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Catching spam commentsHere's something worth sharing: I get a lot of comments on this blog. Well, not a lot really, but probably on the order of a hundred every week or so. All of them are spam. And they all have one really obvious thing in common: they're all written in HTML. So they all start with ... Maybe this blogging thing isn't working so well after allI haven't posted anything in a month. Not that it matters, since nobody really reads this, but in case you're looking back at my archives from 5 years in the future and wondering why I haven't posted anything in a month... I've been busy. Writing long involved posts takes more time than I have in the middle of a busy semester of grad school.... More git for newbies: merge vs. rebaseOne of the things everybody points out about git is that it's a fairly complex system. Of course, other version control systems like Subversion are complex as well, but git doesn't seem to do as much as the others insulate you (the user) from what's going on "under the hood." Case in point: the difference between merging and rebasing.... Acclimating to GitI've been watching git with interest for a while now, because the concept of a distributed version control system — one where you don't need to contact a central server to make a record of your recent changes — would go pretty well with a lot of the things I use version control for. (Not just source code, but managing homework and papers that I type... The most complicated simple way to count paperIn an introductory TA meeting today we had to split up a large pile of survey consent forms for the students to fill out later these week — 24 to each section, for 4 sections per TA, that's 96 sheets of paper. Well, who wants to count out 96 sheets of paper? So my friend had the good idea of optimizing the procedure by weighing 12 sheets and... The Conifer CatapultThe tree catapult is a staple of cartoon physics, and I think I've even seen it acted out in one or two live-action movies. But according to the Mythbusters, it may have been actually used by medieval armies laying siege to castles. I actually thought preconstructed wheeled catapults would have been the norm, but still, you have to wonder: does it... Bouncing BulletsWhenever Mythbusters meet bullets — no, not literally, though this week's episode of Mythbusters does have Adam and Jamie trying to shoot cardboard cutouts of themselves — you know something wacky and interesting is about to ensue. The myth in question is that, with an unwisely aimed shot, it's possible for a bullet to bounce off three steel beams... How the Mythbusters skipped a carOn the last episode before breaking for Christmas, the Mythbusters build team undertook the slightly ambitious project of skipping a car across a pond, as shown in the movie Cannonball Run. At first this probably seems like a ridiculous thing to try — of course, on Mythbusters, what isn't? But this one actually worked. Here's a look at the rather... Unarmed and unharmedThis is one of those really cool things that I've often wondered about: can you really shoot a gun out of an outlaw's hand? Last week on Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie decided to test it out. Sure, it's not the kind of thing you'd think would be easy (or safe) — unless you have access to that classic Mythbusters creativity. Their first idea involved... |
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