Website

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that I have a new website. It looks quite good thanks to by uber-webdesign skillz. I will probably mirror some of my blog posts on the website. It contains cartoons, songs and stories done by me, and will soon have projects I do, once I actually do any. My first project will be to replace the electronics of an old wah wah pedal I got from a friend. It just doesn't sound very wah-ish.

I wrote a story last night which is on the website. It is called The Last Christmas. Check it out.

Take that, Newton

I've been thinking... objects don't really fall at the same rate. I don't think so anyway. I'm not talking about air resistance or any of that crap - I'm talking bona fide, Newton-destroying DIFFERENCES in the rate at which objects of different masses fall. "Surely not," you gasp. But it is true. I am smarter than Sir Isaac Newton. Or I am mistaken. YOU DECIDE.

Let's start at the beginning. Acceleration due to gravity is g. F=mg, that is, the force pulling an object down equals the mass in Kg, times g.

Also, F=GMm/d^2, where M is the planet mass, m is the object mass, and d^2 is the distance between the object and the centre of the earth (i.e. the radius of earth), squared.

So! mg=F=GMm/d^2. Canceling m, you get g=GM/d^2.

G is the universal gravitational constant, 6.67 * 10^-11.
M is the mass of the earth, 5.9742 * 10^24 Kg.
d is the radius of the earth, 6,378,100 metres.

Plug it all in and you get a gravitational acceleration of about 9.8 ms^-2, for an object of any mass. So that's basic physics, right? Newtonian stuff. Old stuff.

BUT! This doesn't take into account the movement of the earth. Now, when an object is falling, it does so because of attraction between it and the earth. The object accelerated easily because it is small. The earth doesn't move, right? Wrong. The earth is not "fixed" in space. It's just as influenced by forces, but its mass is so immense compared to, say, a tennis ball, that its acceleration is negligible. However, because its mass is constant, more force equals more acceleration (remember Newton's second law, F=ma).

The upshot is that heavier objects pull the earth towards them oh-so-slightly faster, and therefore they fall faster (relative to the earth) than small objects.

So that's sorted out.

"But," you say, puffing on your pipe thoughtfully, "if objects can pull the earth, doesn't that mean we can alter its orbit by throwing things up in the air?" If his were true, I would immediately order everybody to throw lots of things up in the air at night time, so the airborne objects pull the earth away from the sun, counteracting global warming, allowing us to emit all the CO2 we want and assuring me a Nobel prize (although I should get one anyway for this ground-breaking paper).

But it's not true. Let us imagine that I heave a '62 Buick into the air with my bulging, manly muscles. Pause on that thought... OK. Now we have to the law of conservation of momentum. This Buick is launched effortlessly into the air by yours truly, and the momentum transferred into the car in the upward direction is equalled by the momentum transferred into the earth in the opposite direction. The earth and the '62 Buick drift away from each other for a bit, then come together due to our friend gravity. They impact with an impressive crash and, if a Hollywood director is filming it, a huge fireball. Anyway, the impact halts them both and we're back where we started.

But that's fairly obvious, so I don't really know why I diluted my ground-breaking paper with it. Why do you have to ask such stupid questions? Altering the fucking orbit...

EDIT: As a strange addendum to this post, I came across this website for World Jump Day, the day after I did this post disproving its principles! It really is an amazing coincidence.

Summer, and other inconveniences

Blimey, it's been a long time since my last entry - over a month. It's starting to become a very neglected blog. But no longer, as I have taken time out of my busy schedule to write stuff about stuff.

In this here hemisphere (hey that would make a cool song title - if I ever see a song by that name I will know that you stole my idea), summer is reaching its zenith. In fact, it reached its zenith on new year's day, when the temperature in Sydney (where I was at the time) was not dissimilar to that of the sun's core. As I staggered, hung over, out to the bus stop after an extremely drunken new year's eve at a friend's place, I could hear the sweat on my neck boiling and my flesh being seared to the bone by UV rays akin to the gamma rays experienced by someone observing a nuclear blast from a distance of two centimetres.

