January 1, 2006
- 5:17 PM - A few late Christmas calculations
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total (or 378 million according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the Earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical).
This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we're now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granding that the flying reindeer can pull 10 times that normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them - Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, by another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates a lot of air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quantillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he's well and truly gone now.
Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, wherever you are.
- 12:17 AM - Happy New Year!!
Hope your year is the best ever.
Later all, stay safe.
December 30, 2005
- 3:23 AM - Death by Overclocking
Ever wonder what happens to an AMD Duron if you overclock it without cooling it properly?
Here's one possibility.
December 29, 2005
- 7:32 AM - When the FUCK did I get ice cream?
Yes, see The Ringer. Everybody loves to laugh at retards, just you're not supposed to. You can in this movie.
BTW -- feel free to notice any similarities between this movie and Super Troopers. Like, uh, same behaviors, same lines, same people... ^^,
ALSO.. I'm going to be in San Antonio for a few days. So uh. Have fun, merry new year, and since today is the last day this year, please remember this one thing: no matter what a stripper tells you, there is no sex in the champagne room. None. Sure, there's champagne in the champagne room, but you don't want champagne. You want sex. And there's no sex in the champagne room.
December 27, 2005
- 1:52 AM - Go see The Ringer
Then stop off for ice cream on the way home.
December 25, 2005
- 11:03 AM - ¡Feliz Navidad!
Someone covered Merry Christmas already, so...
Joyeux Noel to you all as well :P
My Mario Kart DS friend code will be posted here later on, once I actually get it set up, just in case anyone wants to play.
- 3:32 AM - Merry Christmas
Not a lot I can say here. I got a sabre. Yay.
- 1:23 AM - You All Suck.
Just kidding. Merry Christmas. :)
Here's my present to each and every one of you.
(BTW: If Ziggy is still up a month from now, someone have me take him down.. uh.. I'll probably forget ^_^)
Anyways.. known issues with the layout:
1) more gradients are needed.
2) not essenced yet (essence isn't essenced yet)
3) invalid CSS 2.1? wtf? someone fix it if they so choose.
4) IE eats it to an extent. but it's viewable.
5) PNGs need to be optimized.
December 22, 2005
- 12:50 AM - Yeah, we're still alive
I can't speak for the rest of us, but Neogladius and I both work retail jobs. Being as it's only a matter of days until christmas, we're a little scarce right now.
We should be around more in a week or two.
December 15, 2005
- 11:14 AM - Firefox 1.5
Incase you're behind (like I was, but I've been ill over the past 4 days), you won't know that Firefox 1.5 is now released.
The update includes a new automated update system (the old one did suck), apparantly "faster browser navigation" which I haven't noticed yet, the ability to re-order open tabs, improvements to the popup blocker. Also apparantly there's an ability to report a broken website, but I haven't seen this anywhere.
And most importantly: Answers.com has been added to the search list, and the menus look different.
They've also done something funny with Gecko (the rendering engine). Look at this in Firefox 1.5. Now look at it in IE. In the last version of Firefox it rendered just like it does it IE. But now, Firefox puts the symbols at the top (incorrectly, may I add).
I don't know why they called it 1.5, if this is half way to 2.0 (which would make sense, right?) then 2.0 won't be very exciting. It just feels a little rushed, and that rendering problem adds to that feeling. Just me? Share your feelings.
December 14, 2005
- 10:34 PM - Followup to quick gripe
I would like you all to know: SDL can just go to hell.
Once I finally finished fighting with the damn thing to get it playing MP3 files, it plays them as if I dragged a CD down the road.
I was trying to write this damn game to be multiplatform. If I have to fight with it like I was SDL then fuck Linux and MacOS can go to hell.
- 1:22 AM - R.I.P. Working Designs (1986-2005)
One of my favorite RPG translation companies, Working Designs, has shut down. They were responsible for many Japanese RPGs seeing the light of day in other countries, most notably the Lunar series. The official announcement was made by Victor Ireland, head honcho at WD, in this forum post.
For more info on their games, see their website or their page on IGN.
