It'll take a couple of day's posts to cover my trip to Las Vegas. Click an image to view full.
Here's the jet my dad and I left town in. While Ketchikan's airport is small when compared to the nation's major airports, it has a 7,500 foot asphalt runway and a 9,500 foot water runway. Over 16,200 aircraft operations and a quarter million passengers go through it each year. That's why we needed a bridge.
Before I knew it we had taken off and were over the Alaska native village of Metlakatla.
Alaska, the land of 3 million lakes; suck on that, Minnesota... Actually, I think this was over Canada, but you get the idea. The landscape looks the same.
We had a few hour layover in Seattle, so we took the opportunity to explore the Sea-Tac airport.
The construction of the windows in the previous photo were interesting.
Abstract art... I suppose that's what this is.
We stayed at the Luxor. We got in after dark, this was taken the next day. For those who didn't know, the Luxor is a giant pyramid with an Egyptian theme.
From the inside, you'd never know it's daytime.
More to come tomorrow.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
«To Las Vegas! (Photo Heavy)»
Monday, April 12, 2010
«Motivational Monday: Invincible Moose»
The car hit it, but the moose is uninjured.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
«Back on the Rock»
I got back Friday. I had a good time... My dad not so much, because he ended up being sick most of the time.
Oh, what's that? You didn't know I went anywhere to begin with? I decided to slip off to Las Vegas without saying anything about it on my blog. Surprise! I left hints though... Remember that Caturday about Las Vegas? That's the day we flew out.
Oh, what a wonderful sight it was to see Ketchikan getting smaller and further away. I hadn't been on a plane for 16 years1. I really do hate being stuck in this town...
I'll go into more detail later in the week, after Monday.
1: The other recent times I've left town was by ferry, not plane.
See the rest of “Back on the Rock”»
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
«Stop While You're A Head»
Once again from Cyanide and Happiness
See the rest of “Stop While You're A Head”»
Thursday, April 8, 2010
«Cigar Insurance»
Here's a story I've had saved on my hard drive for a long time...
Only thing I can say is: Pwned.A North Carolina man, having bought several expensive cigars, insured them against... get this... fire. After he had smoked them, he then decided that he had a claim against the insurance company and filed. The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigar normally. The man sued. The judge stated that since the company had insured the cigars against fire, they were obligated to pay. After the man accepted payment for his claim, the company then had him arrested for arson.
See the rest of “Cigar Insurance”»
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
«3S Eagle»
Random picture of an eagle I took on the 22nd of last month (March). This is as zoomed in as my camera would go, 20x Optical. I don't ever use digital zoom, all that does is pixelate the image. As it is I cropped the picture down.
See the rest of “3S Eagle”»
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
«Poke the Candles»
I can't seem to leave a candle alone when I'm burning it. I usually end up poking at it with a paperclip or something. I melt wax into it from previous candles that didn't burn all the way. I usually end up screwing up the candle. It will burn with a really small flame, and won't melt all its own wax.
A candle is "set" during the first burn. Usually you'll want to give a candle about 2 hours of burn time to properly set itself. As long as you don't screw with it, it should be fine until the end of its life. Most candles are designed to have a flame just large enough to create a wax pool about the same diameter as the candle itself. This way it pretty much consumes the entire candle.
I also usually snuff out a candle rather than blow it out. If the candle is in its own little container that came with a lid, I simply put the lid back on. If not, I have a little clear plastic (yes, plastic!) thing that I put over the flame. It's actually part of the packaging from some gummy life savers. Believe it or not, the flame snuffs out long before the plastic would melt. It also contains the resulting smoke.
Monday, April 5, 2010
«Motivational Monday: Las Vegas»
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas... Or at least you hope so.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
«Guide For First Contact»
Useless unless you view the full sized image.
Remember from yesterday's post about Uber Rock-Paper-Scissors, the Sponge "cleans Nuke" and wins. So in a battle of "nuclear weapons vs. sponges" the sponge will win. Humanity has a chance of defending itself against an alien attack after all! Hollywood movies don't lie!
See the rest of “Guide For First Contact”»
Thursday, April 1, 2010
«Uber Rock-Paper-Scissors»
So Rock-Paper-Scissors has been officially changed to include a few extra elements. Don't you hate playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and both of you chose Rock the first time? Then both of you chose Scissors the second time? The trouble is, you don't have many options, so it is very likely the same one will be chosen by both people. Enter the new and improved Rock-Paper-Scissors; with 30 options, it is much less likely both of you will chose the same one!
You'll probably have a harder time remembering that Sponge "looks like moon" and thus beats it somehow. Also, some people can't do the Vulcan salute so they will be unable to pick Alien. But no solution is perfect!
