I assume that someone somewhere has done this before, but in lab today we were inspired to play this game by a recent xkcd comic. The rules:
Over coffee I and another grad student had a brilliant innovation: an electric guitar with SQUID pickups! Due to the high sensitivity and low noise of the SQUID, we expect the sound quality to be extremely good. Of course, the guitar will have to be filled with liquid nitrogen (we're assuming high-Tc SQUIDs here) or equipped with a cryocooler. The LN2-filled guitar would have the advantage of producing plumes of fog on demand, and would be especially spectacular when smashed against the stage at the end of the show.
AirTran is my new favorite airline.
Toddler's temper ousts family from planeORLANDO, Fla. - AirTran Airways on Tuesday defended its decision to remove a Massachusetts couple from a flight after their crying 3-year-old daughter refused to take her seat before takeoff.
AirTran officials said they followed Federal Aviation Administration rules that children age 2 and above must have their own seat and be wearing a seat belt upon takeoff.
"The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the family," AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said.
(Via Steinn.) AirTran should publicize this, there is a market for airlines that have low tolerance for obnoxious kids. Bonus reason to fly AirTran: "The father said his family would never fly AirTran again."
Saw the major Coachella news last night, but today the full lineup has been posted. Not only is Rage Against the Machine reuniting for the festival, so is Jesus and Mary Chain.
If I go for just one day it'll probably be Saturday, which has several of my favorite bands. If two days, Friday and Saturday.
I haven't been posting much, but here's something to keep the blog running over the weekend: A variation on the Friday music post which I am totally stealing from Lemming. I've built a playlist of ten songs (plus a bonus track) around a particular theme; below I've listed the artists for each song. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out the theme and the eleven songs. Use of Google and other resources is allowed; some of these songs are obscure and some less so.
Last year I embarked on a project to fill out my collection of '90s music, with the help of your recommendations. This was quite successful, and I will post my list of favorites eventually. But recently I have posted a lot of top music lists, and am a bit burned out, so I'm going to put it off. Instead, I will move on to this year's project, which is to fill out my collection of '80s music.
So: what are the essential albums of 1980-1989? Essential either as a consensus classic or a personal favorite; all genres are open. Here are a few I hear mentioned a lot, just to get things started (inclusion in this list does not constitute endorsement):
The Arcade Fire have posted the first single from their upcoming album, and I give it a thumbs up. Go here, click on "Win", then click on "Win's Scrapbook", then click the album art to start it playing. (Sadly it's just a stream and not an mp3.)
And in another Caltech link from Steinn, the basketball team breaks their 207-game streak.
Steinn's story of his arrival at Caltech is pretty entertaining. All you Techers should go read it.
With uncounted hundreds of unread posts stacked up in Google Reader after my vacation, I am declaring RSS bankruptcy. After catching up on a few essential blogs, I just clicked "Mark all as read" and started fresh. If there's something brilliant I might have missed, let me know.
Observers of my Flickr page will have already noticed that I started Project 365 on schedule three days ago. This is where I take (at least) one photo every day for a year and post the series online. I'm putting these photos in my Project 365 photoset (and also tagging them project365). I think this URL will produce an RSS feed of just these photos (there's also one for all of my photos). Finally, a thumbnail of the latest one will appear on the sidebar of this blog's main page.
A few photos from my vacation should also go up at some point (grouped separately).
A new year calls for a new divination from the iPod oracle. Last year's reading predicted the encouraging outcome of The Futureheads' "Decent Days And Nights", which is a reasonably accurate description of 2006 (and the rest of the lyrics arguably apply, but they're pretty vague).
Of course, I meant to do this on New Year's Day as I did last year, but didn't get to it until now. Nevertheless, it's worth doing it three days late to see what's in store for the remaining 362 days. As usual, the key is here.
The Crossing is funny, but makes me wonder if my iPod is not being synced properly. The Outcome, in addition to being the best song on the list, starts out talking about worker exploitation in diamond mines, so I'm going to assume this is a prediction that I will take a postdoc job by the end of the year.