Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Sometimes the mind comes up with something that one knows is awful, but nonetheless must be created and shared – because it’s the only way to get it out of one’s head. With that in mind, I present this abomination…
I’m so, so sorry.
Client: Since you built my new website my Google rankings have tanked!
Us: OK, well if that’s true we’ll need to have a look at the structure of the site and the quality of your backlinks…
Client: No! My SEO Company says it’s because you have 70 words in my title tags and there should only be 60!
Us: Well, that’s not really the case anymore, Google takes a lot of factors into account…
Client: I’m paying them $5,000 a month so they must know what they’re talking about! I demand my money back! I demand you fix it free of charge! You don’t know what you’re doing! You should be ashamed to call yourselves a web design company!
Us: All right, give us a few days to look over the site and we’ll get back to you with a plan to address your complaints.
Client: You’d better, or I’ll sue!
We run a backlink analysis for the site. It comes back with thousands of comment spam links, over half of which are from porn sites.
Client: Well? What are you going to do to fix your mistakes on my site?
Us: Actually, as you can see from these reports your Google rank has collapsed because your site has thousands of low quality incoming links, most from comment spam and most of those from pornography sites. Google is really penalising this kind of thing nowdays.
Client: … I need to have a word with my SEO company…
As a wise man once said, there’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others.
Not only is XKCD a wonderfully enjoyable webcomic, but every Thursday its author, Randal Munroe, answers crazy physics problems submitted by readers in his What If? section.
For a while now, I’ve been trying to think of something to send in, and just recently came up with one. But then I realised it was a question that I was perfectly capable of answering myself, if I got off my arse and did some research and some maths. So I did.
If all the excess carbon released into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution was compressed into a sphere of pure diamond, how big would it be, and if it were placed into orbit would it focus a death ray of concentrated sunlight down onto the planet?
First step, how much carbon has been added to the atmosphere? According to Wikipedia about 12 Gigatons was released from 1751 to 1900, then a further 334 Gigatons from 1900 to 2008. Adding these together comes to 346 Gigatons, which is as good a figure as any. (It’s important to note that this is just the carbon – not the carbon dioxide containing the carbon. If it were the carbon dioxide we’d have to divide the weight by 3.67 to get just the weight of the carbon.)
The next step is to determine the weight to volume ratio of diamond, so we can figure out how much space 346 Gigatons of carbon would take up when arranged into its crystaline form. Some more poking around online provides a density figure for diamond of 3.52 grams per cubic centimetre. There are 1,000,000 cubic centimetres to a cubic metre and 1,000,000 grams in a ton, so the maths is nice and simple (gotta love the metric system) telling us that 1 cubic metre of diamond weighs 3.52 tons.
To get a volume for our 356 Gigatons of diamond we simply need to divide 346,000,000,000 tons by 3.52 tons – which leaves us with a volume of 98,295,454,545.45455 cubic metres, or 98.29545454545455 cubic kilometres.
So we now know just how much space our chunk of diamond takes up, but so far it’s just sitting around in a roughly shaped blob. We need to reshape it into a sphere.
The formula for the volume of a sphere is v = (4/3)πr^3, where r is the radius of said sphere. Turning this inside out we can derive r = (3v/4π)^(1/3). Plugging the volume figure in gives us a radius of 2.86296 kilometres. Doubling this for the diameter gives us sphere of pure diamond 5.72592 kilometres across – roughly the distance from New York City’s Battery Park to 33rd Street or from London’s Tower Bridge to the cafe in Hyde Park.
That’s one big diamond.
On to the second part of the question – would this diamond project a death ray? To figure this out we need to discover the focal length of the sphere – that is the distance from its centre to its focal point – the point where the light passing through the sphere is focused. The formula for this is pretty simple – EFL = nD/4(n-1) where EFL is Effective Focal Length, n is the refractive index of the material the sphere is made from, and D is the diameter of the sphere. We already know the diameter and Wikipedia assures us the refractive index of diamond is 2.419. Solving the equation gives us a focal length of… 2.440274926004228 kilometres. Wut?
Yes folks! It turns out that the focal length of a sphere made of diamond is always less that its radius, meaning that the focal point is always inside the sphere! No death ray for you!
