Science Videos

I read about using Gallium spoons to mess with science students in a book yesterday. Apparently you can buy your own at disappearingspoons.com. I'd be worried about someone drinking one. But it sounds as though ingesting gallium might not be as dangerous as say, a spoon of mercury.



While we were enjoying the spoon video, we noticed this video of mercury eating into aluminum. Fun to watch (and short - they compressed the two hours to 40 seconds).

The Day of Spilling

The last 24 hours have been about spilling things.  I don't know what's going on, but it started last night when I picked up my wife's lemongrass candle in the kitchen, and promptly spilled wax on myself, the kitchen counter, various jars and containers of nuts and things, the knife block, and the paper towel dispenser.  She was laughing when she came upstairs because it just wasn't worth my time so late in the evening.  It continued into today when I spilled a plastic container of rice, which landed upside down and sprayed rice all over the kitchen floor.  I cleaned it up.  Picked it up.  And the top flew off again, spraying considerably more rice everywhere.  So I got a towel, cleaned it up.  But every time I took the towel to the rice to pick it up and put it in the sink, small pieces of rice flew out of the towel and all over.  I took special care to rinse the towel and look for rice, and every time it seemed perfectly clean, only to shoot little bits of rice all over the floor when I bent down to clean up the mess.  When I was done, I put the container in the sink and pushed the lid back on, and the bits of rice on the corners of the lid shot across the kitchen, tens of feet in cases.  If I could harness that energy, apparently I could power small nations.

And then, like an idiot, I made chili for chili/cheese hot dogs (I know - a peculiar dinner, but we've been experimenting lately, and it can't all be fish).  I spilled semi-chili water between the stove and the counter.  Chili shot out onto the back of the stove, the wall, and the tea pot (at least that was easy to clean).  And chili crawled out of the pan and onto anything within twelve feet.

I'm hoping it's just a phase.

Nephrologist

Someone related to me just stated that urologists are closer in nature to plumbers than they are to neprhologists.  Guess I'll find a neprhologist with whom to discuss my kidney stones.

What Eryn Can't Watch...

Kyle told me that Jonny wasn't allowed to watch Torchwood, it was perhaps a bit too adult, I thought, it's Welsh BBC, how much more adult can it be than Doctor Who?   Eryn can watch that.  Well, in the second episode where there's a big sex scene and the thrusting man engaged in random bathroom sex dissolves into a golden shower/pearl necklace of energy all over the orgasming lady-possessed-by-an-alien...I'm pretty sure at a minimum, that's where it gets too adult.  I'm glad I was previewing it on my bicycle rather than with her in the frontroom.  On a learning note, I had NO idea Cardiff was as big as it was until I saw pictures in Torchwood of the city from above.  Wikipedia puts the greater Cardiff area at 1.1 million people.  Damn sizeable (althrough apparently only 1/3 the size of Minneapolis-St. Paul, but we have the advantage of two cities and two sets of burbs...but no aliens angling for golden showers).

5 Most Terrifying Homoerotic Japanese Music Videos

Wow...if this doesn't catch your attention, I don't know what does.  I particularly liked this description...

"The worst part about the video is the intro: A crackling fire, a flower petal falling, an androgynous Japanese man singing gently to you - possibly about winter snows being the footsteps of fate - and then WHAM! A busload of naked Asians playing the most elaborate game of Dick-A-Boo ever filmed"

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-most-terrifyingly-homoerotic-japanese-music-videos/#ixzz1EpvLIoJa

Scary

I noticed in the National Institute of Health clinical trials database, there's a study for individuals with kidney stones called, "Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithrotriptor Indicated for Fragmenting Urinary Stones in the Kidney."  It involves advanced shock wave technology.  Sounds pretty damn space age if you ask me, or like a Flash-based language for coding.  But then I discovered that apheresis is an extracorporeal circulatory procedure, so I've been engaging in extracorporeal procedures for quite some time, just none involving advanced shock wave technology or lithotriptors.

Interestingly, the process has its own entry on wikipedia.  Although the phrase, "minimal collateral damage" isn't exactly reassuring.

