February 2011 | wodeces

Monday, February 28, 2011

Compass and Straightedge

The Greeks long suspected this, but it wasn't until April 12th of 1882 that Ferdinand von Lindemann conclusively proved it when he constructed himself the most awesome birthday party possible and nobody showed up.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Nanobots

I think the IETF hit the right balance with the 128 bits thing. We can fit MAC addresses in a /64 subnet, and the nanobots will only be able to devour half the planet.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Flying Cars

It's hard to fit in the backseat of my flying car with my android Realdoll when we're both wearing jetpacks.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Major in the Universe

I hear Steven Levitt is writing a book analyzing A.J. Jacobs' quest to spend a year reading everything Malcolm Gladwell ever wrote. The audiobook will be narrated by Robert Krulwich of Radiolab.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Let Go

After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Wisdom Teeth

I heard the general anesthesia drugs can cause amnesia, so when I woke up mid-extraction I started taking notes on my hand so I'd remember things later. I managed 'AWAKE BUT EVERYTHING OK' before the dental assistant managed to find and confiscate all my pens.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Never Do This

I call Rule 34 on The Secret House.

Friday, February 11, 2011

(

$Brains aside, I wonder how many poorly-written xkcd.com-parsing scripts will break on this title (or \;;"\''{\<<[' this mouseover text."$

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Milk

It's not hard when you have the same thought like 40 or 50 percent of the time.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Archimedes

Give a man a fish, or he will destroy the only existing vial of antidote.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Trochee Fixation

If you Huffman-coded all the 'random' things everyone on the internet has said over the years, you'd wind up with, like, 30 or 40 bytes *tops*.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

1999

'Whoa, twenty-two in two hours!' 'Your site got twenty-two hundred hits in two hours?' 'No. Twenty-two. But still, that's like half the people on the internet!'