I have officially started a new meme. Whether it will get very far I don’t know, but I’m going to try. Last week I had mentioned to my department that we should introduce the acronym WTF when marking. We would have to do this bit by bit, starting with the full term:
Write The Formula
After about a term or so of general use within the department we would then be able to abbreviate the phrase to WTFormula and finally WTF. I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be any problem doing that!
We also use the following acronyms; RTQ and RTFQ. These stand for:
Read The Question
and, obviously:
Read The Full Question
sometimes it’s essential to make your point properly.
While at a course, last Thursday, for people like me I mentioned these things and some others wrote them down. I hope, but don’t expect, these terms to make the zeitgeist sometime in the next 10 years. Now, there’s a prediction we can test!
Just in case anyone reading this wants to buy it, I have a home cinema amplifier up for sale. If you can collect it and pay me GBP50 then you can have it. It’s a Sony STRDG-910. I do not have any speakers for you, you’ll have to get them yourself. Here’s the gumpf I have collected about it:
For Sale
Home Cinema Amplifier £50
Looking for a bit more bang for your buck?
Buy this 700W 7.1 Sony Amplifier (no speakers supplied)
Sony STR-DG910
Feature packed High Definition home cinema receiver with HDMI, autocalibration for easy set-up and BRAVIA Theatre Sync for one-push button operation. Also listen via the DMPORT connection to all audio files stored on your Walkman, mobile phone or laptop.
Features
Future-proof HDMI connection (3 In/1 Out) to bridge multiple High Definition sources to Flat TVs/Home Cinema Projectors without any picture/audio quality loss. Digital Cinema Autocalibration – just place the microphone on your couch and plug it into the receiver. The receiver adjusts automatically the perfect surround sound according to your room and speaker set-up. BRAVIA Theatre Sync functionality, The feature enables you to operate your home cinema system just by pushing one single button if connected with BRAVIA TV. DIGITAL MEDIA PORT (DMPORT) connectivity. Just plug in any of the 4 available DMPORTs and enjoy your audio files from your Walkman, mobile phone or laptop. Video Up-conversion to HDMI. You will need only one HDMI cable to your TV and just switch the video sources on your receiver. 8-channel Linear PCM for High Definition sound from Blu-ray discs. Enjoy 7.1 sound in CD-quality for each channel. 1080p pass through – HD film quality passed to screen with no loss in quality Discrete 6 channels with equally 100W (+subwoofer) for powerful home entertainment. All relevant surround formats are supported: Dolby® Digital / DTS / Dolby® Digital EX / DTS-ES (Matrix/Discrete) / DTS 96/24 / DTS NEO:6 / Dolby® Pro Logic / Dolby® Pro Logic II / Dolby® Pro Logic IIx / Dolby® Dual Mono /96k/24Bit PCM Sony’s Proprietary Digital Cinema Sound (developed together with Sony Pictures) to bring the sound from the best cinemas to your living room.
This text is probably (c) Sony as I lifted it from their website.
This Fooyah Communication concerns the weather and cars. It does not concern the fact that my car doesn’t like starting if the temperature is below 2 Celsius and nor does it concern the run of cold weather recently. I also have not done any controlled, scientific tests to confirm my observations but I would be interested in doing so.
Observation:
When there is a frost and the cars in my street have ice on the windows the side of the car that is closest to the buildings has less or zero ice.
Hypothesis:
One side of the car is warmer than the other resulting in less ice.
Mechanism:
The nearby buildings radiate heat and keep that side of the car warmer or slow its loss of heat.
Pretty picture:
The Street
Cars parked in the road in position A have less ice on the SW facing side which is nearest the buildings in the street. Cars parked in position B have less ice on the NW side which is closest to the buildings there. It is not a phenomenon to do with the sun as both of these positions are shaded from the sun’s rays in the early morning and there isn’t any sun when I go out to the car in the deep dark midwinter.
Most of the houses in these streets were built around 1880 and so have brick-thick walls and no cavities to insulate. Therefore they radiate the heat energy of the house quite efficiently. I need to park my car outside a modern house with cavity insulation to see what effect that has on the frost of the car.
Some not-very-sciency-maths-stuff:
I have made a huge number of simplifcations in the following calculations but the order of the result will be about correct and if it isn’t then I am sure that one of the F5 +1 will let me know. Essentially I have estimated the amount of energy lost by the air in my whole house and have assumed that about one third goes through the front of the building (the roof is quite well insulated). I have also assumed that the bricks of the house will lose some heat over the night and that this is radiated out although some will be radiated in. Then the car absorbs the energy without any loss. Basically, the final answer is a big ISH.
So the car absorbs about a couple of Watts per metre squared. That seems about right, but what do I know? Thermodynamics freaked me out at college!
Once a fortnight is just about the correct frequency.
Private Eye is a fortnightly news magazine to which I subscribe. It’s possibly the only newspaper willing to spread the truth and print what is going on. It’s quite frightening really just how corrupt and dodgy most organisations and societies are. Maybe corrupt is the norm and I’m just hoping for an idealised society that can never exist? The other magazine I subscribe to is Scientific American.
In the same week that I receive Private Eye the Merseyside Skeptics Society release their podcast called Skeptics With A K. It’s a show about an hour long which features three normal (ish) guys chatting about skeptical items that interest them. There’s a bit of swearing and a reasonable amount of poking fun at people but it is very interesting and I learn a lot.
Both these subscriptions arrive in the same week and have for a few years, even allowing for the Christmas break they have. Each new year I wonder if the synchronicity will be altered but I haven’t found so this far. Perhaps it’s deliberate?
Saw this earlier today in the sunshine and it warmed me through. So nice to see spring flowers and sunshine. It’s been rather grey for the last few months.
A garden in Kent:
As an encouragement to one of my classes today I decided I would declare them as a genius on this website if they produced a scattergraph that looks better than mine. The criteria I used were:
Axis scales consistent
Axes correctly labelled and correct variable
Small crosses for each datum
Good, well-positioned line of best fit
Good interpolation value from graph
The following pupils succeeded and are therefore declared geniuses:
Ed
Louis
Leo
George W
Cameron
Stewart
James
Note: genius should only be taken to mean able to draw a graph.
Just spent a wonderfully pleasant hour with #1 son sowing seeds in the garden. We tidied the vegetable patch and got rid of the weeds and then planted this year’s selection of veg. It’s going to be carrots, parsnips and chillies. I don’t think the chillies are going to survive the cold so I’ll get some more and grow them inside.
We also read the instructions for the tomatoes and are actually going to grow them inside. They are on the kitchen window sill.
So, in a DIY shop today getting some seeds to sow and I saw this attached to the petrol lawnmowers.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that some people are lacking a bit in the grey matter but SERIOUSLY? People are so moronic that we have to tell them to put FUEL in a petrol motor before using it?!
Someone stop the planet. It’s time for me to get off.
This morning I might have been having a cheeky couple of laps on Gran Turismo 5. I was possibly attempting to win one of the seasonal events (which for some reason I find quite tricky).
While racing around the GT Original track I noticed a castle in the background. I was so fascinated by this that for a few laps I couldn’t really concentrate on the track. The castle is a rather good looking building and really adds to the atmosphere. Sometimes I wonder whether game designers have bets about the most ludicrous things they can add!
Screen #1:
Screen #2
These two screen grabs were taken using the LG remote app on my iPhone that has a capture function!
