California Science Center

Endeavour

 

"Hi, we're starfish."

 

This picture feels like
Wong Kar-wai's movie

"I know what card it is now"

Valentino and Leonardo know that the following 16 cards in inside the drawer:

Heart: A, Q, 4
Spade: J, 8, 4, 2, 7, 3
Club: K, Q, 5, 4, 6
Diamond: A, 5

Elizabeth randomly picks a card from the drawer. She thens tell Valentino the rank and Leonardo the suit of the card.

Valentino: "I don't know what card it is."
Leonardo: "I know you don't know what card it is."
Valentino: "I know what card it is now."
Leonardo: "I also know now."

What card did Elizabeth pick?

粵語人大戰國語人 之 三個人

三個粵語人跟國語人談論孔慶東。

粵語人: 你沒有聽過孔叫獸嗎？
國語人: 沒有呀。他幹了甚麼？
粵語人: 他說我們三個人是狗呀！
國語人: 你們三個人？你們開罪他了麼？
粵語人: 我們都不認識他，怎樣開罪他呢？
國語人: 那他為什麼說你們三個人是狗呢？？
粵語人: 我怎麼知道！因為他是一個瘋子喇。這件事新聞都有報導。
國語人: 嘩，新聞都有報導？我都不知道你們這麼出名...

(五秒後)

國語人: 哎呀，你們"香港人"！

粵語人大戰國語人 之 倒油

Based on my friends' conversation :P

國語人: 你的朋友是幹舍的？
粵語人: 他是做倒油的。
國語人: 哦，他都在廚房工作嗎？
粵語人: 不是呀。
國語人: 難到在加油站工作？？
粵語人: 有些時候是會經過啦。
國語人: 他倒甚麼油？
粵語人: 倒甚麼油？？就是女油嘛！
國語人: 女油？？真是奇怪的工作...

(五秒後)

國語人: 哎呀，"導遊"！！

Counting 45 minutes

There are two pieces of identical ropes. If one burns a rope from one end, it takes an hour to completely burn the whole rope. However, the materials that make up the rope are not even. In other words, if one cut the rope into two equal halves, it does not necessarily takes half an hour to completely burn one of the halves. 


Now, you are asked to count 45 minutes, but you do not have any clock or watch. How would you do so by using these two pieces of ropes and matches?

2 = 1

A friend's Facebook status reminds me of this silly proof of 2 = 1:

a = b
a² = ab
a² - b² = ab - b²
(a + b)(a - b) = b(a - b)
a + b = b
a + a = a (as we suppose a = b in the beginning)
2a = a
2 = 1

:P

Accounts Alerts: You've no alerts at this time

This alerts box on GoDaddy really caught my attention when I logged in:


It's like

"Hey you!!!!"

"What??"

"Ah, nothing."

"#$@!*&"

"It appeared to be a green light to me"

A physicist was pulled over by a police officer. The police officer asked

"Do you know that you just ran a red light?"

"No. It appeared to be a green light to me. Maybe I was driving a bit too fast."

"Alright sir", said the officer with a grin on his face. "I'll have to give you a speeding ticket then since you must have been driving at around, hmmmm, 110,000,000 mph. With an extra penalty of $5 per mph over 60 mph, it's just a fine of 550 million dollars."

"Ehhh... Actually, I think I ran a red light."

P.S. Created based on a question in my college physics textbook :)

Los Angeles to Tokyo the Kayaking Way

Two years ago, I wrote about how Google Maps instructs you to swim across the Atlantic Ocean when you search for directions between Los Angeles and Paris. Apparently, Google Maps has been improved by the Google engineers since then: I just search for directions between Los Angeles and Tokyo and it tells me to kayak across the Pacific Ocean:

For some reason, Google Maps thinks that I should travel to Seattle first before throwing myself into the kayak. Maybe kayaking is prohibited on the beaches of Los Angeles? (-.-)

Not only is kayaking "less tiring" than swimming but Google Maps is thoughtful enough to advise me to visit Hawaii on the way. I can have a good rest (anyone needs a rest after 2756 miles of kayaking) and some fun there!

And, after another 3879 miles of kayaking, we're finally entering Japan. Do I need to show my passport if I land this way? :)


For some reason, it can't find directions between Los Angeles and Paris now

Maybe the Atlantic Ocean isn't that safe to swim across now? :P

How super-duper tiny we all are

Today I received an email from a friend that features comparisons of the planets in our solar system with the various giant stars in the universe and it elicited my quest to find out what the largest star is known to human as of now.

