xkcd

by **Jourdy289** » Mon May 25, 2009 3:37 pm UTC

asad137 wrote:Built this:
Spoiler:

Cool, what is it?

by **asad137** » Tue May 26, 2009 2:12 am UTC

Jourdy289 wrote:
asad137 wrote:Built this:
Spoiler:

Cool, what is it?

It's a millimeter-wave telescope for studying the polarization of the remnant radiation from the Big Bang. It's going to fly on a high-altitude balloon sometime soon (within the next few days or week, roughly).

A few more pictures:

Spoiler:

Asad

by **Brwagur** » Tue May 26, 2009 2:43 am UTC

sexy

by **LTK** » Tue May 26, 2009 9:48 am UTC

Posting here.

I fail at geekiness.

by **ymak** » Tue May 26, 2009 6:46 pm UTC

Spent six hours playing NetHack with one break for food and not ascending once. I have been playing that damn game for almost a year and haven't ascended ever.

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:20 pm UTC

Today I worked out the equations for a spring in simple harmonic motion. (I already knew them, but had never derived them myself.)

Then, as an encore, I did it for a spring in a gravitational field, which was much more interesting. I may post this to xkcd because parts of it confuse me.

by **Sungura** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:41 pm UTC

One of the rats was a little scared. Dunno why, we've had them all week and it's the same thing every day (testing contact lenses, really easy, just hold them and pop it on) so I sang it a lullaby. I think she liked the song.

by **Various Varieties** » Tue May 26, 2009 11:42 pm UTC

Yesterday I watched all 22 minutes of "Everybody Loves Hypnotoad" on the Bender's Big Score Futurama DVD.

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD

by **VDOgamez** » Wed May 27, 2009 1:05 pm UTC

I don't know about me, but my friend just calculated the exact setup of rocket stages for a missile that would deliver a 20 Kg payload 10 Km without exceeding mach 1. He also handwrote a sheet of specs for a spaceship in an RPG that he's playing in my Calc. BC class, including, but definately not limited to, the maximum amount of jerk produced by the main auxilary engine.

As for me, probably programming a game for my calc BC class called "L'Hospital's Asylum". The previously mentioned person designed the graphics. Unfortunately, although we did excellent work, the third person didn't pull his own weight around, and the plot, dialouge, and questions sucked.

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Wed May 27, 2009 4:22 pm UTC

VDOgamez wrote:As for me, probably programming a game for my calc BC class called "L'Hospital's Asylum". The previously mentioned person designed the graphics.

L'Hopital designed the graphics?

by **Username4242** » Wed May 27, 2009 6:38 pm UTC

I'm currently working on a database for easily accessible information on the different hierarchies of Theropods, primarily for identification assistance and as a storage tool for any future research I do on the group.

Fucking love the things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theropod

by **Norrell** » Wed May 27, 2009 11:07 pm UTC

First for one, opened the Hunter:the Vigil book, and before even the entire introduction I had already constructed 15 pages of adventure in my head, having finished the first story in it the entire story was at 34 pages on my desk. Took me one additional night going through the book and ended up at 76 pages for the first adventure.

Then yesterday night I built an entirely "New" amplifier for my surround system (since the old one said bye bye after nine years, that's real quality!) from spare parts of other stuff lying around my apartment. And here's the kicker I'm a linguist starting biomedicine this fall, I don't have any degree whatsoever in electronics, I did it by part trial and error and part stuff I learnt disassembling other crap.

Now I only have to wait until it blows up and kills me. Here's to hoping the shrapnel gets some really high speed and kills me on the spot! Cheers!

by **VDOgamez** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:51 am UTC

Sir_Elderberry wrote:
VDOgamez wrote:As for me, probably programming a game for my calc BC class called "L'Hospital's Asylum". The previously mentioned person designed the graphics.

L'Hopital designed the graphics?

XD
That would be very odd, considering that he died in 1704... Did he invent time travel?

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Thu May 28, 2009 3:27 am UTC

No, he just paid Bernoulli to invent it.

by **medlii** » Thu May 28, 2009 3:48 am UTC

I have mildew in my bathroom because it is always damp. I got a packaged dessicant today to absorb the moisture from the air. After looking it up online, I found out it's made of calcium chloride. Now I haven't figured out whether the hexahydrate or tetrahydrate is more common but I did figure out the weight percent of water that each form could hold.

