Tag Archives: xkcd

Apollo Retroreflectors

History, Humor, Reblog, Science, Space Travel, , , ,

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http://www.xkcd.com/1441

Yet more proof that man really did walk on the moon.

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Left on the moon by Apollo missions 11, 14, and 15 the three retroreflectors continue to provide an ultra-precise means of determining Earth-Moon distance.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

Retroreflectors provide surveyors a precise way of measuring point-to-point distance by timing the two-way time of a laser pulse. The optical design is such that reflected light is returned in the exact direction from which it was sent with very little scatter.

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These methods are faster, safer, and infinitely more accurate than measuring distance by stretching a long steel tape (called a chain for historical reasons) as I did in college surveying camp over 30 years ago. Laser range finders and retroreflectors are the mainstay of modern surveying. This technology did not become commercially available until the 1980s, yet NASA used it in 70s to accurately measure Earth-Moon distance.

With the right equipment anyone can measure the precise distance to the Moon and simultaneously confirm that MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.

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Watches | XKCD

Humor, Opinion, Technology, XKCD,

Old people used to write obnoxious thinkpieces about how people these days always wear watches and are slaves to the clock, but now they've switched to writing thinkpieces about how kids these days don't appreciate the benefits of an old-fashioned watch. My position is: The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.

(alt-txt)

Old people used to write obnoxious thinkpieces about how people these days always wear watches and are slaves to the clock, but now they’ve switched to writing thinkpieces about how kids these days don’t appreciate the benefits of an old-fashioned watch. My position is: The word ‘thinkpiece’ sounds like a word made up by someone who didn’t know about the word ‘brain’.

http://xkcd.com/1420/

TMNT | XKCD

Art, Humor, Music, Video, , , , , , , , , ,

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http://xkcd.com/1412/

Monday’s XKCD (above) made me go find the original theme song on YouTube (top).

In the late 80′ – early 90s TMNT were all the rage. The boys were little and between Christmas and birthdays we acquired every form of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle paraphernalia know to man. You name it we had it: action figures, weapons, vehicles, home-made VHS recordings of the TV shows, comic books (new and old). The show was on every afternoon after school around dinner time and I watched many an episode with the boys. We also saw the first several movies. The theme song was unquestionably catchy, humor childish but not always so, the plots predictable. But heck, I enjoyed it as much as the boys did.

It was a classic.

SRL – Technical Discussion

Humor, , , , , ,

Re: Seven Red Lines

Via #1 Son:

Thought you’d appreciated the discussion at my work about this:

TC Embarrassingly, I’ve done the opposite in meetings.
Requester: I want two perpendicular lines.
PM: Drawing two perpendicular lines is really hard. No resources for it.
Dev: Actually, I can do that in an hour.
PM: /facepalm
3 days, 19 hours ago

JH Increase the dimensionality and you can certainly get 7 lines all perpendicular to each other.
1 day, 5 hours ago

K Can you show me that on a whiteboard?
1 day, 5 hours ago

JC Sure. Get him a 7 dimensional whiteboard.
1 day, 4 hours ago

JH {{1,0,0,0,0,0,0},{0,1,0,0,0,0,0},{0,0,1,0,0,0,0},{0,0,0,1,0,0,0},{0,0,0,0,1,0,0},{0,0,0,0,0,1,0},{0,0,0,0,0,0,1}}
1 day, 3 hours ago

AH (Two vectors are perpendicular if their dot-product equals 0.)
1 day, 3 hours ago

JH As for the color part, I feel like there was an xkcd about this recently…http://xkcd.com/1351/
1 day, 3 hours ago

PA The internet has everything, even seven dimensional orthogonal vectors
1 day ago

JC Projecting seven dimensions down to two dimensions doesn’t seem to work very well. Also, the colors are wrong.
1 day ago

M If you don’t like the color, priests from AoE will fix it for you
1 day ago

SF It’s not too hard to plot 5 dimensional data on a 2 dimensional canvas:http://imgur.com/69Jc8Ch
1 day ago

GM but the question is, can you make them red and transparent?
25 minutes ago

SF color=”red”, alpha=0.5 🙂
19 minutes ago