See the rest of “Uber Rock-Paper-Scissors”»
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
«Pac-Man + Deathstar = Mimas»
The best news headline I've seen in quite a while: Probe spots Pac-Man on Saturnian Death Star
Mimas is one of the moons of Saturn. Because of the large crater on it, it has been said to look like the Deathstar from the Star Wars movies.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
«Physics of the LHC»
The first 7 TeV collisions are now taking place in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), breaking yet another record. They had achieved the 7 TeV energies earlier, but only now are they allowing the particle beams to cross and collide.
7 TeV is only half what the LHC was designed for. However, the LHC is basically its own prototype. It has been decided that the copper fail-safes between the superconducting magnets need to be redesigned before the LHC can reach the full 14 TeV power. The LHC will need to be shut down to perform these upgrades. For now they will run at half power until late 2011, at which time they will shut it down and upgrade it. It won't be scheduled to resume operation until 2013... So much for it being the 2012 doomsday device.
The LHC is 27km in circumference, and those hadrons (protons) in the beams are going around the ring 11,245.5 times a second. That's 99.999997828 percent the speed of light. There are 2 beams traveling in opposite directions.
Yet for all the power and speed of the LHC, nature bombards our atmosphere with far more energetic cosmic rays. Take the Oh-My-God particle for example. It slammed into the atmosphere over Utah with an energy of 3x10^20 electronvolts (equivalent to 300,000,000 TeV). That's why I'm not worried about black holes or anything else from the LHC eating Earth; if it were possible, nature would have already done it.Special Relativity1
Some strange Special Relativity takes place between the beams. Despite moving at near light speeds in opposite directions, they're still not moving faster than the speed of light relative to each other.
The entire 27km circumference of the collider is only a little over a meter in length relative to a beam; this is known as length contraction. Yet from one beam's perspective, the other beam has to travel 202,500km to get around that same circumference once. (Funfact: a 703.5 TeV cosmic ray "sees" the entire Earth as 17 meters thick.)
There's also a strange time dilation that would cause a beam to "see" a clock at rest as running 7,500 times slower. Yet if an observer at rest were to see a clock traveling with the beam, it too, would appear to be running 7,500 times too slow. So from both perspectives, it would appear as though the other clock is the slow one. This effect is increased to 112,000,000 (that's millions) times if the two beams were to look at each other's clocks. (Funfact: a 703.5 TeV cosmic ray would have "seen" only 6,000 years2 pass in the 4.5 billion years the Earth has been here.)
Seriously... Science is stranger than fiction. Yet Special Relativity is tame compared to Quantum Mechanics. When the beams collide, the resulting debris particles are where the Quantum Mechanics aspect of the LHC begin... Then you've got stuff that exists in opposite states simultaneously (quantum states), can jump across an impenetrable barrier (quantum tunneling), and fundamental particles yet unknown to physics (the elusive Higgs boson).
1: These calculations were made for the full 14 TeV output of the LHC (7 TeV in each direction). However, because the energy required to accelerate something near the speed of light increases exponentially, the figures are not far off from the current half-power speeds.
2: If the young-earth proponents were riding a cosmic ray, they might have been right!
Monday, March 29, 2010
«Motivational Monday: Batman Bin Suparman»
He was born in 1990, and had the most awesome parents.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
«Smallpox»
Smallpox. It's been with humans since before civilization. Killed many hundreds of millions. Human history is punctuated with its effects... It is the only human disease to have ever been eradicated. No one will ever die from Smallpox again.
Or is that really true? While it has been removed from the population, stocks still exist in the Unites States and Russia, under the care of the World Health Organization (WHO). They were going to be destroyed, but the WHO changed their mind against its destruction in 2002. Smallpox still exists...
Personally, I feel the DNA of Smallpox should be mapped, then all remaining stocks destroyed. We owe it to everyone that has ever died of Smallpox in the past and the future generations. Please, make sure it's really gone for good.
The Smallpox success alone should be enough to convince people of the usefulness of vaccinations. Even if vaccinations had any link with autism (and they don't) they'd still be well worth it. But that's another topic for another time...
Saturday, March 27, 2010
«Caturday: Suffering Sick Bee»
I've still got my cold. No fever or headache anymore, but I've developed a cough and runny nose. A fair trade, I suppose.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
«The Cones Will Fix It»
Pop quiz! You're a public works maintenance person. A pothole is reported in a busy intersection. What do you do about it?
A. Repair it immediately.
B. Cover it with a steel plate so it's not an immediate hazard.
C. Place a couple cones so people have to drive around it, then ignore it for weeks.
If you answered C, perhaps you work for the city of Ketchikan!
I specifically tried to take the picture when there was no traffic. There was someone that was coming up on the intersection and when they saw me with my camera, they stopped.
See the rest of “The Cones Will Fix It”»
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