Code: Select all: Compound AW CaCl2: 111 g/mol CaCl2*4H2O: 183 g/mol CaCl2*6H2O: 219 g/mol Each 111g of CaCl2 can absorb 73g of H2O in the tetrahydrate. It will absorb ~65% of its weight in water if only tetrahydrate is formed. Each 111g of CaCl2 can absorb 108g of H2O in the hexahydrate. It will absorb ~97% of its weight in water if only the hexahydrate is formed.

by **xNTx** » Fri May 29, 2009 4:11 am UTC

Mr. Bill wrote:I just beat the Elite 4 on Pokemon Blue without using a single revive. Now I'm on a mission to beat the Yellow version and catch all 150.

Isn't there 151 Pokémon on Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow? Or are you excluding Mew due to the fact that it can only be obtained by a glitch or Nintendo Event?

...

by **Drax** » Fri May 29, 2009 1:46 pm UTC

Not sure if this counts, but why not?

I was sitting in the metro on the way to work and poking at the bubbles in the hard plastic sheets they put over the windows (to prevent graffiti "artists" from drawing on/scratching them), and I realised that when I press my nail against it and move it across the bubble, it forms 2 bubbles, and so on. Now, the geeky part, is that the first thing I thought of when I did that was cell division.

by **seridos** » Sat May 30, 2009 9:54 am UTC

I was watching mythbusters the other day, an episode about using match heads as an explosive. I started doing the mental calculations for the volume of explosive etc. Sure thats not that bad, but when you should be mindlessly watching tv, and instead your calculating surface areas and other factors, its pretty bad.

by **Something Awesome** » Sat May 30, 2009 10:47 pm UTC

I wrote a MATLAB program that loads an image of a Mercator map, and when you click and drag between two points, it gives you the latitude and longitude of each point and the great-circle distance between them, all for a Dungeons & Dragons world I'm working on.

by **DNA** » Sat May 30, 2009 11:02 pm UTC

Spoiler:

My speedy RC hovercraft

The brushless motor is quite an engineering feat.

by **seridos** » Sun May 31, 2009 12:52 am UTC

DNA wrote:
Spoiler:

My speedy RC hovercraft The brushless motor is quite an engineering feat.

Dude, this thread is the most GEEKY thing, not the most awesomely badass

by **TaintedDeity** » Sun May 31, 2009 1:00 am UTC

seridos wrote:
DNA wrote:
Spoiler:

My speedy RC hovercraft The brushless motor is quite an engineering feat.
Dude, this thread is the most GEEKY thing, not the most awesomely badass

Since when were they exclusive of each other?

by **polymer** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:23 am UTC

I relatively recently made a basic physics engine to simulate gravity for a game I'm working on. After getting that to work to a point where my game didn't contradict my calculations I felt I earned the right to call myself a nerd/geek.

by **ian** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 11:51 am UTC

Wondering why the 'Most geeky thing you've done recently' is in the science forum could perhaps be considered geeky. Other than that, uh, not a lot recentley. I guess palying Munchkin is kinda geeky.

by **The EGE** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:58 am UTC

I could try and pick one thing, or I could just kinda give a recap of my whole day:

Precalculus: Got bored, started teaching myself integration from an old calc book I lug around. Solved a leftover problem from ARML.

Chemistry: Argued with my teacher over Lewis diagrams. Finished importing the motor files for my model rocket simulation program (does almost everything Rocksim does, only in 11kB on a TI-84).

Physics: Quietly proved I know more than my teacher by explaining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation to him after he didn't think it was possible. Added adjustments for local gravity (varies 0.5% from pole to equator) and altitude to the program.

(Note: did no schoolwork at all)

Came home, and put the finishing touches on a supersonic mid-power rocket I'm making. Figured out which motor to buy for it. Read the entire archives of a webcomic, looked at these forums for a while.