After some googling, the answer is VY Canis Majoris, which has a radius that's around 2000 times the one of the sun, which in turn has a radius that's around 109 times the one of the earth.

How large is that? Watch the following video and you'll see at the end how large the sun is compared to VY Canis Majoris:



Now, can you imagine how small human being is? In that sense, how big is the problem that's puzzling you today? Not that big really :)

P.S. Just to give you another perspective how ridiculously tiny the earth is in this gigantic universe, look at the following two images :P

Image from Wikimedia.org

Image source unknown (let me know
if you know)

Annoying Windows restart popup

Whenever Windows XP gets an update that requires a restart, the following popup will keep showing up no matter how many times you click "Restart Later":


If you insist that we should restart, why ask the question in the first place?? They can simply remind us to restart when we log off. And one time it actually restarted my machine when I was away from my PC (yeah, for more than their five-minute countdown) and all my unsaved work was lost.

Sometimes I just don't know what the software engineers at Microsoft are thinking.. (~__~ )

Tricky baseball pitch

A tricky baseball pitch by a Japanese guy. Does that break any rule in the real game? (o__O )

The Best DUI Arrest In History

Man even if I'm conscious I can't recite the alphabet backwards! It was so funny when that driver admitted that he was drunk at the end hahaha :D

Fool's Mate

A few days ago I paid a visit to Zaca Mesa Winery & Vineyards in Santa Barbara and saw a 3D chessboard there. I couldn't help but rearrange the pieces to show the infamous Fool's Mate to my girlfriend :P

By the way, Merry Christmas! :)

One of the most "innovative" inventions I've ever seen...

"Ever feel bored running on a treadmill because you're at a static location all the times? Don't worry! With Treadmobil, you can enjoy working out on a treadmill and the beautiful scenes on the street!"



Ehhhh.... I think there's something we call, hmmm, RUNNING?

Actually, let me summarize its pros and cons:

Pros

• The only pro I can think about this machine is that treadmill causes less stress to your ankle compared to running on the street. But a bicycle serves that purpose too right?
  

Cons

• The size of the machine is pretty big so you may hit a few pedestrians during your workout.
• It doesn't look like you can stop the machine except by running backward. Have fun on a downhill.
• It looks kind of dumb running on it.

Guess what, they even have a patent pending for this machine :P

Gmail Tree theme adds water droplets when it rains heavily

It's raining so heavily now and my Gmail Tree theme changes its look:

For a second I thought that those are real water droplets on my screen since they weren't there when it started raining (the water droplets appeared when it changes from drizzle to rainstorm while the raining background was already there when the rain started).

I like little touches like this :)

Birthplace of the Internet: 3420 Boelter Hall

I've long known that UCLA is the birthplace of the Internet. However, not until recently did I know the exact location of where this historical moment happened just more than 39 years ago: 3420 Boelter Hall. As a web programmer, I feel that it is my responsibility to check it out (after all, I'll be jobless if the Internet doesn't exist):

This is the current 3420 Boelter Hall

See, it is 3420

This is the old 3420 Boelter Hall, which
has become 3424 Boelter Hall now

Someone just used a marker to make the
"0" a "4" now. Typical engineer solution...
(-___- )

Because of this notice, I think that the first
ARPANET message was sent from this
3424 Boelter Hall, not the one I showed
in the first two photos

A look of the two rooms (on the left)
and the hallway

Man, the Engineering School should spend some money to create a plaque or, better yet, make 3420 Boelter Hall a exhibition room. Come on, this is a huge thing! Can you imagine what the world is like now if this groundbreaking research project didn't succeed back in 1969? :P

Interesting final position of a recent chess game

The following is the final position of a recent chess game I played:

Image from Facebook

My queen and two bishops were all in front of my opponent's pawns and he couldn't capture any of them. A nice finish :P

Animator vs. Animation 2

This is a cool video my coworker sent me :) The first one is here, not as good but pretty fun too!

Okay I was wrong....

After seeing Tina Fey's hilarious imitation of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric (the real one is here),



I admitted that it is, after all, not that difficult to choose the right president (as opposed in my previous post). Well, given a "not so smart" candidate and a regular candidate, who will you choose? Perhaps Palin's greatest contribution in this presidential election is to make it super easy for the US people to make an obvious choice :P