So in conclusion, if you could pull all the excess carbon out of the atmosphere, turn it into a diamond and launch it into orbit you would save the planet’s climate, but you couldn’t use it blackmail major population centres. Hardly seems worth it does it? 🙂
(yes, yes, you could shape the diamond into a lens instead and blackmail all the cities you want, but the maths required is just horrible ;))
Because I’m the sort of person who gets obsessed by stupid wastes of time, I’ve spent far too many hours over the last couple of weeks plotting locations from the computer game Fallout: New Vegas into Google Earth. Not content with simply plotting the easy ones, I’ve been obsessively researching the more obscure places and turned up some interesting information that doesn’t seem to have been posted online previously. So what better place to put it than on my blog?
Gypsum Train Yard: The Gypsum Train Yard appears to be based on the Pabco Gypsum facility to the east of Las Vegas. This so obvious that I’m surprised it doesn’t seem to be recorded anywhere.
Morning Star Cavern: This cave is fairly close to the abandoned Morning Star Gold Mine.
Walking Box Cavern: This cave must have got its name from the nearby Walking Box Ranch.
Samson Rock Crushing Plant: This facility may well be based on the Las Vegas Paving Corp aggregate plant in Arden. It’s southwest of McCarran Airport and adjacent to the railway line, just as in the game.
Some other fun stuff I found. The entrance to Fort McCarran is based on the historic entrance to the airport – located on South Las Vegas Boulevard just south of the Fabulous Las Vegas sign. A bit further west on I-15 is a giant Miller Beer bottle, which might well have influenced the entrance to the Sunset Sasparilla factory. The game states that Freeside is located around the intersection of Freemont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard – what do you find there? A gateway just like the one near the Atomic Wrangler. Jacobstown is not just located on the slopes of Mount Charleston, but is clearly modeled on The Resort on Mount Charleston, even down to the big sign at the entrance.
There’s no doubt plenty of other stuff to be found, but I’m all burnt out on it now 🙂
Thrilling Tales!
How do the balls remember???
This is perhaps the funniest page on the entire internet.
Finished A Storm of Swords the other day
Good News – Joffery is dead.
Bad News – So is everyone else.
15 songs into the Hottest 100 and the Warmest 100 prediction is not doing well. The average deviation is standing at just under 21 places, and there have been five songs that weren’t included at all! Can you feel the tragedy!?
(Yes, I’m keeping stats. Deal with it :))
LATER: A quarter of the way in and the average deviation has dropped to 18.3. There are now 6 unpredicted songs.
LATER STILL: Halfway! The average deviation is 16.6 and there are now 7 unpredicted songs. For the sake of interest, the signed average deviation is almost exactly 2, which shows that the songs predicted too low are almost cancelling out the songs predicted too high. So far, the worst prediction is Internet Friends by Knife Party, which was predicted at position 94 and came in at 55, and the best is Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five, which was predicted at 74 and came in at 73. On to the lower 50!
LATER, AGAIN: Three quarters of the way through! The average deviation is now 14.1, there are nine unpredicted songs and only three of my selections have made it in (damnit!). The most accurate predictions so far are Gasoline by Alpine, Hold On by Alabama Shakes, Hurricane by Ms Mr and our old friend Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five – all came in only one off from the prediction. Internet Friends by Knife Party is holding strong as the least accurate.
At the 75% percent mark my total rating for the countdown is 2.90 – on a scale where 5 is super happy awesome and 1 is kill it with fire! Some more of my songs better make it into the top 25…
NEWSFLASH: Ballpark Music’s Coming Down has proven the first 100% accurate prediction of the countdown at number 23!
LATER: Oh Derp! I missed that the Warmest 100 actually did include Sun by Two Door Cinema Club! Oh well, it won’t have skewed the stats too much. In the meantime, here’s my thoughts on Matt Corby.
LATER: And right on the verge of the top 10, two more accurate predictions. Flume’s Sleepless at 12 and Calvin Harris’ Sweet Nothing at 11. Does this mean the top ten will be completely accurate?? (I doubt it :))
IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LAST LATER: Maybe I spoke too soon. My Gun by the Rubens at number 10 – just as predicted…
IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT: Another correct prediction – Tame Impala at number 9 with Feels Like We Only Go Backwards. How long can this streak last!?