What I'm Listening To Lately

Lissie's "When I'm Alone."


"Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars


"I'm Shipping Up to Boston" by The Dropkick Murphys


"Bate Bate Chocolate" by Muffintopping Dora

Kidney Stone, Remix (last one was 2 years ago)

I had some back pain recently, and thought it was related to shoveling and bicycling.  It occurred to me for a moment that it felt sort of like when I had a kidney stone two years ago, but I wrote it off because of the exercise.  Then yesterday, after the amazing amount of snow that dropped on us - I shoveled three times and that didn't take care of all of it by any means, let alone the two feet of snowplow churn that was all over the bottom half of the drive this morning - perhaps 20" if you base it on our bird bath, I developed a sort of spasming backache that I was certain was shoveling induced.  Until about hour number three of the pain which was both across my back and in my abdomen.  We called my mother, the Nurse Practitioner, and she said to go to the ER as I wasn't sure what it was (could be kidney stone, could be ruptured bowel - who knows until you get it checked out).  That was easier said than done as the plow hadn't come by yet.  We bundled into the car, backed down to the end of the driveway, and promptly went no where.  The neighbors came out to help push the car back into the driveway while my wife called the ambulance.

But the ambulance couldn't get to our house either, so a cop showed up in a big SUV to find me laying on the floor (didn't really stop the pain, but at least I'm not teetering all over).  He asked some questions, loaded me into his truck, and hauled me to the end of the neighborhood road where the ambulance was just getting unstuck.  From there it was into the back of the ambulance and hooked up to saline and drugs, waiting for the plow to come blaze the way like some icebreaker.

A very bumpy half hour or so later, we were at the ER.  They put me in a room, asked me some questions, and I took a nap while they got around to me for a bit of blood (she missed - I hate that - I really hate it when it's one of those teflon suction needles.  They hurt.) and scheduling me to go get a CT.  Later the doc came in to tell me the CT had found a 4mm stone and that it was in the tightest spot and on its way out.  That said, they checked me out and sent me home.

Easier said than done.  It was 12:30 a.m., my wife still couldn't get out of the driveway, and taxis were running 2-3 hours behind schedule.  I picked up some percocet at the pharmacy (vaguely works with me, at least it cuts the pain if it's not a full on attack), and noticed this sign.  This is funny if you've had surgery in that area.  At least I thought it was funny.  Rectal cancer itself is in no way funny.

Percocet in hand, and a bag of vending machine fruit snacks in my stomach to make up for all the vomiting I'd done earlier in the evening when the pain got too bad, I went back out to the ER and sat in a wheelchair facing the sliding doors and waiting for the cab while reading a Discover magazine.  Around 2:30, my cab hadn't shown up yet, but another cab company was dropping someone off and had availability.  It was an interesting ride back.  In certain places, they'd plowed one lane out of six, leaving a road between two tall mounds of snow.

When we got close to home, I took a look at the roads going back into my neighborhood and told the cabbie to drop me off on the corner about four-five blocks from my house.  I gave him a good tip, and then started walking home.  I'm glad it was relatively warm out and that it was a beautiful evening, but trying to get five blocks with back pain and abdomen pain is a bit of a hassle.

By the end of today, despite the doctor's assurance there was a single stone, I've passed 3.5 stones (one was very small), maybe 3.75 if I count the sliver, and there's obviously more left given the cycling of pain I feel.  And there's more snow.  But at least I'm pretty sure the back pain isn't from shoveling.

Bikes and Ice Cream

101 Frightening Ice Cream Flavors - squid, sweet potato, wasabi, curry, shrimp, chicken wing, beet and corn, fried pork ring...yes, most of them come from Japan.

Typography - Write a Bike - I think I need one.

Dog Blog

Eryn and Luna hanging out in the front room watching television.


Luna, striking something of a stupid pose.  She's been a lot better lately since Pooteewheet bought a shock collar for training purposes.  It sounds mean, but 99.999% of the time (literally) the only action required is to give it a beep, not a shock, at which point she lays down and refuses to move.  It reminds her too much of the shock collar used to keep her from barking and being hauled away by the Eagan police.  It has also made her act like a normal dog around small children instead of jumping on them, which makes it well worth the price.

