Quickie - it now seems smartest to expand the search outside of the Bay Area. Either that or expand the search in the Bay Area and potentially end up doing something I'm less interested in. Hmm..yeah..I think I'd rather just try a new place so long as I get to do what I want.

guffaw > lol

This would normally go in Xanga, but I want to post it here...

(19:39:53) Ray: yea.. so, instead of lol
(19:39:57) Ray: you should start saying guffaw
(19:39:58) Ray: guffaw
(19:40:34) Ray: man, i amuse myself

What a moran! ;) Hehe...

GMC - Ideas

I don't watch a lot of TV, and often when I *do*, I completely ignore the commercials. But I really liked "Ideas" (this link is where the pic above came from) by GMC - the one where simple music plays as car parts are crashing down in a field on top of one another. I was hoping to find the song they used for the commerical, but according to this thread at Adtunes.com the song was composed solely for the commercial. One guy pulled out bits of it to recompose the song sans sound effects and voiceover...the effort is pretty good. Check it out here.

Vedic math fun

Read a neat article on Wired about Vedic math. From the shallow treatment given, the techniques seem useful mainly as shortcuts to allow computation of large results quickly - I was awed by one rule that allows for quick computation of squares of numbers ending in '5' (25, 85, 115, etc). This reminded me immediately of the only fun proofs I've ever done, from abstract algebra, when we got to play around for awhile with properties of small numbers. So, of course, I set out to see if I could prove the theorem allowing this neat shortcut. Turns out it wasn't hard at all...of course the hard work was for the Vedic math folk to even come up with this technique in the first place.

We're looking to compute the following:
'n5'^2 =
((2n + 1) * 5)^2, for n=0,1,2,...
= 25 * (4n^2 + 4n + 1)
= 100n^2 + 100n + 25
= 100(n)(n+1) + 25

This is the result that Vedic math so simplifies: To square the number 'n5', multiply n*(n+1) and add the characters '25' to the right of it. So 35^2 = 3*4 + '25' = '12' + '25' = 1225. Neat!

This in no way means I have any more than a passing interest in math - I'm quite glad to be done with it.

Job searching..not a lot of actuarial openings right now. That's sort of ok with me; I can wait to jump into that world. ;) Most of the tech writing things expect many years of experience, although I remembered today that editor role I've had for quite awhile now..2 years yet? Hmm..

Came across a photojournalist job - sounds really fun. Doubt I'll get it, but it's definitely worth a shot. It would be so cool to get paid to take and edit pictures for publication. 5.5 hours of sleep if I hit the hay now... I've got to beat Doom 3 soon so it doesn't waste any more of my time.

Had to happen sooner or later...

Well, I guess I can start using this blog thingy of mine. Why
shouldn't I - I can have things posted by calling to audioblog, or I
can post by emailing blogger (as I'm doing now) or I can auto-publish
any photos I like by using Picasa + Hello (thanks google! you rock!!).
In fact, I'm probably going to use a separate blog to post daily
pictures or something. Could be fun since I like to show off my
photos anyway. I've turned on comments because it's just so boring
without them. That, and I've never had a chance to use comments on a
blog so I sort of want to test them out. Yay!