Random Ideas
Well, here we are 
A static page containing my more interesting random ideas. Originally, I just wrote down some of them as a blog post. But I kept having more, so I’m turning this into a static page! I’ll be adding more random ideas as they come, in chronological order. That means the newest stuff is at the bottom.
(Last updated 17.02.2010)
01.11.2008 – Random Ideas (original post)
I have loads of random ideas. Every now and then, they’re interesting enough I share them with some friends. And even more rarely, I feel just telling them to my friends isn’t enough. So I wish I had a website I could post them to. And guess what. I DO have a website to post them to 
Some of the following random thoughts are kind of serious, some are just random observations I find amusing. If I have more of them in the future, I might make this into a static page instead of just a blog post. Anyway, here’s the first batch of my random thoughts!
Infinite staircase
I love walking up long flights of stairs. One of my favorite tourist spots is the Eiffel tower, where I walked as far up as I could using the stairs (unfortunately the stairs don’t lead all the way to the top).
So I was thinking – why stop only as high as the Eiffel tower? Or Burj Dubai, or any other man-built staircase. How about making an INFINITE staircase, for a freak like me? (Or at least the illusion of an infinite staircase). Well, never a man to be stopped by logical impossibilities, here’s what I came up with:
Imagine a long escalator. Really long. No, not infinite, just long enough for this to work. Now imagine you go and start walking up the escalator. Let’s say it’s basically in a tunnel. Just the escalator, and nothing else. Then, the whole tunnel fills with mist, so it’s more mysterious, and you can also see only a few meters ahead.
A person will be watching you from a surveillance room, using hidden cameras. Then they will start the escalator into motion. Moving in the opposite direction than you’re walking. So if you’re walking up, this escalator would be going down. It would be built so that it gets moving VERY gently, so you don’t feel it. It would take a while to match your speed, but after that, you would be in one spot, just treading the stairs. In the mist. Maybe with some cool soundtrack playing. Walking for EVER. MUHAHAhahahahaaaa…
Laugh-out-loud funny indeed
The other day, I was walking down the street and saw a movie ad on the side of a bus. One thing that struck my eye was the reviewer quote on that ad. It said:
“Laugh-out-loud funny!”
- some reviewer
I, being a geek, of course immediately translated the quote into an abbreviation – “LOL funny!” and burst out laughing. Using the abbreviation literally transformed a serious reviewer quote into something that looked like a YouTube comment left by a 12-year old.
Splitting the maths teachers
I’ve been a university student for over a month now. I’ve noticed one thing – most maths lecturers suck. The thing is, maths teaching is composed of two bits – maths and teaching. Most maths lecturers are great at the maths bit, but crap at the teaching bit.
In high school, I had a very unique maths teacher for one year. He was so bad at teaching, stuff actually made LESS sense after he explained it! (No, seriously.) I haven’t met anyone quite like that since… until now. One of my lecturers is just like that. The stuff makes some sense, then the lecturer talks about it for an hour, and by the end you’re more confused than when you came into the lecture!
This got me thinking. To make a good maths teacher, you need both the maths and the teaching. Unfortunately, finding both in the same person is very rare. But hey, what if it didn’t have to be the same person…
What about having two lecturers in each lecture? One would be great at maths, the other would be great at teaching. The teacher would by default do most of the teaching, and the maths expert would be there to correct any mistakes, and answer the students’ questions if the teacher can’t cope with them. That way, the students get the best of both worlds. Good teaching with clear explanations, but also an experienced mathematician to answer any random questions they might have.
Six Random Things about me
I got recently got tagged by fairyhedgehog in the Six Random Things meme. It’s a blogging version of those annoying chain e-mails. You know, the ones that go “If you don’t send this on to 10 people, a zombie girl will come at midnight and eat your brains”. (I actually got an chain e-mail like that once. “Sweet!” I thought. Finally a chance to test this out! So I deliberately didn’t pass the e-mail on to anyone. All excited, I stayed up until midnight. I even left the window right next to me open, so the zombie girl would have an easy entry. Unfortunately, she never showed up. I guess someone she was visiting earlier that night had eaten a garlic sandwich or something. Sigh.)
So… I won’t be passing this on, since I’m not a fan of pointless chain e-mails (or chain blog posts, in this case). But since the idea of writing six random things about myself goes well with this post’s theme, I figured I might include them . Without further ado, here are six random things about me:
1. I can’t stay still while brushing my teeth. So I walk around, or browse the web, or whatever. Last week, I was reading a book in my bed. Suddenly I feel toothpaste trying to drop out of my mouth onto the bedsheets. I barely avoid it, and realize I still have my toothbrush in my mouth. It’s been there for at least 10 minutes, and I completely forgot about it. (the book was a Terry Prachett).
2. I once solved the Rubik’s cube with my feet.
3. I love walking barefoot through grass. I love it so much, at several points in my life, I went out in the middle of the night just to do it.
4. I spent more time pimping out my computer’s operating system than pimping out my room. Orders of magnitude more.
5. I once tried learning to count in hexadecimal. No, I mean really count in hexadecimal. I invented six new symbols for the extra digits (ABCDEF just wouldn’t cut it for me), and then spent days practicing basic addition and multiplication. I got bored before I could become proficient at it. But one of the symbols I invented made it into my “evil overlord sign”, and it’s now even part of my official signature.
6. I sometimes read books upside down. It makes me read about 5 times slower, so I can savour the book more. For example, I read the whole last book of the Harry Potter series upside down.