December 13, 2005
- 10:01 PM - Quick gripe
Why can't any of these lazy bastards include SOME form of documentation on actually getting fucking SMPEG to work with SDL_Mixer so I can play a damn MP3 file?
If anyone can shed any light on setting this bullshit up to work right, it would be much appreciated. It's really pissing me off.
I guarantee, once I get this shit working, I'm posting instructions and probably some damn binaries, since nobody else seems to give a crap to do so on their own.
December 10, 2005
- 7:36 AM - Odyssey update
This will be my last 'full' Odyssey update on the Realm, because I have set up my own forums for it.
The whole thing is shaping up very nicely, with the battle system well underway and looking pretty cool.
I am looking for two things right now: beta testers, and storylines.
If you want to beta test it, then I need to remind you that this will not be avaliable for at least a week, while more work is done. The earliest that I will start allowing closed beta testing is after I have done the saving/experience system. Still interested? Go and post on the forums and I will hopefully be able to allow anyone who wants to, depending on the volume of people who ask. Post a little bit of information about yourself - it's always nice to know ^^
About the storylines, I am still looking for a decent storyline idea or even a script for a storyline. If you have any ideas, please post them on the forums too. As I mentioned on the forums I am including 1 'real' scenario (with a cool storyline, etc) and 1 'test' scenario which will act as a basis for scenario designers to start working from. Sort of like an example thing.
I'm really enjoying working on it and it's really hopefully going to be pretty cool. Ask your friends if they are interested in testing, I'd like as many testers as possible, and I'd like to start generating interest - what's the point in putting hours and hours in if I don't have much interest? Well, you know what I mean.
A list of screenshots to date are at http://odyssey.pwnz.me.uk if you haven't seen them yet.
Thanks for the ideas and interest so far!
- 1:44 AM - Creepiest person on the Internet!
The following is a transcript of an actual IM conversation I had tonight. Apparently this "SAELX", whose real name is Clay, got my AIM screen name off of my Myspace page. I know this because right after I logged on I saw that I had a new Myspace message from this guy named Clay stating:
Sup bro. I am in Thibodaux and bored as hell. Hit me up on AIm at SAELX.
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Anyway, this isn't the first time he's done this. Not by far. He's tried this with both eXonyte and (before that) eXonyte's slightly younger brother. This is something that he does. What's so disturbing about it? You'll see...:
SAELX: yo
DoctaD1983: Hey, what's up?
SAELX: bored as hel in thibodaux
SAELX: im clay
SAELX: was up
DoctaD1983: Not too much, bored as hell too, but about to get to bed.
SAELX: you fomr thib?
DoctaD1983: Yup, born and raised. You?
SAELX: I live in thib for school (nichols) im fomr lafayette
SAELX: im moving back ther after graduation next weeek
DoctaD1983: kool
SAELX: im so bored
SAELX: you need to come chil wiht me
SAELX: livin alone sux sometimes
SAELX: lo
DoctaD1983: lol, thanks but I think I'll pass :-)
SAELX: damm...you like porn?
DoctaD1983: Tired as hell. I just got back from a friend's house.
SAELX: sweet
DoctaD1983: I was supposed to have a date tonight, but my girl forgot she promised to babysit for someone. Women are so dingy sometimes.
(Note: This statement was not made in an attempt to inform this stranger about the details of my life. Rather, it was made in an attempt to be polite as possible while getting across the message, "I'm not into guys, go away.")
SAELX: lol
SAELX: yup
SAELX: I wanan watch some porn wiht sonee...you suck
SAELX: lol
SAELX: *someone
DoctaD1983: Not really my thing man.
SAELX: come on..its fun
DoctaD1983: Uhh.. still, no thanks.
-
That's right boys and girls. This 22 year old African American from Carenco, Louisiana regularly tries to convince other guys he finds on Myspace to go to his house and watch porn with him. eXonyte tells me that in an ideal situation, those men will then masturbate with him. This individual is by far the creepiest person I've ever encountered on the Internet... and remember people, I play FPSs and MMORPGs!
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