The Book of Bob, Chapter 4

The Great Bobland

People unholy to Bob are not able to grasp the power of Bobland. Millions upon millions of Bobs lived in a place that totally Bob and is wonderfully Bob.

In the center of Bobland there is an enormous mall where every store is entitled Bob. For instance, the Nudy Bob, The Bob, Bob's Auto Repairs, Bob's Store. This is a place where normal Bobs roam free.

Around the mall lies the downtown district, known simply as Bob. In the center of downtown, there is the world's largest spork manufacturing company, located conveniently next to the company is the helicopter-ejection seat test area, which is so large anyone who went in there never came out. The rebuilt llama farms (see chapter VI) and dead cow farms are not far away.

The first All-Powerful, All-Knowing Bob built an aluminum foil shack just outside the downtown district. It has since been made into a monument, and is the central site of all pilgrimages to Bobland.

Outside the downtown district is a suburban area known as Bob.

The Balalaika Super

The Balalaika Super is a pizza from Round Table Pizza topped with onions, garlic, pineapple and jalapenos.

Project Euler

projecteuler.net

It's a set of math puzzles, to be solved by computer programming. I'm using it to learn Python.

The world ended recently.

Judgement day was May 21, 2011. You might say to me, "But the world is still here!", but you would be wrong. You made the mistake of trusting physical evidence. You should have faith and disregard what your eyes tell you about the world, because your senses can be deceived.

Perhaps you've seen billboards that say the bible guarantees that judgement day was May 21. When it comes down to a choice between what the bible says and empirical observations of the natural world, shouldn't you always choose the bible? It was written by god! The bible says so!

Once you learn to adopt this logic, many other helpful biblical concepts, including creationism, will come to you easily.

Three Pronged Sporks are Best

It's true. BOB likes three pronged sporks better than four pronged sporks. One prong for each letter in BOB's holy name. A 4spork is still better than a spoon or a fork, but a holy 3SPORK should be used for rituals.

Unapologetic Nerd Time

There's no point in trying to be cool or fit in with the normals. I don't do things the way they do, I'm weird. Pretending not to be has been holding back my intellectual development.

Oh and since I was making blogs about sporks when I still cared about being semi normal, it may amuse you, my non-existent reader to imagine what will happen NOW. HA!

Review of D-Link DIR 615

I bought a DIR 615 from Fry's Electronics about a week ago because the old Belkin wireless router had been crashing several times a day.

The Rules of Tubball, from the Book of BOB

The rules of Tubball are as follows:

No one shall have physical contact with the player holding the ball. Any illegal physical contact is called warbling.

The player holding the ball shall not take more than four steps without tossing the ball into the air a distance of not less than four centimeters, to be caught by himself or another player. This is known as the rule of four.

For throwing the ball into the tub, the team whose player threw the ball shall receive three points, excepting in the following cases:

Players standing in excess of one half court’s length from the tub shall receive five points if the ball lands in the tub and stays in.

Should any of the following conditions be met, the relevant player shall be allowed to stand unobstructed and throw the ball while positioned three eights court’s length distant from the tub:

If the ball bounces out on a five point throw without hitting the rim. This is called a chivegrinder.

If the player is touched while throwing the ball at the tub. This is called a yardinnger.

If the ball hits the rim and breaks, with only one part going into the tub, except in the case of a five point throw, in which case the same unobstructed throw may be made, but with a reward of two points for it. This is called a brokleswich.

If a llama runs onto the court while a player is making a throw. This is called a llama penalty.

If the tub is knocked down by the force of the player’s throw, his team shall receive four points instead of three, unless one of the other conditions is met, in which case one point shall be added to a five point throw but no points shall be added to throws valued at less than three points. This is called a +1 strength bonus.

When one team has more players than the other, the team with fewer players may chose which side to play on, but if they do they forfeit their otherwise automatic right to take possession of the ball first, and standard rules for deciding this shall apply. This is known as the Lone Ranger’s Gambit.

If any player calls out acceptance of the Lone Ranger’s Gambit without consulting his team, then he is known as a Lone Ranger and a Lone Ranger’s Trial event occurs. If there is more than one Lone Ranger on a team, one Lone Ranger may not take part in the following action concerning the other Lone Ranger:

A Lone Ranger’s decision to accept the Lone Ranger’s gambit may be ratified by the rest of the team, with the exception of other Lone Rangers, who as previously mentioned shall not have decision making power in this regard. However, if the team does not ratify the Lone Ranger’s acceptance, they may choose to trade the Lone Ranger for an opponent’s player of the opposing team’s choice. However, any player voicing a decision to the other team on this matter without consulting his own team first is also a Lone Ranger and must also face the Lone Ranger’s trial after conclusion of the present one, which he shall no longer be allowed to take part in. If the team does not choose to ratify the Lone Ranger’s Gambit and does not choose to force a trade, they may take possession of the ball as normal, but the opposing team shall have choice of sides, instead of use of the usual procedure.

The standard procedure for determining which side a team will play on is as follows: The team members shall line up in a row facing the row of the other team’s players. The two rows shall advance on one another, and the players must attempt to run through the gaps in the line of their opponent. Those who fall down during this process must stay down, excepting in the case that they choose to walk to the bench or sideline, where they must sit or lie down. Those who fail to breach the enemy line but do not fall must exit the court and sit on the sideline, and should be pushed down if they refuse. When one team has only one member remaining, he shall attempt to run through the opponents’ line. If he fails, the opponent’s team shall have the right to pick their side of the court. If he is successful, however, he shall pick his team’s side. If he does so without consulting his team, he shall be a Lone Ranger, but he shall be not stand trial, for no one on his team is left standing to try him. He shall therefore face no penalty for taking the decision into his own hands, and so will be known as the Solo Ranger. The Solo Ranger will not be allowed to be a team captain in the next game, unless he already is a team captain, in which case he may again be a team captain.

