The Spark Between

I typed “#define PI” into the search box today to grab a nice long definition of PI for my graphics code, and found something entirely unexpected. Something, in fact, that I guarantee I have never thought before in my life. A proof that Pi (the number) exists. I think perhaps only Jason can truly appreciate the need for such a proof, but I found it quite interesting, nonetheless.

Have you ever actually proved that Pi exists, that it is a unique real number between 3 and 4 that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, for all circles? Or did you just accept your teachers’ word?

Very interesting :-)

…are so much more vibrant in real life than my memory can ever recreate. Not to mention more vibrant than the eggs ever seem to turn out :)

or, to paraphrase a commercial, driving 1600 miles to watch some other guys drive 250. Heh.

It was actually a pretty good time. Much more impressive in real life than on TV. I’d do it again, though I’m not sure if I’d drive all the way out here to Bristol, TN, in one crack next time…

My new HTPC will have to wait until at least Thursday for a more modern power supply to arrive… I guess my desktop has a few more days as my highest-performing machine.

I flew 1500 miles for some of this excellent Teriyaki. Also, my interview went well, and could definitely net me my future job.

It’s time… if we don’t thaw this ice out now in a somewhat controlled manner, it will thaw itself in a potentially dangerous manner. Did I mention we made hundreds of pounds of ice?

Chris re-aligning our melting hose:

Thawing in progress:

Here’s a quick How-To on merging two Google Calendars together, since Googling with the obvious phrases did not get me very useful results.

The Problem: Merge Two (or more) Google Calendars Into One

Let’s suppose that you, like me, have more than one calendar in your Google Calendar, and decide at some point that you want to condense those into one. I was struggling to find a single click solution for this, and then just to find any solution, for quite a while. Then I stumbled on the “Import” feature, and realized that it actually solves all my problems. Here’s how it works.

The Solution: Import one Calendar into the other

Once you see how to do it, it’s a quick task to merge two calendars together. In fact, you can even use this to merge a Google calendar from one account into another.

1. Log in to your Google Calendar account, and click on the drop-down menu next to your Source calendar. Pick “Calendar Settings” from the list:
   
2. Now, scroll down to the bottom and find the Private ICAL address link. Right click on this link and save the file to your Desktop (or other handy temporary location):
   
3. Next, return to your calendar and click on the “Add” dropdown menu at the top of your calendar list, then click Import Calendar:
   
4. Select the file you just saved from your Source calendar, and choose the Destination calendar you want to import into:
   
   Then click Import, and you will soon be greeted with the cheery success message:
   
5. And that’s it! Here’s a before-and-after of me combining two calendars to show that it works. (Take a look at Tues, February 12, for example.):
   

In the past three weeks, instead of doing all the studying / schoolwork I am supposed to have been doing, I have, among other things, also read three really great new books. Too great, in fact, in that I read the latest today in one 8-hour sitting. (Well, technically I did move from the couch to the chair, and paused to bake some chicken for supper… but I read the thing straight through, nonetheless.)

The books were, in the order they arrived for free:

• Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson
  
• Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
  
• Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson
  

I thought about putting mini-reviews up here, but I don’t think I have anything amazing to add to the descriptions you can find elsewhere, other than to say that all three are very different books, but I enjoyed all three greatly. Of them, Spin had me hooked the most, seeing as I was compelled to read it straight through. If you like Science Fiction, I highly recommend it; very cool futurist technology ideas (and scary to think about those that are feasible…), and also very neat ideas about how a society might react in the face of a looming yet not immediate apocalypse (in this case, known with certainty to be some 40 years distant).

The most important part:

How you, fellow science fiction / fantasy lover, too, can get free digital books like these to read, on a weekly basis. Check out the publisher Tor‘s new program, called “Watch the Skies.” They’ll send out free digital books once a week, and also enter you in a drawing for something or other.