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Metric at Levi’s-Fader Fort for SXSW 2010

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This spring break was one of the few times that I tried to go to SXSW shows. Normally, I am not very enthusiastic about going to live music concerts because I get bored with most of the visual performances and my back and legs hurt after standing in a crowd for hours. On a side note, people that smoke in crowds are extremely annoying.
On Tuesday, March 16, I went with my brother and friends (Jessica Allen, David Wogan, and Jessica Gonzales) to see Metric at Levi’s-Fader Fort on 5th street next to Rogue. Even though we didn’t arrive very early, we were able to get to the front row without too much crowding. Metric was amazing! Some shows I have seen seem to have more show/crazy catch than substance. You could tell that Metric knew how to play their instruments well and they had good showmanship (Emily, their singer, has an incredible amount of energy). My favorite Metric album is Fantasies and my favorite song is “Stadium Love”.

Pictures are coming soon!

Gaussian Numerical Integration

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About half a year ago, I learned of Gaussian numerical integration. It is a simple method to accurately evaluate a bounded integral. The idea is that there is a polynomial that approximates the function being integrated. The integral can be approximated by the sum of weights times the polynomial evaluated at different points. The more points used the more precise the answer is.
Link to a more comprehensive explanation.

Story Outline

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Many years ago I created a general story outline that has evolved over time. There are two parts to the story. The first part takes place when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. The second part occurs in modern times. WARNING: It’s a little crazy, the time frames used are clearly ridiculous, and no science is used.

What archeologists don’t realize is that the dinosaurs were intelligent. They had a vast civilization that spanned the globe. One day a spaceship crash landed on Earth. The space travelers were chimpanzees. The dinosaurs captured the chimps and proceeded to perform experiments on them since they had never encounter an alien species before. One result of the experiments was the creation of homo erectus.
The chimps track their wayward ship to Earth and find out that their brethren were experimented on. They go berserk and call in their fleet. They bombard Earth and kill off the dinosaurs who don’t have the benifit of opposable thumbs to defend themselves. The dinosaur scientist who created the homo erectus specimens is able to cryogenically freeze his creations before he dies. The chamber holding the homo erectus specimens is uncovered during an earthquake and is damaged. Emergency protocols thaw the specimens and they escape.

present day:
Many years later, the chimps come back to earth and are surprised to find humans. They realize that humans are descended from the chimps that crash landed and were experimented on. Angered by the “abominations” they again call for their fleet. To survive, humans clone dinosaurs from fossilized bones and team up with them. Dinosaur technology with human’s oppossable thumbs are able to defeat the chimp aliens.

MEAT Update: New Flavors

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M8 now comes in three zany new flavors! M8 Homestyle (opossum, raccoon, squirrel, fox, muskrat, rabbit, armadillo, and rattle snake), M8 Exotic (llama, ostrich, zebra, giraffe, tiger, bear, panda, and koala), and M8 Endangered Species (bald eagle, golden cheek warbler, blue whale, Tasmanian forester kangaroo, monk seal, grey wolf, jaguar, and sand cat)

MEAT

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So awhile back, I had a couple of crazy ideas (funny/stupid/spoof ideas) of things to do with meat.
One idea is to make M8 which is similar to the V8 drink but instead of vegetables there are 8 types of meat blended together. The meats might be pork, beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, venison, horse, and monkey.
The other idea is to make a meat salad. Like a veggie burger where vegetables are formed into a meat patty shape, the meat salad would be ground meat formed into vegetable shapes like lettuce leaves and tomatoes.

Update

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Pictures from Thanksgiving at Big Bend are up on my photo gallery. They are only a select few of them so if you want to see more, go to my Flickr account. The photos are provided by Jessica Allen and Andrew Johnson (AJ).

New Age Workout

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I just saw this commercial on TV and almost fell out of my chair laughing.

I can’t believe that they are able to sell this product, especially the Flirty Girl Fitness Pole i.e. the stripper pole.

The Guild

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This video that mocks MMORPG players by The Guild is hilarious.

The video is surprisingly well produced and the lyrics are great (they rhyme).

THE SUN RETURNS!!

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Happy Winter Solstice!

(on Dec 21)
also Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Book Catalog

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I have decided to try to catalog all my books again since I am getting a bookshelf for the Winter Solstice. The first time I started to catalog my books, I used Book Collector by Collectorz.com but I got bogged down with all the fields that can be filled for each book. The user can input an ISBN and Book Collector will download the books information. The problem was that each book had a different amount of information on the internet so different fields would be filled in. Some of the stuff like the plot didn’t always get digitized correctly. I ended up trying to fill in the blanks which took forever so I stopped. It was also hard to setup a system to denote which universe a book was in. For example, the Honor Harrington series by David Weber has some side books that I would like to be able to denote as taking place in the Honorverse.

I had similar problems with my movie catalog until I decided not to try to fill in the missing info and just keep what I downloaded. I think I will do something similar with my book catalog. I will probably just try to fill in the main fields. I still need to come up with a system for the universe problem.

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