February 21, 2005

kinetic energy

It snowed today.

Kinetic energy is the energy of motion. An object which has motion - whether it be vertical or horizontal motion - has kinetic energy. To put some more context, moving cars have kinetic energy. The kinetic energy of a body is calculated using the following formula KE=m* v2/2, where m is its inertial mass and v is the velosity of the body. It, as all other energies, is measured in Jaules (J), J = kg * m2 / s2.

Now here is a little quiz for you:
Two cars are moving in parallel one (A) at 50 km/h the other (B) is catching up at 60. Both weight 1.5t (not that it matters). The moment the two cars are exactly in parallel to each other both drivers hit the brakes. Assume that the break force applied to the cars is the same.
Question: What was the speed of B at the distance that was required for A to come to a full stop?

Staight-forward human logic tells you 10 km/h. Hint: that's way off.

The answer is 33.2 km/h. Surprised? Sure you are.

Posted by boyan at 11:48 PM | Comments (1)

February 20, 2005

good places for broadband

Based on population density, GDP per capita, mobile and land phones per capita and UN HDI these are the best countries for broadband:
1.Macau, 2.Monaco, 3.Hong Kong, 4.Singapore, 5.Gibraltar, 6.Taiwan, 7.Bermuda, 8.Malta, 9.Japan, 10.South Korea, 11.Netherlands, 12.Bahrain, 13.Belgium, 14.Jersey, 15.United Kingdom, 16.Germany, 17.Guernsey, 18.Italy, 19.Israel, 20.Barbados, 21.Puerto Rico, 22.Switzerland, 23.San Marino, 24.Luxembourg, 25.Aruba...

This only takes the above parameters into account and is based on a formula that I figured out and tuned. Your opinion may vary.

Posted by boyan at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2005

ACTUAL transcript of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. This radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10-10-95.

Americans: "Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision."

Canadians: "Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision."

Americans: "This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course."

Canadians: "No, I say again, you divert YOUR course."

Americans: "THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. THAT'S ONE-FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP."

Canadians: "This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Posted by boyan at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2005

Tuesday

Another day passed. Quite a busy one.

I met some annoying layer 2 multicasting issues today. It seems that most IGMP snoopers have a hard time dealing with groups that map to 01-00-5e-00-00-xx, just because that's the same mac address range used by the link-scoped "Local Network Control Block" 224.0.0.0/24 groups. So multicast users all over the world, AVOID using x.0.0.y and x.128.0.y groups.

Posted by boyan at 11:04 PM | Comments (1)

February 14, 2005

The headphones are in. I'm digging through old records and enjoying new depths of transparency. Really good headphones. Thanks John.

I'm ordering the PC parts tomorrow. Finally.

Workwise Monday is usually the worst day of the week. All status reporting and planning is done on this day and that's really not something I enjoy. Just give me the real stuff.

Posted by boyan at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

Another week passed. Nothing fancy.

I'm watching too much TV and not reading book enough apparently.

Posted by boyan at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2005

back-from-the-dead

Yo folks,

A lot of time, no blogs. It seems I'll be coming back to active blogging really soon.

I'm settling in Dublin with the same company. We just decided to move to a different country.

I'm experimenting with some new funky stuff around iSCSI and video streaming. This can't be bad.

I've got new toys to play with and even more are coming soon.
New car: Renault Megane with a 115 HP petrol engine, all the crazy safety features and nice interior enhancements.

New PC soon -
Antec Sonata case
Abit AA8XE i925XE motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor
Corsair 1GB CL3 PC4300 matched pair of memory
Gainward NVidia GeForce 6800GT 256MB 2xDVI video card
2x Seagate 200GB hard drives (in RAID1 of course)
NEC dual layer DVD recorder optical drive
in other words - a good gaming machine. I haven't decided on monitor, keyboard and mouse yet. My friend David LLoyd, the Half-life/Counter-strike fan, will help me with these, I'm sure.

New headphones soon -
Sennheiser HD595. Just look at the specs.

Life is good, although not as much extreme fun and not enough new interesting things to do. It's good anyway.

Cheers!

Posted by boyan at 12:38 AM | Comments (2)