All posts by Jim Geurts

Waves and wormholes – More physics based daydreaming

I was talking with a friend not to long ago, and he mentioned how he
has occasionally felt or saw a mesh/netting/fabric that he believed
represented the universe… I do have to admit that I have sensed
something similar a few times… Anyway, the topic came up from us
originally talking about how certain sound waves/frequencies do some
interesting things to people.  He made the point that everything
is a wave and thus affected by vibrations. 

I’d like to expand on the mesh/fabric belief, slightly, though.  I
think of the mesh more like a 3d grid/sphere… Metaphorically
speaking, think of a combination of Swiss cheese and an onion.   So… why a 3d object?

Well, I think what he meant by a mesh really represents distance and
space.  Think about everything happening at this exact moment as a
plane (in the geometric sense).  Each point on the plane would
represent an event or more precisely object.  All of the planes
would combine to make up a 3d object, in order to accommodate the notion of time.  Thus, my metaphor reference
to an onion.  So where the hell does Swiss cheese fit in?

I’m still working out all of the conceptual details, but I figure that
gravity has to fit in the picture, somewhere.  Physics says that
the more massive an object, the more gravity it has.  So… each item on the plane would have gravity and that
gravity could disrupt/interact with the other planes.  It could even create
a hole or path between some of the layers.  Mathematics has many
equations (sqrt(n), ln(n),
etc.. ) to show this.  Otherwise, if you need something more
conceptual, think of a bowling ball resting on a bed.  This is
where I pull in the notion of Swiss cheese… figure gravity is warping
the space/time continuum in ways that we don’t really know how to
utilize right now. 

Think about this, though… say an object exists with gravity strong
enough to warp the mesh enough to create a tunnel between some
layers.  Then think that the object at the center of the
distortion doesn’t really exist at all, or it exists in another
dimension.  Only the gravity distortion exists.  That way,
objects that travel through the gravity created vortex wouldn’t collide
with a super massive (and probably very tiny) object.  Since there
is no object to hit, an object that enters the vortex could exit the
other side at the same velocity.  In effect, it would be a way
shortcut time and space, or as most people have termed it, a wormhole

The major fault in this logic is that the super massive object doesn’t
really exist.  Either that or there must be a way to create
extremely large amounts of gravity without the mass requirement. 
It might also be possible that once the tunnel is created, it could
sustain it’s form solely from the structure of the layers themselves (without the requirement of extreme gravity)…

Nachos in Baltimore

I went to Baltimore over this past weekend… If you’re ever looking
for a great place to get nachos in Baltimore, check out Nacho Mamas
in
Canton.  It’s right in the square, so you have some choices for
where to wet your beak while you wait to sit.  Probably the best
plate of nachos that I’ve ever had.  We had one plate for the six
of us that were eating and it worked well as an appetizer.  Two
people could easily be full from just the nachos, though.

Javascript: Attach event

In an effort to better my javascript skills… I needed a way to hook
into the window.onload event.  Rather than just doing something
like window.onload = Load_EventHandler();
I decided that I would add an event listener to the load event,
instead… But how to do that so that it is cross-browser supported (IE
6+ and Gecko is all I really care about, personally)?  This is
what I came up with (with example usage):

function AttachEvent(elementObj, eventName, eventHandlerFunctionName)
{
if (elementObj.addEventListener)
{ // Non-IE browsers
elementObj.addEventListener(eventName, eventHandlerFunctionName, false);
}
else if (elementObj.attachEvent)
{ // IE 6+
elementObj.attachEvent('on' + eventName, eventHandlerFunctionName);
}
else
{ // Older browsers
var currentEventHandler = elementObj['on' + eventName];
if (currentEventHandler == null)
{
elementObj['on' + eventName] = eventHandlerFunctionName;
}
else
{
elementObj['on' + eventName] = function(e) { currentEventHandler(e); eventHandlerFunctionName(e); }
}
}
}
// @eventArgs is an interface of type Event: http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Events/events.html#Events-Event
function Load_EventHandler(eventArgs)
{
alert("here");
}

AttachEvent(window, "load", Load_EventHandler);


A random thought for a Friday afternoon…

Every day I grow; the world becomes a little smaller… It wasn’t that
long ago that I thought of the world as an infinte adventure… It’s
becoming more apparent to me that the world doesn’t move as rapidly as
I once thought.   I think that this trend will reverse once I
hit a certain age, though.  I think I’ll become more apprehensive
towards leaving my comfort area (home, city, country, etc…)

When I was growing up, I thought we’d have flying cars and amazing health care at this point… damn movies

What I didn’t realize is that there is a process that everything must
go through before it is unleashed to the general public.  That
process is the thing that ultimately slows innovation… it is also the
thing that keeps safety (arguable) and consistency in products… so you
get the good with the bad, I guess.

Are you free because you can lock your door at night?

No… you’re just scared.  Ask the majority of Canadians if they
lock their doors at night…  America… the land of the scared sheep

Now don’t get me wrong… I love the land where I live. But it seems that the majority of people are, more than ever before, blindly following idiots in power.

Anyway, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one disgusted with the current state of media in the world. Via Dare

Feel that dull sensation?

I am going to try something… hopefully it will spread through the six degrees of separation…

I want to see how the general public feels about an issue, without
resorting to the normal news outlets.  I feel that the majority of
news outlets throughout the world report on the same issues. 
There is little creativity except for how to rephrase what the other
news outlets are saying.  So if you read this and find it either
strikes a nerve or makes you curious, please link to it, reproduce it,
or do whatever it takes to reach a couple more people. 

