Copy Paste Character
Ever have a key break on your keyboard and copy and paste until you get a new one? What about extended characters?
Reduce noise-induced hearing loss with “morning-after” dietary magnesium
If you’re exposed to loud noise, there are a few things you can do to minimize the damage to your hearing:
1. Take a dietary supplement of magnesium. In the past decade, scientists have quietly found a “cure” for noise-induced hearing loss. Several scientific studies (notably those by Joseph Attias and colleagues [1,2]), have shown that magnesium (in the form of magnesium aspartate, oxide, or stearate), at a dose of 2.9 mmol/kg (116 mg MgO /kg body weight) can reduce the magnitude of both the noise-induced temporary threshold shift and the permanent threshold shift in human subjects. The improvement by magnesium in these studies was typically 5 to 10 decibels, which means that it does not completely block the injury, but orally ingested magnesium partially protected against permanent hearing loss.
Of course, prevention is key! Wear hearing protection when exposed to loud noises!
Noise-induced hearing loss
RONJA - Networking with beams of light
RONJA Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access is a Free Space Optics device originating in the Czech Republic. It transmits data wirelessly using beams of light. Ronja can be used to replace a segment of LAN, and one can enjoy all activities as if they were directly connected via 10Mbit/s full duplex Ethernet — playing games, connecting to the Internet, streaming audio/video, or sharing files.
The range of the basic configuration is 1.4 km 0.9 miles. The device consists of a receiver and transmitter pipe optical head mounted on a sturdy adjustable holder. Two coaxial cables, like those used for TV antennas, are used to connect the rooftop installation with a protocol translator installed in the house near a computer or switch. The range can be extended to 1.9 km 1.2 miles by doubling or tripling the transmitter pipe.
Building instructions, blueprints, and schematics are published under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. Only free software tools are used in the development.
Chronomancy
Chronomancy stems from the word chronos (meaning time), and it is generally a fictional and sensational school of magic. Although the school is based on quantum physics and certain scientific theories, there is no concrete evidence of the perfected use of time manipulation.
Saw this across my feeds. Spent too long searching Wikipedia for it until I decided to look at the history page for Chronomancy.
Solar water disinfection
Solar water disinfection, also known as SODIS[1], is a method of disinfecting water using only sunlight and plastic PET bottles. SODIS is a cheap and effective method for decentralized water treatment, usually applied at the household level and is recommended by the World Health Organization as a viable method for household water treatment and safe storage [2]. SODIS is already applied in numerous developing countries.
Wow.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit: Hieroglyph Edition
As with any language, some of the words are hard to translate directly, but Richard Parkinson and John Nunn, expert translators from the British Museum, maintain the story line as accurately as possible with the limited vernacular offered through Hieroglyphic script . . . Peter Rabbit is denoted by a semi-circle, an ellipse and rabbit image.
HOWTO: encode a string into a complicated-looking trigonometric function
I’ve written a small C program that takes as its input an arbitrary string and outputs the above function, modified a bit so that you can use the character index directly, i.e. f(4) gives you the
fifth character of the original string.
Near finals time, I tend to hate Mr. Fourier and his works. However, it’s still early enough in the semester that I’m jovial.
HOWTO: encode a string into a complicated-looking trigonometric function
Richard Feynman Needs His Orange Juice
For you folks in RSS readers, I linked to the following video Richard Feynman playing bongos [via]
Bacon Cups
I had an occasion calling for bacon themed food and my mind immediately turned towards the famed bacon mat. I needed something a little more single-serving though, so I decided to attempt bacon cups.