Boo Bees

My wife gave me a Valentine's Day card that was just a bit silly and just a bit risqué.  Eryn asked if she could see it, and originally I said "no, it's for adults."  Then I thought about it and said, "Sure, go ahead."

Eryn: "I don't get it."

Me: "What are they?"

Eryn: "Bees."

Me: "What are they saying?"

Eryn: "Boo."

Me: "And what are they?"

Eryn: "Bees."

Me: "What kind of bees?"

Eryn: "..............bumble bees?"

Me: [laughing] "What are they saying?"

Eryn: "Boo."

Me: "And they're....?"

Eryn: "Bees."

Me: "They're...?"'

Eryn: "Bees?"

Me: "That say?"

Eryn: "Boo."

Me: "And they're?"

Eryn: "Bees."

Eryn: "Boo. Bees."  [Eyes roll.  She gets it.]

The Ball is Down!

The ball that was up is now down!  No one seems to have noticed yet, however.  Perhaps the young punks can't see over the snow banks to the center of the yard.

Advanced Squad Leader - Released From the East

I forgot to blog about my ASL gaming last week.  It was important because it was the first game (of three) in which I've beaten Troy.  I changed up my tactics a bit and was more aggressive with my firing, moving, and positioning, and it seemed to pay off, even though in retrospect there were better places to stick my machine guns to create fire lanes and open up my line of sight.  As it was, I had to send one of the groups of troops north chasing after some Russians, just to make sure they didn't harass my other troops from the back, and to ensure that I didn't have troops sitting around doing nothing.  But otherwise, I think my positioning was good and allowed me to fall back from good fire groups to good in-building defense, and then provide plenty of backup on my close combat.  That, and I had a 9-2 leader who was chewing up the Russians by eliminating a lot of their coverage modifiers.  I think he got MVP for the game.  And I rolled well at the end, which was a change from past games where I had a habit of breaking my HMGs on turn one.

One thing I learned was that I'm not the only one who thinks demolition charges are for suckers.  Who the hell runs up next to someone and hangs out wiring up a charge under threat of point blank fire?  There's some sort of art there, and I don't quite know what it is.  Given Troy's demo charge sat all alone next to a group of my Germans for almost the entire game, he's not sure of the secret yet either.

He did come very close to breaking me in the end, however, and brought enough force to bear on my eastern flank that my troops crumbled and folded up because they were surrounded.  It was interesting to see the break and surrender work like you always thought it was supposed to when demoralized troops don't have anywhere to run.  Nice job on Troy's part.  It just was too late in the game.

There's a nice breakdown of one individual's after action report at BoardGameGeek.

"Istra, Russia, December 11, 1941: as the drive on Moscow slowed due to supply problems and "General Winter," STAVKA was given time to deploy fresh troops from other fronts.  The 78th Infantry, led by energetic 38-year old General Afanasy Pavalantovich Beloborodov, was transferred 6,000 miles from their native Siberia to the Sixteenth Army under Rokossovsky.  Veterans of the Mongolian frontier, the Siberians  would use skillful ambushes and delaying tactics to slow the panzer's march on Moscow.  Near the River Istra, they were finally ordered to halt and fight.  The snow-covered fields and the medieval town of Istra itself would become a battlefield for several weeks.  On 26th November, the 78th was renamed the "9th Guards Infantry," but needed no special titles to display elan and heroism.  Squeezing out of the pincers formed by the 10th Panzer Division and 2nd SS "Das Reich," the "marvelous Siberians" would regroup and launch a counterattack to retake the historic town." [But not in this case].

