Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Physics Cocktails

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Whilst reading through the last posts on one of my favorite blogs (Cocktail Party Physics) and helplessly spending time there instead of on a little project of mine I found these Physics Cocktails. While I haven’t tried a single on of them yet, it has been quite interesting (and funny ;-)) to read through them – just for the sake of it, you know?

And as normally there’s no capital punishment on sharing recipes, I’ve went ahead and copied them shamelessly over here for you to appreciate. I sure hope Jennifer doesn’t mind.

If there’s a brave, who has or plans to try one of the cocktails, I’d be glad to read his comment.

  • Listening to the Drums of Feynman
    The perfect nightcap after a long day struggling with QED equations.
    1 oz dark rum
    1/2 oz light rum
    1 oz Tia Maria
    2 oz light cream
    Crushed ice
    1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
    In a shaker half-filled with ice, combine the dark and light rum, Tia Maria, and cream. Shake well. Strain into an old fashioned glass almost filled with crushed ice. Dust with the nutmeg, and serve. Bongos optional.
  • Combustible Edison
    Electrify your friends with amazing pyrotechnics!
    2 oz brandy
    1 oz Campari
    1 oz fresh lemon juice
    Combine Campari and lemon juice in shaker filled with cracked ice. Shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Heat brandy in chafing dish, then ignite and pour into glass. Cocktail Go BOOM! Plus, Fire = Pretty!
  • Hiroshima Bomber
    Dr. Strangelove’s drink of choice.
    3/4 Triple sec
    1/4 oz Bailey’s Irish Cream
    2-3 drops Grenadine
    Fill shot glass 3/4 with Triple Sec. Layer Bailey’s on top. Drop Grenadine in center of shot; it should billow up like a mushroom cloud. Remember to “duck and cover.”
  • Mad Scientist
    Any mad scientist will tell you that flames make drinking more fun. What good is science if no one gets hurt?
    1 oz Midori melon liqueur
    1-1/2 oz sour mix
    1 splash soda water
    151 proof rum
    Mix melon liqueur, sour mix and soda water with ice in shaker. Shake and strain into martini glass. Top with rum and ignite. Try to take over the world.
  • Laser Beam
    Warning: may result in amplified stimulated emission.
    1 oz Southern Comfort
    1/2 oz Amaretto
    1/2 oz sloe gin
    1/2 oz vodka
    1/2 oz Triple sec
    7 oz orange juice
    Combine all liquor in a full glass of ice. Shake well. Garnish with orange and cherry. Serve to attractive target of choice.
  • Quantum Theory
    Guaranteed to collapse your wave function:
    3/4 oz Rum
    1/2 oz Strega
    1/4 oz Grand Marnier
    2 oz Pineapple juice
    Fill with Sweet and sour
    Pour rum, strega and Grand Marnier into a collins glass. Add pineapple and fill with sweet and sour. Sip until all the day’s super-positioned states disappear.
  • The Black Hole
    So called because after one of these, you have already passed the event horizon of inebriation.
    1 oz. Kahlua
    1 oz. vodka
    .5 oz. Cointreau or Triple Sec
    .5 oz. dark rum
    .5 oz. Amaretto
    Pour into an old-fashioned glass over (scant) ice. Stir gently. Watch time slow.

Greenpeace has gone nuts

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Quoting from the german “Spiegel” from here

“Während sich die Experten des Weltklimarates den Kopf über Maßnahmen gegen den Klimawandel zerbrechen, leistet sich Deutschland als einziges Industrieland der Welt weiterhin unbeschränkte und CO2-treibende Raserei”, sagte Wolfgang Lohbeck, Verkehrsexperte von Greenpeace. Es sei ein ungeheurer Zynismus, dass Minister Tiefensee ein Tempolimit blockiere. “Er verantwortet damit Jahr für Jahr Hunderte von zusätzlichen Verkehrstoten, Tausende von Verletzten und mehrere Millionen Tonnen Treibhausgase. Da die zuständigen Politiker bisher immer nur reden, wird Greenpeace jetzt handeln!”

and

Laut Greenpeace würde ein Tempolimit eine unmittelbare Verringerung des CO2-Ausstoßes um etwa neun Prozent auf deutschen Straßen mit sich bringen. Greenpeace setzt sich dafür ein, dass Hersteller Autos auf den Markt bringen, die weniger Sprit verbrauchen – wenn keine hohen Geschwindigkeiten mehr erlaubt seien, steige auch der Anreiz bei den Herstellern, weniger auf umweltschädigende Autos zu setzen, hieß es bei der Umweltorganisation.

In essence, Greenpeace doesn’t like politicians discussing matters to long – in this instance – speed limitations and has decided to put up their own road signs limiting the maximum speed on the famous German Autobahns to 120km/h. Now, am I missing something or, are they trying to abolish democracy (and freedom while we are at it?).