The standard procedure for determining which side will have first possession of the ball is as follows: The two team captains will stand back to back in the center of the court, and the tallest player aside from the captains shall stand between them. If the tallest player apart from the captains is shorter than one or both of the captains, he shall stand on a crate, log, official starting post, or any other appropriate object. He shall then balance the ball on his head and jump as high as he can, and upon landing, dart to one side so as to be clear of the captains, who shall then attempt to grab the ball. Physical contact with the person holding the ball is allowed in this stage of the game, as a brief struggle for possession may take place if both players grab the ball at the same time. If one touches the ball first but then breaks contact and reestablishes said contact at approximately the same time as his opponent, both players may touch the ball. If, however, one player clearly grabs and holds the ball first, he shall be immune from grappling attempts by his opponent, and shall pick which team gains possession first. If he chooses the opposing team without consulting his team, he is a Lone Ranger and must be tried by his team. If he chooses his own team, he shall not be tried.

This concludes the rules of Tubball, national sport of Bobland.

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

The first P in PHP stands for PHP. Did you know that?
PHP is used for making webpages fancier. I am learning all about it.

Today I finished an upload form that interfaces with mysql to add files to the server and information about them to the database.

Amon Amarth at the House of Blues in Hollywood

This was an amazing concert!
The supporting bands were Eluveitie and Holy Grail, and they rocked. I would've enjoyed the concert had it only been them, but they weren't why I was there. By the time Amon Amarth took the stage, things were insane! The mosh pit was a frothing mass of rabid vikings. A guy was wearing a wolf pelt. People had horned helms. I went crowd surfing, but also got knocked on my ass moshing a few times.
These guys are seriously awesome.

Dark Tranquillity in L.A.

I went to see Dark Tranquillity open a concert at the Wiltern. I brought some trash-bags against the forecast of rain, but I forgot that they were the small kitchen sized ones. It did rain, and we ripped head and arm holes into them and wore them as shirts; they were about the right size for that. Anyway, we stood for an hour in the rain and met some dude who was hitting on some chick who had come from Mexico City to see DT.

DT was awesome, but sadly, people were still finding their seats for the first few songs. They only played seven songs before they left the stage and were replaced by The Devil Wears Prada, a band which was doing nothing for me except making me glad I had earplugs.

The show closed with Killswitch Engage, which was fun. Musically, I liked them much better than Prada but certainly not as much as DT. However, the performance was at least as enjoyable because I had had time to get hopped up on energy drinks and beer by that point, and the crowd was really into it.

I think that I got seated in the Prada section or something, because a bunch of people who sat silently and made me feel awkward for headbanging during DT started flipping out when those spazzy kids took the stage. Anyway, basically everyone was rocking out to killswitch, which makes sense because they were headlining and all.

I really need to see a show with Dark Tranquillity headlining. If seeing those seven songs with that mellow crowd was worth two hours driving and an hour standing in the rain (and it was), then holy shit a real show will be good.

http://www.darktranquillity.com/realindex.html
They played:
Terminus (Damage Done)
? Shadow in Our Blood ?(We are the Void)
Lesser Faith (Fiction)
Misery's Crown (Fiction)
Treason Wall (Damage Done)
Iridium (We are the Void)
Final Resistance (Damage Done)

Bobbing Heads

This week (or maybe it was last week, but it was this month, anyway), I was in the lab with two coworkers and I was talking about a hypothesis of mine about the reason why birds bob their heads. I thought that it was to give them depth perception, because the fields of view from their two eyes don't overlap very much and so they shouldn't have depth perception while their head is stationary. One of my coworkers said no, it's because there's a tendon connecting their legs to their head, so the head has to move when the legs do. The other guy believed him because he's older and more senior than I am. I suggested that the reason why there would be a tendon to do what he claimed it did could be because the resulting head bobbing gives depth perception, but no one seemed to care or believe me. I tried to argue that other animals with eyes on the sides of their heads, such as deer, also seem to bob their heads a bit while walking. They still weren't buying it.

So, I looked it up. Biologists think that birds bob their heads for image stabilization or for depth perception through motion parallax, or probably both. So, my hypothesis is reasonable and probably correct. Furthermore, a bird will not bob its head if it walks on a treadmill, and it will bob its head if carried forward without being allowed to move its legs. So the head motion is not linked to the feet at all; it's triggered by visual stimulus.

By the time I had reached the conclusion that the tendon hypothesis was bullshit, one of my coworkers had left and it was only the guy who had suggested the tendon with me, and not the guy who believed him over me. He told me he made it up as a joke, just to see if the other guy would believe it.

What's the lesson? Some people care more about who's right than what's right. Or if they aren't sure what's right, they at least fall back on trying to determine who's right. Sure the guy thought about it a little bit, but in the end he didn't know what to think so he trusted the older person over me, even though he was being deceived.

Science, of course, should never be about who's right, but only what's right. People can't own facts. Unfortunately, we sometimes have to choose to trust someone because it would take too long to verify every single bit of knowledge ourselves, but we should always prefer to use reason to determine what is right instead of simply listening to an authority who we trust to be right.