On the plus side... christmas! I got a new hard drive and a new watch, among other things. It's about time I replaced my watch, which was quite far into the process of falling apart. It really is very difficult to read a watch with no hands. No, only joking, it was digital, but the battery contacts were ruined and I could only read it when I plugged it into a powerpoint, and that meant that the time got reset whenever I wanted to see it, and I had to count the hours, minutes and seconds between checking the time. Really, I'm not making this up! Actually, I am.

Anyway, I am happy about my new hard drive for two reasons: It will allow me to download lots of stuff when I eventually get broadband, and it gives me lots of space for recording music, which is something I am starting to experiment with. These two things combined to inspire me to write and record a song about getting broadband, which I'll upload when I fix it up a bit. I'm using some great free software I found (KRISTAL Audio Engine and Audacity), playing my guitar, singing, etc. Hours of fun to be had. Also I am reading Inside Out, a personal history of Pink Floyd, by Nick Mason. This book, combined with my adventures with recording, have inspired me to try to form a band. I am already thinking of band names (which, as everyone knows, it the absolute most important consideration for any band), and I'm leaning towards the Incredible Hallucinogenic Cookbook. Or possibly the Incredible Flying Grandpa. Something incredible, anyway.

While I was in Sydney for Xmas and NYE, I went to information day at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. I plan to do electrical engineering after my year off, and those are the main unis I'm interested in, so I thought I really should decide which one I want to go to. Unfortunately it didn't help much, I thought they were more or less equally cool. But I'm probably going to UNSW.

In other news, Centrelink sucks. For the uninitiated, Centrelink are the bastards responsible for giving people the dole, youth allowance, etc. I started getting youth allowance a while ago and now that I've finished school and am officially unemployed, they're being rather fascist about making me look for a job. Not that I don't want a job ($$$$$$), but they are also making me go to this job search training bullshit... it's rediculous.

But alas, this is all I have time for tonight. Until next time, I bid you adieu.

Keep drinking

You are not hallucinating.

Now that we've got that cleared up, on with the post. It's been almost a week since my last post which is bad because I like writing it. I just plain forgot! Not that I have been doing much in the meantime - basically I have been mowing, stuffing around on the internet, watching TV and, just today and last night, reading Sin City comics. They are cool. (I have also been doing things like eating and sleeping but I don't suppose they are interesting topics.)

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on friday night. It was good. Although it's been absolutely ages since I read any of the books, I rented the third movie and that got me up to speed. After seeing the latest movie, of course, I went to the pub with some mates. (Unfortunately, after seeing all the hot chicks in pubs at Schoolies, the selection around here is quite a disappointment.) I ended up quite drunk, but managed to stumble home OK. In the morning I woke up to discover that I had gone to bed naked, which was odd, since I never do that. Alcohol is a strange thing. Actually I had planned to stay off the booze for a while after Schoolies... but whenever somebody says they will stay off the booze for a while, they don't. So, whatever.

I really can't think of anything else to talk about. It is late and I am hot and tired. I did three hours of mowing today (well, not just mowing - we also took some rubbish to the tip), and summer has just begun and there is something of a heatwave at the moment. So I am sweaty even though I am just sitting here. It is revolting. Why can't it just be autumn all the time? I like autumn. Here is a summary of the seasons:

Winter: Shit - too damn cold. Which would be OK if there was snow, but where I live there isn't. You can't do anything in winter.
Spring: Shit - I get hayfever so spring just blows ass.
Summer: Kind of shit - too damn hot. Everything's all sticky and sweaty and there's flies everywhere and the lawn always needs mowing. The only good part is you can go to the beach. And Christmas of course.
Autumn: Good! Reasonable weather, no hayfever, and my birthday. Can't complain.

Now I go to bed.

