Adam's random blog

Gregor Mendel

kungfuadam — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:16:09 +0000

Google is honoring Gregor Mendel today-
Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822[1] – January 6, 1884) was a Czech-German Augustinian friar and scientist, who gained posthumous fame as the figurehead of the new science of genetics for his study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of these traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel’s work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. The independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel

Here is google’s image for the day

100 most beautiful words in the English language

kungfuadam — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 05:25:29 +0000

Ailurophile	A cat-lover.
Assemblage	A gathering.
Becoming	Attractive.
Beleaguer	To exhaust with attacks.
Brood	To think alone.
Bucolic	In a lovely rural setting.
Bungalow	A small, cozy cottage.
Chatoyant	Like a cat’s eye.
Comely	Attractive.
Conflate	To blend together.
Cynosure	A focal point of admiration.
Dalliance	A brief love affair.
Demesne	Dominion, territory.
Demure	Shy and reserved.
Denouement	The resolution of a mystery.
Desuetude	Disuse.
Desultory	Slow, sluggish.
Diaphanous	Filmy.
Dissemble	Deceive.
Dulcet	Sweet, sugary.
Ebullience	Bubbling enthusiasm.
Effervescent	Bubbly.
Efflorescence	Flowering, blooming.
Elision	Dropping a sound or syllable in a word.
Elixir	A good potion.
Eloquence	Beauty and persuasion in speech.
Embrocation	Rubbing on a lotion.
Emollient	A softener.
Ephemeral	Short-lived.
Epiphany	A sudden revelation.
Erstwhile	At one time, for a time.
Ethereal	Gaseous, invisible but detectable.
Evanescent	Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.
Evocative	Suggestive.
Fetching	Pretty.
Felicity	Pleasantness.
Forbearance	Withholding response to provocation.
Fugacious	Fleeting.
Furtive	Shifty, sneaky.
Gambol	To skip or leap about joyfully.
Glamour	Beauty.
Gossamer	The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk
Halcyon	Happy, sunny, care-free.
Harbinger	Messenger with news of the future.
Imbrication	Overlapping and forming a regular pattern.
Imbroglio	An altercation or complicated situation.
Imbue	To infuse, instill.
Incipient	Beginning, in an early stage.
Ineffable	Unutterable, inexpressible.
Ingénue	A naïve young woman.
Inglenook	A cozy nook by the hearth.
Insouciance	Blithe nonchalance.
Inure	To become jaded.
Labyrinthine	Twisting and turning.
Lagniappe	A special kind of gift.
Lagoon	A small gulf or inlet.
Languor	Listlessness, inactivity.
Lassitude	Weariness, listlessness.
Leisure	Free time.
Lilt	To move musically or lively.
Lissome	Slender and graceful.
Lithe	Slender and flexible.
Love	Deep affection.
Mellifluous	Sweet sounding.
Moiety	One of two equal parts.
Mondegreen	A slip of the ear.
Murmurous	Murmuring.
Nemesis	An unconquerable archenemy.
Offing	The sea between the horizon and the offshore.
Onomatopoeia	A word that sounds like its meaning.
Opulent	Lush, luxuriant.
Palimpsest	A manuscript written over earlier ones.
Panacea	A solution for all problems
Panoply	A complete set.
Pastiche	An art work combining materials from various sources.
Penumbra	A half-shadow.
Petrichor	The smell of earth after rain.
Plethora	A large quantity.
Propinquity	An inclination.
Pyrrhic	Successful with heavy losses.
Quintessential	Most essential.
Ratatouille	A spicy French stew.
Ravel	To knit or unknit.
Redolent	Fragrant.
Riparian	By the bank of a stream.
Ripple	A very small wave.
Scintilla	A spark or very small thing.
Sempiternal	Eternal.
Seraglio	Rich, luxurious oriental palace or harem.
Serendipity	Finding something nice while looking for something else.
Summery	Light, delicate or warm and sunny.
Sumptuous	Lush, luxurious.
Surreptitious	Secretive, sneaky.
Susquehanna	A river in Pennsylvania.
Susurrous	Whispering, hissing.
Talisman	A good luck charm.
Tintinnabulation	Tinkling.
Umbrella	Protection from sun or rain.
Untoward	Unseemly, inappropriate.
Vestigial	In trace amounts.
Wafture	Waving.
Wherewithal	The means.
Woebegone	Sorrowful, downcast.

