9gag recently had a posting, with someone confused about pizzas being round, their boxes being square and the slices being triangular.

Of course without consulting any historical reasons (and hence running the risk of being very wrong), the suggestion is this: It’s easier to roll dough to round shapes, square boxes are easier to manufacture, store and move around, and the “triangular” slices are the only way to split the pizza fairly equally. And if you cut a circular shape along its diameter it’ not a triangle but actually a “sector”. And just for some additional information, cutting a circle along a chord forms a segment.

I faint

Came across this on the way home.

Anyway today is 11 Nov 2011: 11-11-11. It’ll be even more interesting at 1111hrs.

Picture by Carol VanHook on flickr

Exercises in compare and contrast are quite interesting. Never thought myself much of an arts student (but here I am dying in anything remotely related to math), but this is probably a no-brainer.

Here are two articles. Not exactly apples and apples though.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1160975/1/.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15517948

Don’t think this is the right place to put in some personal views. But let’s just say that the fare hike was pretty timely.

Picture by neekoh.fi on flickr

We pretty all know something about wishing upon a shooting star. One version says that the wish has to be repeated for a total of 3 times for the duration of the trail. Given that the shooting stars witnessed are actually very short, I guess it would mean some things.

1. Wish for simple/short things.
2. Know what we want very clearly.
3. Always be staring at the sky.

Wonder if vague wishes that encompass almost everything would be effective. At least it would cover the first two points pretty easily.

But I guess we have plenty of wishes, some simple, some downright complicated. And somehow choosing one would be complicated. Perhaps a story whereupon a magic lamp’s genie only grants a single wish, barring lame-ducks tricks such as “I wish for more wishes”, can show the burden of choice, and of the problems of choice and sacrifice.

Except that in the case of a shooting star, there isn’t time to go on a protracted debate in the mind.

How many of us upon witnessing a shooting star can actually get the wish immediately without regret. And of those who can, how many actually see the wishes come true?

Maybe we should keep our wishes simple, or vague so that we may kid ourselves more easily in the future.

幸せになるように…幸せになるように…幸せになるように

Picture by paulmcdee on flickr

Sigh.

But in the remote possibility someone is wondering, I’m still alive, with alive being that the heart is beating, brain functioning, organs working (I hope).. Nothing much else is alive though.

Getting it on

In case you don’t remember, last week’s entry’s first two entries were about someone being shot at for refusing to kiss, and that studies show that sex raises your risk of heart attack. Perhaps it has become a habit, but the first article is related to this topic again. It turns out that there’s some bugger with such an itch in his groin that he spent over 228k USD on hookers. Apparently he had over 3000 nights of fun. It’d be a miracle if he hasn’t caught something.

+1 warriors rejoice

Except that this +1 is of a slightly different nature. Google comes up with this +1 feature that’s sort of like the Like button we see in Facebook. The idea is that the user can recommend the search results, improving the search and all. But then again, one will only know how good the result is after going to the page and away from the search results (unless you’re like me and open everything in new tabs). Maybe it’s not so brilliant after all. But perhaps +1 warriors in certain pointless forums can expend their urge to +1 in another way.

USBattery

So we have this gadget that is a battery with a USB port. Confusing is whether the thing is recharged via USB, or that it powers USB devices. But it looks cool.

BSOD strikes 3DS

Apparently some people are getting a BSOD (B for Black) on their Nintendo 3DS’es. Perhaps we should move away from colours that start with the letter B for fatal error screens next time, so we can have new acronyms. Perhaps worse colour combinations too. Green on purple. So we have more than one reason to cringe at the sight of the error screen.

Snake tweets

A witty twitter user is entertaining people by tweeting an escaped cobra’s “thoughts”. While people are being reassured by the zoo that the cobra isn’t going to sample the arse of someone taking a crappe in the loo, it does seem irritating that the iPhone is given a seal of approval by even a reptile, by saying that it works with a tail.

Angry Eagle

Makes us wish we had the power eagle in the following video for our Angry Birds games.

Angry Birds cause Pork Shortage, perhaps

And not all of the pigs that got blown up by the birds become filling for your meat bun. That’s why we use cardboard too.

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Let’s hope that didn’t ruin your appetite.

Never say no to Grandma

Not only can you not say no to panda, it seems that saying no to Grandma can have near-fatal consequences too. A 92 year old lady couldn’t get a kiss from a man almost 40 years her junior took offense, and sent 4 bullets his way. We may wonder if it was the unsteady aim that caused the misses, or a great aim despite her advancing years that led to misses intended to intimidate the target into obliging.

Don’t forget to stretch

Getting it on may be fatal too. A study shows that sudden bursts of intense physical activity raises significantly the risk of a heart attack. Which isn’t exactly rocket science. But they also mention that sex also raises the risk. While it’s one more reason to hit the gym and condition ourselves for such exertions, perhaps it’ll be a good way to go. Just kidding.

Promotion by Piracy

Just a week after a post that sort of blames companies partially for piracy, a film producer comes out to thank pirates for making his film popular. He is grateful that his little movie has been put to the map. Now if only all the other film makers are only after having their films put on the map..