High hopes

I had a lucid dream last night. If you don't know, a lucid dream, or LD, is a dream where you are actually aware that you are dreaming (i.e. lucid), so you can appreciate and interact with your mind's creations (for more info go here). Sort of like virtual reality, but it actually feels real. It is incredible.

Anyway, in the dream I was in my house when for some reason I realised I was dreaming. I went outside and walked through the backyard. This simple act was profound because it felt incredibly real - I could feel the pressure in my legs as I walked, etc. - but I knew it was all happening in my mind. The mind really is an amazing thing.

I had an awesome feeling of happiness the whole morning. I am using a good LD technique called WBTB, which caused me to have the first LD since I had one two months ago. I intend to continue this technique, so hopefully I will be having many more LDs in the future.

Learn to lucid dream, it really is great.

EDIT: It is now two days later and I've had another one! It wasn't as good though.

Uncomfortably numb

If this entry is somewhat less well-written than the others here, it is because I just got back from Schoolies today. The main thing I learned from this trip was this: four consecutive days of drinking really knocks the shit out of you. Especially when your diet consists mainly of meat pies.

The first stop after checking into the resort was to the shopping centre. We stocked up on easy, unhealthy food and more importantly, numerous cartons of rum throwdowns and beer. I had a bottle of 96% home-distilled alcohol which was handy.

We had three rooms, each with three people staying in it. Therefore, the resort entitled us to two buffet breakfasts per room per day, so every day one person from each room had to miss out. In the end it didn't matter much; we usually missed breakfast because they cunningly stopped serving it at 10:30 am, before most of us had woken up.

At night, of course, we hit the pubs. Unfortunately most of our crew was underage so only three of us went. However we had a good time, drank lots, and danced with random chicks. Which between you and me is the first time I've ever done that. It was fun!

The drinking and dancing with chicks was going well until the fourth night when, out of the blue, some bastard of a bouncer kicked me out of our favourite (now ex-favourite) pub. I was somewhat drunk, but definately not drunk enough to justify kicking me out. I was sitting on a seat, not doing anything wrong, and the meat-head piece of shit comes up to me and says it's time for me to go home. I was astonished, and extremely pissed off. I had, however, pre-emptively extracted a somewhat feeble revenge by hiding schooner glasses behind one of the toilets, which my friends later liberated from the pub. I went in there to help get the glasses, but the scummy bouncer saw me and kicked me out again. Before getting the glasses we hung around in the kebab shop across the road eating potato wedges. That was good.

Another thing we did was set off some fireworks on the beach. One of my friends overheard someone in the lobby saying it was probably those "farmers from Woolgoolga". (Apparently referring to us, despite the fact that we are not farmers and not from Woolgoolga.) I also bought the new Matthew Reilly book, Seven Ancient Wonders. It is good. Buy it. Now.

Anyway I am too tired to write anymore. Several other amusing things happened on the trip but I will have to write about them later. Or not.

Gnoc, gnoc, gnocchi on heaven's door

Like a child before Christmas, I am in eager anticipation. The reason is that tomorrow I leave for Schoolies. I have obtained a bottle of 96% alcohol from a friend so I shouldn't have to spend too much on booze, which is good because that would otherwise be my main cost. Schoolies being a week of more or less constant consumption of all things alcoholic. Not to mention other mind-altering substances.

I have bought a DVD on eBay, of The Wall Live in Berlin. It is absolutely incredible. Not only is it brilliant musically, it is also an amazing feat of theatrical production. The sheer scale of it, the enourmous audience, the gargantuan wall, the huge inflatables... it is mind-blowing. If you are a fan of Roger Waters then you should already have this (yes, I am somewhat behind the times), but if you don't, get it now!

If you are wondering about the title of this post... I had gnocchi for dinner (only I accidentally cooked it for too long, so it was a bit mushy).

Anyway I probably won't be able to post while I'm at Schoolies, so once again my non-existant but devoted fan-base will have to find something else to occupy their time :P Maybe... learn to make whisky or something. Bye.