And that's after coming back from a 3-day high school math competition.

by **Username4242** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 7:02 am UTC

Old thread, but while I was doing a literature search for a review paper I came to realize that one could perform rarefaction analysis on the number of relevant papers found through Google Scholar to estimate the number of relevant papers left. I didn't do it, but the fact that the thought crossed my mind puts me into pretty extensive nerd territory. ;-)

(for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rarefaction_(ecology) )

by **Thesh** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 7:14 am UTC

I just posted on an msdn blog with a solution to a problem that is more elegant than I have seen (because I am awesome).

by **letterX** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 7:50 am UTC

Notch wrote:I started working on a clone of Infiniminer. That's pretty geeky. =D

Holy shit! I thought this thread was getting necro'd because of this quote! Instead, I get to quote this quote!

On topic: This is probably the most geeky thing I've done. Ever.

by **Gigano** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:41 am UTC

Yesterday I had a discussion about with some students about quantum mechanics and whether or not our universe is open, while waiting for a centrifuge to finish a spin down of a gel extraction procedure as part of some cloning that I was doing. It was a pretty geeky moment.

by **elasto** » Sun Jan 15, 2012 3:48 pm UTC

letterX wrote:
Notch wrote:I started working on a clone of Infiniminer. That's pretty geeky. =D

Holy shit! I thought this thread was getting necro'd because of this quote! Instead, I get to quote this quote!

Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice if being geeky was always quite so rewarding >_<

by **Eternal Questionner** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 5:56 pm UTC

As a mental break from reading a 1000-page physics book which, if I complete, will probably nullify a good proportion of the university course I have yet to start, I learned HTML and solved some chess puzzles.

by **eSOANEM** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 6:49 pm UTC

Eternal Questionner wrote:As a mental break from reading a 1000-page physics book which, if I complete, will probably nullify a good proportion of the university course I have yet to start, I learned HTML and solved some chess puzzles.

It's a good book but I really think you're over-crediting it. Its exercises are few and don't fit well with the order the text is written in so, whilst it may do an excellent job (as it did with me) of introducing you to a large number of concepts and giving you a bit of understanding of some specific things, don't expect it to provide anywhere near the depth or fluency that you'll get from a university course.

As I said though, it is a very good book and is certainly well worth the read.

by **Eternal Questionner** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:03 pm UTC

Yes, I suppose deep down that's what I always expected. Have to agree with the 'good read' part - boy do you have to concentrate though!

by **eSOANEM** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:10 pm UTC

Yeah. Now that I've finished it I probably ought to go back to the sections that I didn't quite get (mainly the quantum stuff and the fibre bundles IIRC) and see if it sticks better.

by **Eternal Questionner** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:47 pm UTC

I remember reading fibre bundles A LOT of times before understanding any of it - still pretty sure there's still plenty I missed. I was kinda hoping, after the intense maths of the first half, the physics wouldn't seem as bad - from what you say I guess I was wrong.

Also - conversation about fibre bundles - new geekiest thing today!

by **tomandlu** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:26 pm UTC

Hmm,

Wrote a ROT13 macro for word and rewatched all of Babylon 5... oh, and made a CGI version of a spaceship I describe in the sci-fi book wot I wrote (although I used Bryce rather than Povray, so I'm not sure if the CGI counts as 'geek' or not...)

Spoiler:

by **eSOANEM** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:56 pm UTC

Eternal Questionner wrote:I remember reading fibre bundles A LOT of times before understanding any of it - still pretty sure there's still plenty I missed. I was kinda hoping, after the intense maths of the first half, the physics wouldn't seem as bad - from what you say I guess I was wrong.

Also - conversation about fibre bundles - new geekiest thing today!

The relativistic stuff I mostly got (it also helped cement the tensor stuff from the maths section in my mind), it was mainly the QFT stuff where it started to lose me, but I think that was partly my fault for trying to read that section too quickly.

by **Eternal Questionner** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:57 pm UTC

Yes, although QFT doesn't exactly have a reputation for being easy reading, even by physics standards. It's amazing how much more carefully you have to read it, compared to a normal book. That caught me out at first (as soon as I got past the early bits, which I had seen before).

by **userxp** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 11:31 pm UTC

I programmed a chatbot in my Casio calculator. In BASIC. It could only understand three phrases though. I also did a program that drew arbitrary RLE-compressed bitmaps on-screen (and painstakingly entered a picture of Mario in it), one that drew a 3D cube, a Brainfuck interpreter (obligatory) and even attempted a program to genetically evolve line graphics. Does that count as geeky?

(I was bored in maths class).

by **Whitebluur** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 11:48 pm UTC

I spent all of yesterday in the "Math Den".

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