Source- AlphaDictionary

2010 in review

kungfuadam — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 05:49:33 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 11 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 746 posts. There were 16 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was April 1st with 865 views. The most popular post that day was Just a minute, let me Topeka that!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were googleblog.blogspot.com, facebook.com, englishexperts.com.br, tineye.com, and ohamerica.us.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for hardwood floors, 100000 dollar bill, hardwood floor, 100,000 dollar bill, and 500000 dollar bill.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Just a minute, let me Topeka that! April 2010
5 comments

Largest Aircraft Boneyard in the world- Davis Monthan AFB, Tucson, Arizona February 2007

Cambridge study on spellings! February 2007
7 comments

BraZilians don’t even know why BraZil is spelled with a Z July 2007
22 comments

Charleston Barbie dolls January 2008
2 comments

Do a driving tour with Google Street View

kungfuadam — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:44:28 +0000

This site-

http://www.gaiagi.com/3d-driving-simulator/ is a plugin with Google Earth that allows you to put in a driving trip and see 3D, map, and street view images as you go through the drive. I put a trip in Brazil and took a screen shot during the trip. You should try it out. You can also speed up the trip. The streetview doesn’t load as fast as the rest of the map but it is pretty cool.

Oh the fun of troubleshooting

kungfuadam — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:10:13 +0000

I have had endless headaches of the error message on my Netgear router- WAN address rejected, incorrect security. I would then have intermittent internet connectivity. It has never happened on my Droid, but happened on my XP and vista machines. I finally got the sense to get the security types to match, and so far so good. I hope Netgear releases a firmware version to fix this issue.

These are the logs

[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.6] to MAC address 00:90:4b:4a:93:13, Friday, December 03,2010 08:05:44[admin login] from source 192.168.1.5, Friday, December 03,2010 08:05:00[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.6] to MAC address 00:90:4b:4a:93:13, Friday, December 03,2010 08:03:26[WLAN access rejected: incorrect security] from MAC address 00:90:4b:4a:93:13, Friday, December 03,2010 08:02:51[admin login] from source 192.168.1.5, Friday, December 03,2010 08:00:51[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.5] to MAC address 00:1e:4c:b2:ce:60, Friday, December 03,2010 07:52:24[Log Cleared] Friday, December 03,2010 07:52:08

Here is the screenshot of configuration on the Vista machine

Today is the 115th anniversary of the discovery of X-rays

kungfuadam — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:13:09 +0000

X-radiation (composed of X-rays) is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have awavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (3 × 10¹⁶ Hz to 3 × 10¹⁹ Hz) and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma rays. In many languages, X-radiation is called Röntgen radiation, after Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who is generally credited as their discoverer, and who had named them X-rays to signify an unknown type of radiation.^[1]^:1–2 Correct spelling of X-ray(s) in the English language includes the variants x-ray(s) and X ray(s).^[2] XRAY is used as the phonetic pronunciation for the letter x.^[3]

X-rays from about 0.12 to 12 keV (10 to 0.10 nm wavelength) are classified as “soft” X-rays, and from about 12 to 120 keV (0.10 to 0.01 nm wavelength) as “hard” X-rays, due to their penetrating abilities.

Hard X-rays can penetrate solid objects, and their most common use is to take images of the inside of objects in diagnostic radiography and crystallography. As a result, the term X-ray ismetonymically used to refer to a radiographic image produced using this method, in addition to the method itself. By contrast, soft X-rays can hardly be said to penetrate matter at all; for instance, the attenuation length of 600 eV (~ 2 nm) x-rays in water is less than 1 micrometer.^[4] X-rays are a form of ionizing radiation, and exposure to them can be a health hazard.

The distinction between X-rays and gamma rays has changed in recent decades. Originally, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by X-ray tubes had a longer wavelength than the radiation emitted by radioactive nuclei (gamma rays).^[5] Older literature distinguished between X- and gamma radiation on the basis of wavelength, with radiation shorter than some arbitrary wavelength, such as 10⁻¹¹ m, defined as gamma rays.^[6] However, as shorter wavelength continuous spectrum “X-ray” sources such as linear accelerators and longer wavelength “gamma ray” emitters were discovered, the wavelength bands largely overlapped. The two types of radiation are now usually distinguished by their origin: X-rays are emitted by electrons outside the nucleus, while gamma rays are emitted by the nucleus.

(From Wikipedia’s article, X-rays)

Google’s image for the day

Google Home Page Background

kungfuadam — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:24:34 +0000

Looks like the plain old Google page got a little less plain. This is what it showed when I opened it this morning

Wikipedia on April Fool’s

kungfuadam — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:04:31 +0000

Just sharing how Wikipedia’s page looks today-

Click for larger

Just a minute, let me Topeka that!

kungfuadam — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:45:21 +0000

As of today, April Fool’s Day, Google has changed its name to Topeka because Topeka, KS has changed it’s name to Google

Here is Topeka, the website’s new sign-

Here is a chart from the blog that will teach us how to properly use the word “Topeka”

Click on Topeka’s logo below for a link to Topeka’s official blog on the name change:

Happy Pi Day

kungfuadam — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:31:19 +0000

Today is 3/14, we are celebrating Pi Day- that crazy number- Pi, is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter or
3.14 etc etc
1 Million digits of pi.

Here is Google’s image