Reason, CO2 emissions could be reduced by a whopping 9% on the road (note: in my opinion that’s far, far less then a 1% overall reduction) and if there are low speed limits car manufacturers can concentrate on low emissions and low fuel consumption rather then speed. Nice thinking overall, I’ve got to admit. Oh wait, it might not be that good after all. What about American Cars? In the US the speed limits are quite low, actually a good deal lower then in good old Europe and yet they are fuel guzzling monsters.

Reply to (For Atheists and Agnostics…) a post on the DeviantArt Forums

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The question formulated by LostintheWhirlwind was the following:

I would like to know a specific reason why you do not believe in God or any other higher power.

Please actually explain yourself, and please don’t flame. I’m really interested in knowing what you all think.

I am an agnostic and I believe that the question is quite easy to answer.

Now, why would I choose to be an agnostic? What I am searching for a proves. You need proves in almost all the areas and parts of your daily life.

You do need to have a driving license when operating a car, so that you can prove that you are able to. You have to prove to your bank that you earn money in order to get a credit card. In court you have to be proven guilty before you can be sent to prison. Now, this last example is actually the most important one. Perhaps because it is the most obvious one to everybody, but perhaps because we just need – as human beings who like to question and analyse things – that something has taken place (a crime for instance) otherwise there is no need to believe that said convicted is a bad person and whatnot.

Interestingly, religion is the only place (hence the almost in my third sentence) I know of – or that I can come up with in a fraction of a second – where this seems not to apply. Why is that? I do not know. Prove me that that there is a god, and I will accept and formally acknowledge that I have been wrong. So far though, nobody has been able to do that.

You might argue that I could just as well prove that there is no god. Fair enough. But I believe I can counter that. To do so, we’ll have to get back to the court example I gave earlier on. People don’t go to a judge and say: “Look I haven’t done anything wrong.” without having been accused. There just is no need to prove that you haven’t done something, if there is nobody able to show that there has been an illegal act of your part. I reckon that most people do share my opinion on these court “rules”.

Now, I ask you. Where is the proof that there has been something – or that there is something – like a god? Asking me to prove that there is none seems just to be asking the question the wrong way around, as I tried to show with the court analogy.

As always, no offense meant to anybody whoever worships a god. I hope though that you will be able to understand why I am not.

LDAP on a mobile phone

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Yesterday evening while laying in bed, I once again had one of this strange thoughts. And again I was too lazy to get up right away and note it down. Anyhow.

Have you ever thought about why we do not have any LDAP support on mobiles? (Now this might exist somewhere, but to this date I have never heart of it.) Imagine kicking of the telephone book you are used to and switch for a national solution to the problem of “How on earth am I supposed to find the number of this and that person”?

We’ve certainly all been subjected to the case where we just couldn’t either remember of find a number in our digital or not address book. What was the solution? Well, either call a service who is going to query their database for you, or look it up in the telephone book (if then the telephone book is listing mobiles).

Now, instead of having a telephone book for the wired connections, we could have one for mobiles as well. Heck, best would be to only have one decent register on where one has to search.

Now imagine you are on the way, say somewhere in the country side. And as many people nowadays you carry your mobile with you just about anywhere. While sitting somewhere under a tree (heh, I can even try to be romantic) you suddenly want to call an old friend of yours.

Virtually impossible at the moment, it might not be in the future.

Now, getting back to LDAP support on a mobile. Imagine if there was a national LDAP service running, where you could type in the name of the person you want to query it for (intuitive, isn’t it) and it would give you as you type your results (imagine the “as you type” part once the input of the user has reached more than 3 or 4 characters – the connection speed and all make it impossible in my opinion to fetch or get a huge new list at every new character the user enters).

Technologically we have it all. I mean, there are Linux smart phones out there. And as many modern day mobiles have (Lord, here we go) Java capabilities everybody could just download an application allowing him to reach this service. The connection speed of the devices get’s better all the time too. GPRS should already be plenty fast, UMTS would be even better.

I can imagine though, that some people would feel uncomfortable with such a solution. After all, it’s your numbers available to just about everybody. And even though there are people who would have their name and numbers in an offline register – read: telephone book – they wouldn’t allow you to have their names and numbers in an online register. After all, every technology involving the internet is dangerous…

I sincerely hope that this service doesn’t exist yet. Not because I will make myself some kind of ridiculous if it does, but because otherwise I could have saved myself some minutes of typing.

Anyhow. Anybody of you got an opinion on this?

Choppy Video Playback in Prince of Persia

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If you are to encounter a choppy video playback while playing Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones consider the following:

Open Hardware.ini in the folder you’ve installed Prince of Persia to. Then change the value of “NonPow2Textures” to the opposite. True or false. Which means, if it’s 0 – set it to 1; if it’s 1 set it to 0.

Once you’ve finished, you should set the permissions to read only. To do so, right click on the file, then open up the properties dialog. You’ll find the checkbox at the lower end of the window.

That’s about it. The problem should be solved.

Had to solve this for a friend like 20 minutes ago. Seems to work now – that’s why I hope that it might help you as well.