Picturing the Past 10 Years (via Phillip Niemeyer)

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NHL Suspension Flow Chart

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How important is your Twitter avatar? A personal experiment.

Note: I apologize for any likenesses to any current public Twitter accounts now. If I misrepresent you, it is FOR EFFECT.

With that said: 

 

How important is your Twitter avatar? You know... that picture next to your account name? It is how people remember you. It is how you are representing yourself to the world. It is your online image. 

I like to experiment. I asked myself, "What if we took the same tweet and changed the avatar and name of the account from where it was said?"

Let's try it:

This gives me a hint of honesty, appreciation, and a hint of sexuality. It depends on who you are, but I like a girl who can eat a hot dog like a champ. *Ahem* #OK, moving on.

 

God. I just want to punch this fat guy. Stop eating. I hope you choke on the damn dog, even though I know you won't because you've probably become an expert at swallowing things whole. Fat shit.

 

I do love me some ballpark hotdogs. Boy, I could eat one right now. Hmm. Where can I get some mustard? OH! @wildmountain has some good stuff! I'M BUYING SOME NOW.

 

Results:

Your avatar has a surprising control over your followers' reaction to your tweets. I don't know why. I'm no psychological expert. I do know that I made assumptions about every person based on their avatar before I even took into account what they were saying.

Beauty is only Tweet Deep.

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2012: End of the World? Skeptic vs Believers

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Why your memory depends on books

I'm not going to claim to be an expert in the field of medicine, nor neurology. Hell, I'm not even an expert in the field that I should be an expert in. I am, however, an observer and commentator of my own experiences. Be Bryanized.

I have been given special privelege in the past to be able to read books on a daily basis. Even more special, that privelege has been taken away from me. It was then that I started to realize how much books affect your memory and daily thoughts, and adversely when taken away. Here's why:

1) There are three types of memory in the human brain: short-term, middle-term, and long-term memory. Books help stimulate your brain's ability to constantly convert short-term memories into middle and hopefully long term memories.

Short-term takes place immediately after learning a new fact. Generally, the average human can remember 7 +-2 facts before being unable to remember more things. This also has been shown to be the deciding factor in how people remember things more than others: those who can tend to put images next to facts. Books help conjure those images.

Go ahead and try to read a list of 30 items, and then recite them in order. By the same token, read that list again but put yourself in a story mode in your head, thinking of places and things where the list of those 30 things make sense in your mind, and recite the order. I will guarantee that the latter method works umpteens better.

This is what books do: they force you to conjure up images to push short-term facts into middle and long-term territory. Biologically, we think that a short-term memory is formed from a chemical response in our brain, linking a synapse formation with the ability to complete detailed memories. Books are an excellent source of mental stimulation to initiate that chemical response.

There is no known limit to the long-term memory, a.k.a., people are thought to be able to remember ungodly amounts of data. There are now 4 or more people confirmed to have such a gift as remembering every date, time, and detail of every event in their life, dubbed and ultra- rare "super memory". They are currently being scanned and tested to help under the biological differences between "normal" people and themselves.

2) Depending on what you read, you will have the book topic fresh in your head for days, if not, weeks afterward. The written word tends to have the keen ability to pour fresh loads of story and intellect into a person's long term memory. This is the key.

3) If you read a non-fiction story, or a cookbook, or a book about sharks, the stimulation differs. This is a great way to mix up the brain's response to factual data (ie. prevent brain boredom).

4) Alzheimer's patients have no ability to learn new facts via the short-term memory. Yet, their long-term memories remain intact. Their brains no longer have the ability to make new memories. Books help make new memories.

5) If you don't use it, you lose it.

This is the most important thing to understand: making memories cannot be taken for granted. It is an ability. Some people have a greater ability than others. Like the ability to throw a baseball, or shuffle cards, making memories get better with practice.

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If you love Diablo 2, you'll love Torchlight

It's as simple as that. The game plays perfectly. From the creators of Mythos and Diablo 2 (no shit) comes this awesome 1-player action RPG. I will go out on a limb and say that Torchlight has more action than Diablo 2 ever did. It plays faster, smoother, and has a bit more depth. Not only do your characters have skill trees like in Diablo 2, but you also have the ability to purchase spells of incremental levels. For example, my Destroyer has a heal spell, the ability to summon zombies (for distraction), haste, and refraction (like thorns). But, you only have 4 spell slots, so this adds a bit more depth to the way you build your characters. In addition, you have a pet from level 1, similar to a merc in Diablo 2, but it really doesn't have the same abilities (that I've found yet...) as the merc did. In Torchlight, you find random fishing holes, catch some fish, and feed it to your pet a la a Boy and His Blob to transform your pet into different types of monsters. They can range from melee spiders to range attack fire elementals. You have the same core gameplay that Diablo 2 had plus these additional few things. It is so much like Diablo 2, in fact, that as you play it, you'll recognize some of the areas, from Act 3 to Worldstone Chamber. This video definitely looks like Act 5 of Diablo 2:

You can see that I'm getting my ass handed to me. I am playing the game on hard difficulty, which is an excellent choice for those who feel comfortable with these types of games. The game gets hard enough that you actually have to concentrate on your items, positioning in battle, and healing in a well-balanced way.This was a random mini-boss battle that had really nothing to do with the story, but made it an interesting time fighting through floor 29 of the main dungeon. It's these little fights and events as such that make this game so enjoyable. In addition, Runic Games plans to incorporate the data played game data from this game in their upcoming yet-to-be-seen MMORPG. I literally bought it 4 hours ago, and haven't put it down since. Well worth the $20.

Verdict: WORTH IT

Reference material:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/174548/10_reasons_you_must_play_torchlight.html/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4173/working_by_torchlight.php

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-torchlight/17-1551/

 

Official site:

http://www.torchlightgame.com/

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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In the Sydney Aquarium, part 1

The Sydney Aquarium has 3 huge fish tanks, each with two glass tunnels to walk through. As you walk, you'll see dozens of fish in the first one, more fish and dugongs in the second one (the main attraction), and sharks in the third. The shark tank was my personal favorite.

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Recreating Swine Flu (H1N1) in Pandemic 2

I like the swine flu. It does a few things right:
1) if "everyone" is "threatened" with "death", people tend to be "nicer" to one another
2) tragedies tend to bring people together (see rule #1)
3) it kills off the weak

To commemorate, I present a Recreation of the Swine Flu in Pandemic 2, a flash game, found here: http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Pandemic-2.html

Pandemic. OOOoooOOohh... scaryyyy..

Setting up my weapon.

How will the Swine Flu evolve? You'll notice my weapon is more visible than lethal. We need the opposite: to make this thing less visible and more lethal to do the job.

Getting stronger... but more visible

Humans trying to protect themselves. Meh. They found it.

But, the U.S. and Mexico are screwed. Blame Canada and their fucking bacon.

Africa and Russia are screwed, thanks to the Middle East's unsanitary conditions.

There are no signs of life in New Zealand? Tell me something I don't already know.

Alas, the swine flu pandemic is evadable. Just like Tecmo Super Bowl predictions are accurate in their championship game scores and winners, so, too, shall be Pandemic 2.

Ames' Window

I just shook my head in disbelief.

Britain's got talent...?

Seriously?

Statistical Consulting 1-1

Statistical Consulting - Homework 1
Objective: listed in comments

The SAS code is as follows:

/* HW 1-1
Student listing ordered by index with vars id, age,
gender, gpa, and cscore.
Means of gpa and cscore also provided.

*/

DATA HW1DASH1;
INPUT ID AGE GENDER $ GPA CSCORE;
INDEX = GPA + 3 * CSCORE/500;
/* above answers part (c) for index situation */
/* below this line answers part (a) for data set */
DATALINES;
1 18 M 3.7 650
2 18 F 2.0 490
3 19 F 3.3 580
4 23 M 2.8 530
5 21 M 3.5 640
;

PROC SORT DATA=HW1DASH1;
BY INDEX;
RUN;

PROC PRINT DATA=HW1DASH1;
TITLE 'FIVE STUDENT SUBJECTS';
ID INDEX;
VAR ID AGE GENDER GPA CSCORE;
RUN;
/* answers part (b) for means */
PROC MEANS DATA=HW1DASH1 N MEAN STD STDERR MAXDEC=1;
TITLE 'DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS';
VAR GPA CSCORE;
RUN;
/*
PROC FREQ DATA=HW1DASH1;
TABLES GENDER HWGRADE GRADE;
RUN;
*/

OUTPUT

INDEX ID AGE GENDER GPA CSCORE

4.94 2 18 F 2.0 490
5.98 4 23 M 2.8 530
6.78 3 19 F 3.3 580
7.34 5 21 M 3.5 640
7.60 1 18 M 3.7 650


The MEANS Procedure

Variable N Mean Std Dev Std Error
GPA 5 3.1 0.7 0.3
CSCORE 5 578.0 69.1 30.9