mssv

  • Flight 990

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    An excellent piece of journalism on the crash of EgyptAir 990 from the Atlantic Montly.

  • Scrabble

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    Played Scrabble at the pub last night – got 309 points, most of which came from oxygen, squadron (used all seven letter – extra 50 points) and fazed (triple word score).

  • Foreign emoticons

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    Inspired by a post on the Culture mailing list, I was going to write something about the universality of emoticons on the Internet between different cultures and languages here. I then realised that it was far more interesting than I first envisaged and so it deserves a full write up. Expect a new article in…

  • Earth and Beyond

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    A good example of mini-story events in mmoe – in its review of Earth and Beyond Online, Gamespot talks about a scripted event controlled by a game employee in the guise of an NPC. Clever stuff.

  • 1000th post

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    New Mars forums reaches the 1000 post mark! We’ve come a long way, baby…

  • Writing

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    Something popped into my head today as I was scribbling down some notes during a supervision: does the fact that I write with a pencil (as opposed to a pen or biro) affect my writing style, and on a higher level, my method of thinking? Pencils provide a much less constrained and linear way of…

  • MGS

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    Getting a stereo view of Mars – the boys at NASA are pretty damn clever; they’re planning to obtain 3D images of areas the Mars Global Surveyor has already covered by pointing the spacecraft off-nadir (so it doesn’t point directly down).

  • Emotions

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    While I have some issues with neurobiology lectures, I definitely don’t with our supervisions. They’re usually a great mixture of brainstorming and learning of interesting facts. Take, for example, today, when I learned that when cats are hostile to each other and their hair stands on end, it’s because their hair makes them look much…

  • Futurama

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    Matt Groening stands up for Futurama (and some stuff about the Simpsons).

  • Neuro and Psych

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    There were two things that caught my attention today in lectures. The first was a list of symptoms of mania (an abnormal emotional state, the opposite of depression): i. Unfounded elation ii. Hyperactivity iii. Talkativeness and “flight of ideas” iv. Distractivility v. Impractical, grandiose plans vi. Inflated self-esteem vii. Reduced sleep …and I thought, ‘I…