AND AFTER THAT: Well, that was fun while it lasted. Frank Ocean breaks the chain taking number 8 with Lost.
GETTING TOWARDS THE END NOW: Down to the top five. I imagine that it’ll be a shuffling of the five highest songs left on the Warmest 100 list – Thrift Shop, Little Talks, Breeze Blocks, Holdin’ On and I Will Wait. We’ve just got to wait to see what order they come in….
RIGHT ON THE VERY TIP: So, will the Number One be Monsters and Men (Yey!) or Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (Boo!)? I have a nasty feeling thrift shopping is going to beat small talk. Also, what the hell is this “Breeze Block” thing at number three!?
THE END OF EVERYTHING: Well, there we go. Little Talks by Monsters and Men at number 2, so (barring an apocalyptic upset) Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has taken out the 2012 crown. Damnit. But on with the statistics.
The average, overall deviation for all Warmest 100 songs that made it into the countdown is 10.79 places. The signed deviation is 0.08, which means the songs that were ranked too high almost completely cancelled out the songs that were ranked too low. The worst prediction (excluding those songs that didn’t make it in entirely) remains Internet Friends by Knife Party – which was predicted for 94 but ended up 37 places higher at 55. Eight songs were predicted accurately…
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis – Thrift Shop – 1
Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks – 2
Alt-J – Breeze Blocks – 3
Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards – 9
The Rubens – My Gun – 10
Calvin Harris – Sweet Nothing – 11
Flume – Sleepless – 12
Ball Park Music – Coming Down – 23
The top ten songs were all predicted correctly, but the middle five were in the wrong order. The top three songs were predicted accurately.
Eight predicted songs didn’t end up in the countdown – the highest predicted position being 56 for Japandroids.
Japandroids – The House that Heaven Built
Haim – Don’t Save Me
Kanye West – Mercy
The XX – Chained
Something For Kate – Survival Expert
Frank Ocean – Pyramids
Haim – Forever
Van-She – Idea of Happiness
On the whole I think the Warmest 100 did a great job – and at the very least gave me something to do all day 😀
The overall score as far as songs that don’t make me want to remove my brain with a spoon is 2.9 out of five – which means I could just about put up with the entire playlist. Of the songs I voted for, 8 made it in. Which is pretty good considering I never expected Euphoria to get in anyway and just voted for it out of principal. The other omission was Santigold’s The Keepers – which I’m actually very surprised about. But hey, it’s probably my best performance in years, so I ain’t complaining.
Roll on the Hottest 100 2013! (and let the whinging about how the Hottest 100 and Triple J in general aren’t anywhere as good as they used to be begin…)
Well, this is fun. I’ve had a dry, itchy cough since before Christmas. This week it decided it would be better accommodated by my lungs, moved downwards and turned into bronchitis. On the plus side I’ve got a few days off work. On the downside my body seems to have decided that the best method to get rid of the infection is to get rid of my lungs entirely, and is attempting to cough them up on a regular basis.
I’ve been to the docs (happily I had booked an appointment to get the dry, itchy cough looked at before it went feral on me) and have been prescribed rest and a five day series of antibiotic pills the size of twenty-sided dice, so I should come up smiling on Tuesday morning.
In the meantime I’ve been working on painting my Cyclops Demolition Vehicle and watching a rather good documentary on H.P.Lovecraft up on ABC iView, so all’s well that ends well (assuming I do end up well – if not, I’ve got a repeat script on the giant pills).
Oh yeah, this is new. I bought a copy of the Game of Thrones board game. Hopefully I can introduce the guys to it soon, so Fabian can wipe the floor with us all. I’ve got a half a mind to try playing as the Starks, as it looks like an interesting challenge… I’ve also read my way through the first three books, and am now onto part II of Storm of Swords. I found Part I hard going at a few points, but it picked up at the end and I can’t wait to see just how awful the Martells turn out to be (just about everyone in Westeros is awful, it’s merely a matter of degree ;))
That’s it for now. Got some coughing to do…
When the Google Streetview car rolled past Churchill’s secret World War II bunker in Dollis Hill, the door was open!
Well I thought it was interesting…