Delicious Grilled Garlic and Herb Shrimp

I made this Grilled Garlic and Herb Shrimp recipe tonight from AllRecipes.com (they have a decent iPad app, although this particular recipe doesn't list ingredients in the app, which is strange). Rather than following the recipe exactly, I used one pound of cooked shrimp (good shrimp, from Kowalski's, although on sale) and the same mixture of ingredients, and let it sit in a plastic bag to marinate overnight. Then I put it in a pan, including the extra sauce, and let it simmer with a cover until ready and dropped it on top of some thin noodles and served it with a side of curried, baked cauliflower, and lettuce (salad).  Absolutely delicious.  Probably the best thing I've made so far since I've started focusing on fish and shellfish.  I strongly recommend it if you like shrimp.  Eryn ate half of my wife's serving, and she's notoriously picky.

My wife is injured by Mythbusters

Eryn got a Mythbusters' explorer kit for some holiday in the past, the Forces of Flight kit.  On the left you can see Jaime and Adam preparing to defy danger with a rocket pack and a beret.  The kit comes with a number of experiments, including a pull-string, plastic toy helicopter.  To launch the helicopter, you mount it on its stick, yank the pull string, and it takes off across the room (or yard), demonstrating how rotors work.  That's what should happen.  But usually what happens is all the blades go flinging off in different directions, and you have to listen very carefully to hear where they land so you can retrieve them from under the refrigerator, behind the cupboards, under the recycling, etc.  Unless they hit your wife in the head.  Then they're really easy to find, because they're right there, on the floor, under the red welt.  The truism that all good science experiments can benefit from safety glasses holds with experiments around torque and Bernoulli's Principle.

I'm not sure how obvious it is in this picture, but it was incredibly obvious in person.

Giant Talking Lamp

I originally saw this on The Chive (home to hover hands, pedobears, and random photos of the day) and thought it looked very cool because of the bicycle next to the giant lamp.

Then I found the lamp on http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-giant-talking-lamp-of-malmo.html, which includes many photos and a video.  It talks!  It's the Giant Talking Lamp of Malmo, Sweden, and it moves around town during the year.

Change in Habits - Update

So it's been about a month since I stated I was changing my habits.  Results so far?  Down 18.5 pounds.  I suspect I'm actually down 20, but I forgot to weigh myself the first few days after starting.  I know 18.5 pounds in a month isn't exactly healthy, but the truth is that's the easy weight - what I usually fluctuate by in the summers doing casual bicycling.  So I'm not too worried about it.  According to my iPad app, I took in 56,410 calories in the last 34 days.  I exercised, burned 110,293 calories.  That's a net of -53,883 calories, or 15.4 pounds.  So the counter is running reasonably close to reality.  So what have I changed?

• Bike 2-3x a week, generally for an hour each time.
• Lots of fish.
• Lots of vegetables (cauliflower/green beans)
• Take my lunch to work 95% of the time to control what I'm eating.
• Healthy snacks (generally almonds or a dried fruit/nut mixture and oranges and apples).
• Always breakfast.
• Track it via the iPad.

You'll note that I didn't include "gave up alcohol" or "gave up sweets".  I'm careful about how much of those things I'm imbibing, but I haven't given them up.  This did lead to at least one embarrassing day where I think my alcohol-related calories were higher than my other calories for the day.  That's possible with beer.  Less likely if I drink whiskey (and I'm careful with Scotch as it tends to have an impact on my mood which is more obvious if I'm not eating as much).

On an amusing note, I've found that I can't really eat a full restaurant meal anymore, so I tend to haul home half of my food.  That's resulted in twice as much mileage from my eating out, and leftovers for lunch or dinner for myself or my wife.  Who, I should mention, is benefiting from my healthier lifestyle.  If your husband is cooking wasabi salmon, bison stew, or pecan-crusted tilapia, green beans, and baked curry cauliflower, you're naturally going to eat better.  If for no other reason than you don't have to cook dinner.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Eryn and I went to the Rosemount Daddy Daughter Dance on Friday. In the past, the Valentine's dance has been hosted in Eagan, but this year they combined with the southern version. It was bigger, that's for sure, with about twice as many little girls running around, but it was also not quite as interesting because of the size, and because they ditched the cloth rose and teddy bear for the kids. Not that I think Eryn needs yet another rose or teddy bear, but because after giving them to the kids for years, they were noticeably absent. But we had fun. We danced and decorated cookies (crowns that looked sort of like someone flipping you off), played a bean bag game, and had our picture taken of us dressed up.

