see them. Of course I haven’t finished the game yet, but thus far it seems balanced between game time and story progression.

All told, if it says BioWare on it it’s almost certainly going to be a great game, and Mass Effect is no exception.

As I came home today, I thought a bit about the factor field that I did before (you can search the archives of the blog, and I’ll also try to find the relevant links later). With Excel, I was able to produce a visual representation of the prime numbers, and that enabled me to see that primes occured next to a “spike” that happened on multiples of 6. On the way home, I decided that it would be nice to hear what that sounded like too. After all, if the spike at 6 was consistent then it should be fairly rhythmic. (Indeed, if we put it into 6/8 time and use 8th notes, the prime numbers should be a nice syncopated rhythm.)

Since I have Cakewalk software, I decided to give it a shot. Since we’re looking at rhythms, I made a simple percussion track. Here is what the prime numbers sound like between 1 and 150 (note that I included 1 as a prime number even though it technically is not) when the prime numbers are snare drum hits and non-primes are silent: Prime Numbers.

Most people will have no problem picking up the rhythm, at least at the beginning. However, it does get kind of muddled toward the end when the primes spread out a bit. The rhythm is easier to pick up if you listen to the non-prime numbers, which I did as a bass drum: Non-Prime Numbers.

And of course if you play both of them together it’s obvious: All Numbers.

Finally, to show the relationship that this has with the six-note “spike” I’ve put a cymbol crash at every 6th note: All Numbers W/6th Note Emphasis.

In the future I’ll have to add a bit more and maybe extend it out beyond the first 150 numbers. Perhaps there will be a pattern that comes out of this too…

The headline says it all: Zednik: ‘I felt like somebody stabbed me.’ Observant readers will wonder, Why did Zednik say “I felt like somebody stabbed me“? Well it doesn’t say it in the article, but the question Zednik was asked (they played it on the radio this morning) was: How did it feel to get slashed in the neck?

You people thought I was joking about all the lame “How does it feel?” questions that the media ask. This is the only thing they know how to ask. Even the DJ this morning on the radio made a joke about it: “‘How did it feel to fall off a cliff?’ ‘It felt like falling off a cliff.’”