Science Discussion: Earthquakes and Tsunamis

Wanted to have a discussion with Isaac regarding the recent events in Samoa (tsunami) and Indonesia (earthquake). This website from the US Geological Survey should help describe, in great detail, the relationship between the two.



Update: Here's a Wolfram|Alpha Search showing earthquake frequency and magnitude during the past 24 hours.

Anatomy: Japanese Monsters

Comparative anatomy of Japanese monsters. After a quick look, I don't see a mechanism for the fire production in Godzilla. The fire organ should be somewhere next to the lungs.

Reading: Thursday Reading

Several articles for Isaac to consider reading Thursday night for his reading assignment.
African Dynamo - story of a boy in Africa who makes his own wind farm
Four Things Everyone Needs To Know About Sharks

Also here's 15 podcasts which will make you smarter.

Music: In Your Eyes - Jeffrey Gaines

Trying to learn to play this version of the Peter Gabriel song. Here are the chords.

Cooking: Simple Sesame Noodles

Denise found this cool website called Pioneer Woman. This is one of her recipes that sound good, and easy. Maybe we'll find time this weekend to give it a try.

Star Wars: Clone Wars Movies

It looks like they are posting the Clone Wars movies on the Star Wars website. There's also been much discussion about the season's new character Cad Bane.

Quote: Friday Quote From Jack

I think we've posted this one from Jack Kerouac before, but here's a picture from Lance Armstrong's twitter feed. Great quote!

Space: Get To Mars Faster

A gravity trick to make the trip to Mars faster.

Birthday: Look Who Else's Birthday is September 22nd

In the Lord of the Rings, in the first chapter, "A Long-Expected Party", both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins celebrate their birthday on September 22nd, 3001.

Here is a summary and commentary of that chapter on tor.com.

So as tor recommends

So my dear Bagginses, Boffins, Tooks, Brandybucks, Grubbs, Chubbs, Burrowses, Hornblowers, Bogers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses, Proudfoots (Proudfeet!), and even Sackville-Bagginses—I encourage you all to celebrate in the finest hobbit tradition: drinking ... (root beer), eating good food, and sharing in the company of your friends.

Development: Media Converter

I was assigned a task at work to convert a video file to an AVI format using only a freeware application. It took a bit of time to finally find one that worked, but I thought I would record the application for use in the future.

MediaCoder seems to convert a myriad of formats and even provide an API.

Happy Tuesday!

Happy Birthday Brian!!

We wish you the best birthday ever, and hope you have a day full of fun today. Did I say today? I'm sorry we don't celebrate birthDAYS around here, we celebrate birth-parades.

This looks like a fun website to help you celebrate until Halloween. This must be one of the best pumpkins I've ever seen.

Weekend: Countdown to a Great Weekend

Two momentous events in a terrific weekend.

1. Pearland Eagles Freshmen Red's first football win - Isaac played center and defensive tackle. He made many tackles (including a sack), and one pancake on offense. Denise quickly shot this with her camera, it was a very brief visit to the bench.



2. We finally got the rockets working. We shot 4 rockets on Sunday, the first made it to 527 feet. During the descent of the third launch, we lost the nose (and altimeter). We shot one final rocket without the nose, and found that it added much needed in-flight stability.



3. We also played a rousing domino game at the coffee shop (which Denise handily won). Unfortunately, it was cut short by a human smoke machine. The smoker decided to fog us out, even after we helped her move the umbrella into place.

Ukulele: Vintage Ukulele Songbooks

Large collection of vintage songbooks in PDF.

Music: Pearl Jam's New Album On MySpace

Somewhat interesting little clip about making Pearl Jam's new album, "Backspacer". Check out Mr. Vedder's guitar at 3 minutes, also a cool dog. After watching this, I think with a bass guitar, we could put together a song using the new online audio mixer mentioned previously.

Pearl Jam - Backspacer Short

Music: Online Audio Mixer

We've been searching for a way to create our own mash-ups, this site looks great. It worked better for me in IE than Firefox.

Pictures: Isaac's First Practice In Pads

This set shows Isaac's first practice in pads. Not long after, he learned how to use them. Also some shots of a cool board Dad got for Father's Day. As Isaac shows in the skateboard picture, "Peace!"


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Pictures: Our Trip To Kyle Field

Thanks to some great last minute research from our internet purchaser, we got seats for the A&M football game sitting on the field in the endzone bleachers. We couldn't have asked for a more incredible experience.

We saw the Cadets march in, got to sit on the cannon, played on the field after the game, marched with the band, and attended a midnight yell practice. It was fantastic!

Here's my favorite picture of Isaac testing out his Kyle Field stance (totally intense).




Here's the rest of the set.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Tomatoes: Look Who's Snacking

Look who I found snacking on our tomatoes this afternoon.

Music: Key's In The Conch Shell

This song is sure to take away your stress. Great tune by Kenny Chesney. Mike says he knows a steel drum player, can't wait to give it a ride (Here are the chords).

Music: Boston vs. Black Eyed Peas Mashup

Great mashup of Boston and Black Eyed Peas.

Biology: The Tree Of Life

Narrated by Sir David Attenborough

Education: President's Speech to School Children

Posting the President's prepared remarks for Tuesday's speech for Isaac's reading assignment this evening.

Music: Beethoven's 5th Symphony Visualized

Here are the instrument colors (using the new PDF tool).

Rockets: Labor Day Launch

We attempted to celebrate Labor Day with a model rocket launch. While our launch was not successful due to a firing mechanism failure, we learned a valuable lesson about testing and problem resolution.

We will post more when we complete a successful launch.

Programming: Inline PDF Embedding With Google Docs

Very useful embed object available from Google Docs lets you create an inline PDF or PowerPoint object in your HTML code.

Here's the code from Google Operating System blog.

<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf&embedded=true" style="width:600px; height:500px;" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Here's what it looks like in the frame.

Quotes: Quote Of The Day

Some quotes which seem to apply to current situations. You certainly can't let the turkeys let you down.

Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change. Andre Gide

I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells. Dr. Seuss