Revolutions

Because it's Friday: Game of Thrones Family Trees

I'm loving the Game of Thrones series, but not having read the books it has been a bit difficult keeping up with all the various families, houses and their entanglements. The Game of Thrones Wiki has been a great resource to clear up my questions, but I wish I'd found Magdalena Maslowska's Illustrated Guide to Houses and Character Relationships sooner — it would have cleared up a lot of my confusion. Here's just a detail, centered on the Lannisters:

(Hat tip: Francisco Palm.) You can explore the details in the full-size version (click to enlarge), but beware spoilers if you're not caught up to Season 3 as it's showing in the US.

On the other hand, you could just work with the (slightly NSFW) Game of Thrones Cheat Sheet below the jump. It's not terribly helpful, but it captured pretty well how I had to refer to most of the characters for the first season and a half or so!

Because it's Friday: Compendium of Logical Fallacies

Ahh, arguing on the Internet. Whether it's about politics, religion, culture or science, if you're anything like me you've had 1000 online arguments and changed the mind of exactly nobody. Still, it's fun to exercise those debating muscles, and now with the handy website thou shalt not commit logical fallacies you have the perfect riposte to any invalid, inappropriate or just plain wrong argument (click for the full version):

Someone impugning your character instead of responding to your well-reasoned point? Send 'em over to Ad-Hominem land. Asking you to prove a negative, that they introduced? That's not where the burden of proof lies, buddy. You might say that no true debater would use a tool like this, but I say that's just moving the goalposts.

Each of the fallacies comes with a pithy example. (Begging the Question: "The word of Zorbo the Great is flawless and perfect. We know this because it says so in The Great and Infallible Book of Zorbo's Best and Most Truest Things that are Definitely True and Should Not Ever Be Questioned."). You can find all of the fallacies and examples by downloading the poster, which comes under a sharing-friendly Creative Commons license. You can also explore each of the fallacies at yourlogicalfallacyis.com.

Have a great weekend!

Because it's Friday: A visual history of meteorites

At the aptly named website bolid.es you can see this nifty animation of all the meteorites that have been observed to land on Earth, from 861 to this February's spectacular event in Russia:

The animation is flashy to be sure, but it certainly gets the point across: while more people are seeing meteors as the population grows, impacts have been a constant part of our history, and will continue to be so in the future. You can drill down into individual impacts by clicking the blue bars.

Keep your eyes on the skies this weekend, and have a good one!

Because it's Friday: Looking for Love in all the Right Places

Craigslist, the popular bulletin-board service, has long had a "missed connections" personals section. This is the place were lovestruck singles (or at least, the situationally single) can reach out to the unidentified partner of their dreams, armed only with a description of their fleeting encounter and the hope that the object of their affections is also looking on Craigslist for their missed connection. Here's a recent typical example, from a supermarket in northern California:

Trader Joe's on Cleveland - m4w - 41 (santa rosa)

Well, I feared this would happen. I'd see you at Trader Joe's, try to muster up the courage to say hello & ask for you digits, and then, having failed, wind up here in CL. You're maybe 30, and gorgeous. Blonde hair, wearing dark flip flops, and maybe your shirt was white? I was wearing a baseball hat. (Tell me what color.) We checked out at the same time at adjacent cashiers, at about 1pm, maybe a bit before then. You drive a small car, I think gray. (For some reason, I apparently don't remember colors too well.) Are you out there??

Dorothy Gambrell realised that these "missed connection" posts could give insights into where around the country "love at first sight" strikes the most often. By mining the most frequent locations mentioned in 100 posts in each state back in February, she created the following "love map" of the USA (via Flowing Data):

If you're looking for love this weekend, maybe this map will help you find it. (WalMart is certainly a popular choice in many parts of the country.) Whatever you get up to this weekend, enjoy! We'll be back on Monday.

Because it's Friday: Ten Tech Tips from David Pogue

You probably thought you knew all of these tech tips, but I bet there'll be at least one that you'll find useful. In my case, as someone that always trie to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, I never new you could use shift-space to go back up a page in a browser. Handy!

 

Here's one I'd add to the list: you can use alt-TAB to switch to a different application (or cmd-TAB on a Mac). I'm always surprised how many people don't know that one.

Enjoy your weekend!

TED Talks (YouTube): David Pogue: 10 top time-saving tech tips (via Jose Camoes Silva)

Because it's Friday: Self-sufficient dogs

Given all of the tragic news this week, perhaps a little unicorn chaser is in order. So without further ado, here are some adorable videos of dogs keeping themselves entertained.

Jerry's owner built him an automatic ball throwing machine. Just check out the look of anticipation on his face as the ball is loaded:

 

On the other hand, Sid doesn't even need mechanical assistance. All he needs is some stairs:

 

That's all for this week. Enjoy your weekend, and stay safe — especially our friends and colleagues in Boston and Texas.

Because it's Friday: Tesla coils, Faraday cages and quadrocopters — oh, my!

What surprises me about this video isn't that the quadrocopter doesn't get zapped — the power of Faraday cages to divert electrical current is well understood. What surprises me is that the radio controller manages to pilot the drone amongst all that EM radiation caused by the Tesla coils (via Gregory Piatetsky):

 

That's all for this week — have a great weekend, folks.

 

Because it's Friday: Wat!?

Gary Bernhardt shares some of the quirkier aspects of languages like Ruby and JavaScript in this hilarious lightning talk from last year (via Hadley Wickham):

 

R doesn't get a mention, despite having its own ample share of, shall we say, unique idioms. I can think of a few (the effects of assigning to c or T, for example) — what's your favourite Wat!? moment in R? Let us know in the comments, and have a great weekend! 

Because it's Friday: NoSQL Style Hathos

According to Andrew Sullivan, hathos is "the attraction to something you really can’t stand; it’s the compulsion of revulsion". It's something that's so awful, that it actually becomes awesome. This autotuned shot-for-shot recreation of Gangnam Style extolling the virtues of NoSQL databases certainly qualifies in my book:

 

Thanks to Mikhail Popov for the tip. Enjoy your weekend!

Because it's Friday: World's longest simulation

You may think your simulations take a long time to run, but this one's been running for 200 years: (click to enlarge) 

Note the Caius crew in blue, which rose from #6 in 1992 to #1 in 2002-2005

The chart above, by Tim Granger, shows just 14 years of data from the Oxford / Cambridge "Bumps" races, a unique tournament designed to find the best rowing crew in the Oxbridge system. Because the race rivers are so narrow and winding, a traditional race with multiple competitors in parallel lanes is out of the question. Instead, boats line up in single file, and if during the course of the race a boat manage to bump into (or come alongside) the one ahead, those two boats will swap positions for the next race. The boat at the head of the pack at the end of the multi-race tournament is declared the winner ... and the same ordering is held for the next tournament in six months time. This has been going on since eighteen-fracking-fifteen!

Sure it's really more of a bubble sort than a simulation, and teams do change ability over time so the sorting isn't stable, but still: that's a really neat way to determine the best Oxbridge rowing team, given the constraints. This Quora post by Ferenc Huszár explains more of the details.

That's all for this week — enjoy your weekend!