23.12.2008 – The most generic testimonial ever
Every day at the university, when I walk to my lectures, I pass by the Mediators’ Office (whatever that is). In front of their entrance, in a huge font, they have the following testimonial:
“Thank you for an excellent service that resulted in a very positive outcome.”
Every time I see that, it just cracks me up . Seriously, that’s got to be the most generic testimonial ever. Where did they get it… Mail-Order Testimonials Inc.?
05.01.2009 – One hot chocolate with a dash of placebo effect, please
About three weeks ago, I was meeting a few friends at a coffee place. Since I don’t drink coffee, I decided to go with hot chocolate. The following conversation ensued:
“I’ll have one hot chocolate please.”
“Hot chocolate or Milano hot chocolate?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, Milano is like ordinary hot chocolate, except totally awesome!”
So I went with Milano . But now that I’m thinking back over it… was I just sold a hot chocolate with a dash of placebo effect? After all, it has all the tell-tale signs:
- there was no specific difference between the two hot chocolates, but Milano was sold to me very enthusiastically
- it was more expensive than ordinary hot chocolate, making me think it was more valuable
- it did actually taste awesome
The question hass been bugging me for quite a while. I think I’ll eventually go back to the coffee place and just ask them
26.09.2009 – Invisibility, or flying?
It’s the ultimate geek question. If you could choose the superpower of either invisibility or flying, which one would you choose?
The reasoning usually goes that if you choose invisibility, you’re a more cautious, careful person who likes to scoop out the area and then take out the enemies without them even noticing. Like a ninja. And if you choose flying, you prefer to fly in, all guns blazing, make a huge mess, get what you came for and get out of there. (Like a pirate?)
And that thinking is all great… if you’re also in a comic book universe, with supervillains and stuff. But let’s say you had to choose the superpower, but still live in our world. That completely changes the game.
Suddenly, the best you can do with invisibility is watch people without them noticing. Great if you’re a voyeur, or a spy… but kinda useless otherwise.
On the other hand, flying is just FUN. No more explanation needed
So my answer is flying. Because it would be a lot more fun to have for my day-to-day life, than the sneaky invisibility. (Although with invisibility, you could do a lot more EVIL. Too bad I’m a good guy :p)
Which one would you choose?
10.01.2010 – Why does hot soup cool down?
We were discussing this with a friend. It all started with the simple question:
Why does blowing on soup make it cool down faster?
My explanation is that hot soup cools by evaporating. Blowing on the soup replaces the humid air above the soup (already pretty saturated with evaporated soup) with dry air, which lets the soup evaporate faster, and so cool it down.
The soup cools down in the same way that a wet t-shirt makes you really cold. Evaporation literally sucks away heat energy from the unevaporated parts.
So I posted the question on twitter. And several people argued that hot soup cools by heat conduction. I mean sure, it does. But how much, really? Air is a notoriously bad heat conductor – it’s why clothing keeps you warm. The clothing itself does very little, but the layers of air between clothing act as a great insulator!
So I was thinking, maybe we could design an experiment. Have:
- A bowl of soup under normal conditions
- A bowl of soup with a fan aimed at it, thus producing constant blowing
- A bowl of soup in a small, closed container, which would quickly saturate with humid air and stop further evaporation
Unfortunately, the small container would not only stop evaporation, it would stop hot air from leaving, which would keep the soup hot even if the Heat Conduction Soup Cooling Hypothesis supporters are right
Oh well, I guess one of the greatest mysteries of the universe remains unsolved…
10.01.2010 – The dirty laundry metaphor for life
I was doing my laundry the other day, and somehow I found myself contemplating the phrase “Eternal cycle of dirty laundry”. Which lead me to make a bunch of metaphors between laundry and life, just for the fun of it Here they are:
- Life is like doing dirty laundry. Shit will always keep piling up, and whenever you think you’re just about done, a whole new bunch of shit will come along. It’s okay, that’s how life works. It makes it more fun
- Troubles in life are like dirty laundry. They keep coming, and if you don’t deal with them, they’ll just pile up until they stink so much you will HAVE TO deal with them. So treat trouble like dirty laundry – whenever they come up, just deal with them, and then get back to your life. There’s no point in complaining about dirty laundry, it will keep coming anyway.
- Problems are like dirty laundry. They seem disgusting and smelly, but when you take the time to deal with them, they turn into a heap of fresh, wonderfully aromatic laundry that makes you happy and proud. And without dirty laundry, there would be no freshly washed laundry either!
And a bonus one about food:
- Life is like food. It tastes SO much better when your friends are around!
Ahoy!
17.02.2010 – The magic double-taste sandwich
I was at the airport, seeing my girlfriend off. Since we had another hour or so, we grabbed some food at a sandwich shop.
So we’re half-way through eating, and my girlfriend says:
“Hmm… when you turn over the sandwich, it tastes different.”
That didn’t make any sense, but I tried it anyway… and she was right!
After playing with it for a few minutes, we came to a theory why that was the case.
The sandwich had a bunch of different fillings. Including cheese slices and some tasty salad-dressing type of thing.
When eating with the salad dressing downwards, our tongues got a full load of the taste, and it was awesome. By turning it over, our tongues reached the cheese first, and got very little of the salad dressing… so the sandwich tasted completely different.
Try it yourself. Next time you’re eating a sandwich with several layers of fillings, turn it over and see if it tastes different!
