Month: January 2002

Guy Ottewell has left his digs in South Carolina and has moved back to England. Universal Workshop Home Page

I like this well-written Seven wonders of the web list in the Guardian. Blogger makes their list; it makes my list too.

The Coffee Czar has turned me on to Joel on Software. Joel Spolsky, the eponymous author of the site, also runs Fog Creek Software, publishers of City Desk.

I enjoy reading New Scientist magazine, but my local newsstand has stopped carrying it. So I have to remember to look at the web site more often.

Is it true that all things are contained in a long enough string of randomness? Use NERSC: Pi-Search Results to search for strings in the first billion or so digits of pi. It’s pretty easy to find a short string, like “gulley” (search string found at binary index = 203616973). So naturally I went looking for bigger game. Suppose your search string is “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”

30-bit binary equivalent = 10101001101111010000011000101100101
                           01011000100000110111111100100100000
                           11011101101111111010001000001110100
                           11011110100000110001011001010111010
                           01000001110100110100011000011110100
                           01000001101001111001101000001110100

character pi :  at&3..01tdTo be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 
tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 
Help! I am a monkey trapped in a pi-making machine ad9.439$^daive9-

Amazing!

We are sending a coded message to potential intergalactic neighbors. If you received such a message, how would you decode it? See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991757 for an introduction to the problem. I’ve taken a stab, using MATLAB, at decoding the alien message. Take a peek. If you want to know exactly what the message codes for, look here. Turns out the whole thing is being guided by two Quebec physicists.

Eric Weisstein’s World of Mathematics is back online after a long (legally imposed) hiatus. Read Weisstein’s author’s note about his descent to and return from legal-limbo hell.

Some Double Dactyls that have been hiding on my site for a while.

A recent Google search for Star Chamber turned up this tidbit on the Leasowe Castle web site in Wirral, England.

One of the most atmospheric rooms in the Castle is the beautiful Star Chamber with the starred ceiling taken from the Palace of Westminster, where the most serious crimes were tried. The last gaze by the convicts was up at the “starred ceiling”.

Can it be? Has the famous ceiling from the storied Star Chamber truly been saved and moved to castle cum hotel on the Merseyside? I thought it had been destroyed with the rest of the court in the 19th century. A little more digging found this on the Wirral Council web site.

Sir Edward Cust made many additions to the castle. In 1836 when the Star Chamber of the Court of Westminster was being demolished (so called because the ceiling was decorated with stars), he saved the oak paneling and used them to line the ground floor dining room. He used this room as a library but it became known as The Star Chamber.

It appears to be true. Time for a pilgrimage.

Good bioinformatics article: Signals Magazine: Time to Morph.