Here's Eryn in her crown with her wand, trying to look like she's not really sleepy.


Decorating one of the cookies at the frosting/cookie station.  I worry about the sanitary level of the frosting given so many little girls were sticking their fingers and knives in it, but it wouldn't be the first kid spit in my space, and it won't be the last.


Here she looks sleepier.  The hair pulling usually means she's thinking about something.


This guy was there with his daughter or grand daughter.  I think he looks like an evil Mark Twain pulling a gun.  Don't mess with Mark Twain.  He could bury you with words.  He's probably reaching for a pen to write a scathing account of my dancing.

Beer...

There's a bit of a ruckus going on lately with Surly's plans to attach a brew house to their brewery. I don't see a problem with it, despite the desire of Minnesota middle men to maintain their hold on distribution no matter what common sense dictates. Many breweries outside our state have a similar set up such as Goose Island and Sierra Nevada (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and there's no appreciable impact to beer sales I suspect. It wouldn't surprise me if having a local brew house doesn't contribute to beer loyalty in the area and more sales. Just moving a tavern down the street is silly.

I did enjoy that the MLBA states that they oppose lower BALs for DWIs and smoking prohibitions (as if that has anything to do with them if they truly embrace a three part system). And they've already updated their site to reflect that they, "Fought back attempts to weaken the “Three-tiered” alcohol system."

That said, I DO see the advantage of not selling beer in grocery stores. I've been to Tucson several times, and finding a good liquor store can be a bit of an effort. If you allow grocery stores to sell liquor, then you get grocery stores that sell Miller and Bud and cheap wine and completely ignore variety. The end result is to take away the primary revenue stream from small liquor stores that helps fund their interest in variety. You lose the likes of Blue Max and The Cellars and are faced with nothing but beer from major breweries and only the most mainstream of local beers (Summit - which I like, but I want a choice). You're not robbing from grocery stores, they can still set up a liquor store if it's separated from the main store by a wall (Kowalski's and Byerly's), or by a parking lot (Cub Foods), and the separation forces them to compete in variety.

The antithesis of instant messaging...

I had a question for Fidelity the other day and thought it might be easiest just to talk to them via instant messaging. I've never been in anything "instant" before that put me in a queue for more than ten minutes.

Jason Charles Miller with Felicia Day

As part of my interest in all things Felicia Day, I noticed this video she's in for Jason Charles Miller's, "You Get What You Pay For." A pretty good song and video, even without her crawling under the hood of a pickup.

Geeky

I found this Tiobe Software programming community index fascinating.  I wouldn't have guessed C and C++ outdistanced C#.  Or that Groovy was all the way down at 36.  I might have guessed VB.NET was .263%, but I know at least two people who can program in VB.NET, so that puts me well above that number in my "community".

Thoughtworks has an interesting pdf talking about the state of software as they see it.  The death of Java?  Really?  I don't see it.  Then again, my company loves Java, and I don't always trust their technical direction. Is that a horrible thing for a manager to say?  I trust MY technical direction and I'm part of the company, so perhaps that suffices.

These HTML5Rocks slides, which are written in HTML5/CSS3 and both explain and demo the HTML5 features, are cool.  I recommend Chrome if you're headed over there to check them out. I just finished Brian Hogan's HTML5 and CSS3 - the book and the web site complement each other nicely.

Tall Brad sent me this link about spelling autocorrect humiliating people.  People should be humiliated if they can't spell.  Enjoy.

Danny MacAskill video from my parents.  BIKE GEEK!  Sweeeeet...  Background music is Wax and Wire by Loch Lomond.  Even sweeter.


What kind of nut pays money to bike up Mount Lemmon?
(pilfered from Google)

Kyle is searching for flatulence deodorizers. He found one.

According to Felonspy

There's a rapist that lives in the lake behind Target.  Maybe in an underwater lair, or maybe that's the only way to satisfy some restraining order.  There's a mystery geocache in the middle of that lake as well as you can see from the picture below....

Paints an ominous picture.  I think it's a trap.