I would like to get a general opinion on why people think the US is
still involved in Iraq.  and generally the middle east, for that matter…

Here are a couple reasons, off the top of my head:

  1. Control over the majority of the world’s oil supply
  2. Public relations with political officials in surrounding countries.
    • If we’re nice to them maybe they’ll buy more weapons from us and fuel the war some more.
    • This way, we can convince to the American public that someone wants our military over there.
  3. To prove that we are the international bullies promoting “peace”
  4. To use it as a pivot point for that part of the world.
  5. An excuse not to address North Korea and/or China
  6. A great reason to keep dumping money into the black hole that is the defense budget(s)
  7. Something to keep our minds off the fact that Michael Jackson is a pedophile…
  8. News stations are required to have something to show… God forbid they show something positive, for a change…

Here are some reasons that just don’t fit with why we’re still there:

  1. Capture Saddam… uhm.. we did that
  2. Capture Bin
    Laden… apparently that isn’t at the top of the agenda for the current
    administration.  – This priority was twisted into the mess that
    we’re in now.  Rather than go after the one responsible for the NY
    disaster, our “leader” chose to finish his daddy’s dirty work.
  3. Spread the joy of capitalism…err democracy.  Think
    about it… does it really work for 90% of the population of the
    US?  Let the people who live there everyday come up with their own
    form of government.

Now, I’ve said this before and I want to say it now.  If we’re
keeping our presence over there to show how mighty we are, then it’s a
losing battle.  If we think people respect that kind of thing,
lets ask the locals how they feel.  I’m not saying that we go back
and play tapes of their response when we took Saddam from power. 
I say we get some true responses aired to the American public. 

So what can we do other than be at war?  I have a great
idea… one that can prove
to
other nations (and more importantly, future generations) that our
leaders can actually use that
glob of material between their ears.  I say we start a great
project or multiple projects.  Something grand in scale, like the
pyramids.  If war only exists to keep people working/productive,
then surely we can divert from that path and do something useful.

To completely show how ingenious we can be, I vote that
we build a giant sphere.  The government could dump billions of
dollars into research for how to develop a perfect sphere (materials,
design, possible uses, etc).  You know… all of that money they
spend trying to figure out how to make jets and weapons more
stealthy.  They could also employ thousands of
workers to work on the sphere.. figure at least a new town could be
started.  That would employ all of those serving overseas, if they
desire.  Consider this idea to be a modern
equivalent to the belief that Michelangelo drew a perfect circle as a
response to the request, made by Pope Julius II, to find someone worthy
to paint the Sistine Chapel.  Making a perfect sphere that can
last the test of time would not be an easy feat.

Now, any project would do… A new space race, for instance.  We
could actually challenge ourselves to establish a lunar colony within
5-10 years.  That is not far fetched, given the proper time and
resources.  Anyway, I just figured the sphere was a neat
idea.  Don’t you think that it would be nice to have something to
show for all of the hard work, rather than people who die before their
time, in a senseless war?  And yeah, I know that there is a
massive project
, but honestly, it doesn’t get the attention or
resources it deserves. 

Am I dreaming?  Probably, but it has been proven that anyone can change the world, if they want to…

From ah and uh to sugar in apple juice…

If some race (future or extraterrestrial) were to analyze a typical
conversation between two people or say a non-rehearsed radio show, they
would be pretty confused, I would think.  The fact that we insert
the useless “ah” or “uh” randomly, would throw them off…

Think if the Egyptians did that with their hieroglyphics… Maybe that’s why we have such a bitch of a time deciphering them.

The other thing that is on my mind this morning is about apple
juice.  I bought a 15.2 fl oz. bottle of Dole apple juice this
morning… I had heard that apple juice generally contains a lot of
sugars, but this one said “No Sugar Added” on the front.  Flipping
it over, I find that there are 24g of sugars helping to make up 9% of
my daily allowance, per serving.  There are two servings in the
bottle… To me, it seems like they should put “Lots of Sugar Added”
along the front.  But hey… I’ll give Dole the benefit of the
doubt.  I’ll accept that the sugars are natural sugars and apple
juice (squeezed from the apple, itself) contains them and would taste
like shit without them.  It just seems like tricky marketing
trying to tell the user that there is no sugar.

Now, to clear things up… I am not one to watch calories, sugars,
carbs, salts, fat, or whatever craze is popular for the moment.  I
generally eat what my body tells me it is hungry for.  Granted, I
use some intelligence with this… I abstain from eating a double
grande gyro with a side of nachos, at 3:00am cause I’m drunk.  I
realize that if I ate only fruit and veggies, I would be thinner, if
not “healthier.”  But that sucks… I like to live and enjoy what
the earth provides…

Drawbacks from registry / file polling…

Ever watch that little network icon in the systray?  Wonder how it
knows when to blink when there is network activity?  I didn’t
either, but then I came across an entry from Mark that describes how it
determines when to blink.  The program, represented by the network icon, polls a couple registry keys about twice per second, to determine if there is activity.  As he
outlines in this post, polling ultimately hurts system performance,
since it takes cycles away from useful applications and can cause
memory page faults.

So what does Mark recommend a windows developer to do as an alternative to polling? For the registry, use the RegNotifyChangeKeyValue function. For the file system, use ReadDirectoryChangesW and/or FindFirstChangeNotification functions…

Spelling errors: A thing of the past…

Yep, that’s right… I envisioned a nano machine last night.  By
drinking a glass of water (with a couple hundred nanobots), the nano
machines will enter the host’s body and alter the human brain in such a way that will fix
spelling errors.  I will guarantee that the process is safe and plan on introducing the nanobots into myself. 
I am thinking about other implications with these machines… I think I
can program them to give people excellent musical ability, too…
basically the applications are endless.

I’ll start creating these nanobots once I get home, tonight.  If
anyone would like to help fund the project, please donate some funds…
you won’t be forgotten when this hits the market!