Canada Post Anti-Jinx

In the past month we've seen some long delays in arrival of parcels. My thesis has gone completely MIA. A parcel from Australia is somewhere in transit. Various products ordered online have been taking there time...

After much grumbling, we found an article online telling of month-long delays on Canadian imports! Oh no! Now, while the article made sense, Dad (gleefully) pointed out the article was from 2004 and so hardly relevant to the current situation. :P

Regardless, our grumbling seems to have paid off, as in the last 12 hours:

• a package from DealExtreme arrived at Emily's;
• a set of books from Amazon.ca arrived at Emily's;
• a parcel arrived at my place (have to pick it up tomorrow afternoon);
• another set of books from Amazon.ca starting shipping.

I need to grumble to the aether more often.

Brave or Stupid?

A brave or stupid person will take actions that are likely to end badly for them. You can only tell between "bravery" and "stupidity" by asking: were they aware of the risks to themselves?

I think this guy falls in the "brave" camp.

Police are investigating the discovery of an explosive device in Benalla, in central Victoria, yesterday. They say a council worker spotted the device on the spare wheel of his car when he left work. Worried it could harm others if it exploded, the man then drove his car to a more isolated area. Police bomb technicians were sent to the scene from Melbourne and confirmed it was an explosive device with potential to harm the driver of the vehicle.

Though perhaps a little stupid for not calling the police first...

Sesame Street is AO

From the New York Times:

The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Interesting.

E8

What is E8? E8 is an algebraic construct recently used by someone to produce a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. You can look it up if you want. Search for "surfer dude has a gut" to read all about it. It's a pity that it's wrong, but these things have to be tried.

For curiosities sake, I looked up what E8 really is, and wanted to share this tidbit of information:

This lattice, sometimes called the "8-dimensional diamond lattice", has a number of remarkable properties. It gives most efficient sphere-packing in 8 dimensions, and is also the unique even, unimodular lattice in 8 dimensions.

I'll assume that your eyes didn't glaze over too much, and you noticed the same thing I did. E8 gives most efficient sphere-packing in 8 dimensions. I have to admit, efficient sphere-packing in 8 dimensions is kind of impressive, but it is also incredibly useless. Such is the world of mathematics.

Climbing the Walls

Yeah, things have been stressful here. So, when I visited Emily this last weekend, we did the only thing appropriate: wall climbing.

It was awesome. Emily and I got to practice our teamwork (initially learned in Splinter Cell), as one had to hold the rope and operate a ratcheting mechanism while the other one climbed. I was lucky she was there - by the end of the day my arms were so tired I just fell off the wall twice.

All the climbs were about 4m straight up, though the variation in knobs and handholds made some walls much more difficult to climb than others. On some you had to practically leap from your current position and hope you caught the next handhold before falling. It was kind of cool really.

Only one problem: my arms didn't function properly for 2 days afterwards. :) I was unable to squeeze or grip anything. I couldn't even squeeze a water spray bottle, my fingers and arms were that tired.

Still great fun though. :D