The salty taste of greed

Some opportunistic and greedy bugger from China decided to buy truckloads of salt to cash in on panic buying due to radiation fears. However his dreams of swimming in cash were soon replaced with the reality of swimming in salt, with his apartment filled with sacks of salt, and no one to buy them, with prices dipping after the government urged people to stop the panic buying. At least he can learn from this experience, and having wised up, can in more than one meaning advise the younger ones, saying that he has eaten more salt than they have of rice.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s an artificial cloud.

So with the 2022 World Cup being interestingly awarded to a tiny nation with 40-degree Celsius summers, there has been many a debate about shifting it to winter, about how the hosts won’t want that, about how the FIFA didn’t really mean they wanted that, about how the Europeans won’t stand for that, about how much of a fool Blatter is. Pushing ahead for the summer world cup, an artificial cloud has been proposed, one that will adjust its position in the sky to block the stadium from direct sunlight. Let’s hope the thing won’t fall out of the sky.

Before you turn green

With the radiation leaking and all, we all could do with some more knowledge about the radiation effects on health. Many news sites have published information about the effects of exposure. We could probably do with more knowledge, so that more unethical buggers like the fella mentioned above won’t profit. But here’s a nice graphical (somewhat) representation on how much you can soak before you start turning green.

Just to undo the damage

With the recent spate of horrible tunes some call music, it’s time to have a nice old piece to soothe the soul. Breaking from the usual semi-interesting video, here’s a set of videos to repair the damage to your ears.

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So ends this (or maybe actually the previous) week’s post. We’ll be back on the schedule if a post comes on Sunday, which in case you don’t know comes after Saturday, and is followed by Monday. And it’s good manners to sit at the front seat.

iLate, again, and again, and again..

It seems that people don’t really learn their lesson. After a few cases of the alarm clock on the infernal iPhone screwing up, people are still depending on it. It cost them again. I really recommend a cheap plastic alarm clock, so that the damage will be much less if you chuck it out of the window in annoyance in a particularly bad morning.

The front seat, or the back seat?

We’d rather Rebecca Black be stuffed in the boot with her mouth gagged. Along with the lyricist of the now famous “Friday”. Tens of millions of views later with an incredible Dislike to Like ratio, it is one song that has rang (unpleasantly) in many a ear. Notice people like to criticise Dislikes with witty remarks such as (# people are Bieber fans, where # is the number of dislikes to a generally nice sounding song)? In this case, we can probably say the people who clicked Like in the Friday video are either a) deaf, b) nuts or c) Bieber fans. Oh wait, generally these 3 conditions come as a set.

The blame game

Some study suggests that piracy is a result of what is termed “global pricing”. Of course for people like us who don’t live in the centre of the whole darned Universe (this place called the US), things are a little more expensive. Turns out for some things, it’s much more expensive, and people turn to piracy. Of course in the end pirates will still be viewed as pirates, but perhaps it’s worth a think. Then again, we all know that there’ll still be pirates even if music is sold at 20 cents a track.

Let’s call it an Applesuit

Apple sues Amazon for infringing its trademark App Store, which even though being so generic was granted. Amazon’s App Store sells apps for Android. Next up, Apple will be filing lawsuits against all the grocers in the world for selling apples, and against anyone who dares to use the first person singular personal pronoun – I – in lowercase.

Matte is good

Chrome in wanting to reflect their philosophy of simplicity, decides to change their logo to a simpler and less shiny one. Also, instead of an angled view, it’s a plain flat view. Wonder if Firefox will do something about theirs. Like maybe make the fox look fatter. And by the way, Firefox 4 is out. Get yours today. But this post was writte on a 3.6.

A tale of two Marios

Controversial Man City striker Mario Balotelli is known to have a mouth that works independently of the brain (assuming there’s a brain in the first place). Now we also find that aside from kicking and heading a ball, his motor functions include little else. Particularly missing is the ability to wear a bib. Also can be noted is the lack of patience.

Now this Mario is much better. If you ever wondered how a 2D platformer will look like in 3D, this video shows that it’s a narrow strip of land. Our great Mario must have an amazing sense of balance to travel on such a landscape, dealing with dangerous mushrooms along the way.

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This has been a fairly long post. Perhaps the blog will see a rare and more personal entry soon.

And let’s take a moment to remember the acknowledge the disaster that has befallen Japan, and hope for the stabalisation of the nuclear issue, as well as a swift recovery.

This post will be short and simple, with just a single source.

Mobile to the Moon

Maybe not so far.. But a Windows Mobile 7 phone got strapped onto a balloon and released with the intention of reaching the stratosphere in order to track its flight path. The choice of phone was down to not having to learn additional skills to use the iPhone for this purpose. I hope this is the case, and not for the silly reason of not wanting to waste an iPhone on a mission like this. You know I hate iPhones, and this is not a way to have any other phone chosen over it.

Waiter, could you print me this..

Perhaps having your food look exactly like the one in the menu is not impossible. Research is going on for using 3D printers to produce edible stuff. We can’t guarantee the taste though.

IE Through the Years

No (failed) attempt at a witty title for this. If you remember a video from a previous post about the different versions of Windows (well, more like how well it upgrades and retains stuff), this article is about how Internet Explorer has changed since version 1, all the way to the newly released IE9.

Jumpstart in life

Seems like this kid will have a very early exposure to future problems, if the future spouse does that. But for now, poor kid..

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