totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[YNM]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

not much more to add apart from wildfires

Wildfires rarely happens on Java, but it does happen on the east coast of Sumatra and Borneo, where the peat bogs are.

Also, official report from the national electricity company has been released (in Indonesian because that's where they operate).

It basically confirms my suspicion that one out of three (one more was under maintenance) of the main transmission line was tripped - in this case, by an overly tall tree which grounded the conductor through a spark - which resulted in overcapacity of the two remaining available transmission lines, which results in the transmission lines being downed, which results in overdemand and subsequent downing of all generating stations, which shuts down electricity to almost 80 million people for at least 5 hrs; and further disruptions for the rest of the day, and the following day after, as they inspected everything.

I'm just glad this only required an easy fix, and the loads involved weren't much more saturated. It could've been worse.

Edited August 6, 2019 by YNM

[CatastrophicFailure]

We got our first chicken egg today. 

Idin’it cuuute?

Shown here next to a freakishly large, cholesterol-laden, double-yolker butt slug one of the ducks keeps pumping out with slightly disturbing regularity. 

Edited August 6, 2019 by CatastrophicFailure

[kerbiloid]

Just found these amazing threads.

https://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=22998

(from the 1st link). That's how the world was beginning. KSP 0.3, still 2d.

Spoiler

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Lapis]

On 7/31/2019 at 8:46 AM, Geonovast said:

I've seen Iron Man 2 at least a dozen times, as it's one of my favorite of the MCU, but I didn't find out until yesterday that Elon Musk was in it.

same i was rewatching it a while back and spotted him

[TheSaint]

Spent the weekend camping up at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. All the years we've been going to the South Rim, never been to the North Rim before. Not at all what I was expecting it to be like. Had a great time.

[CatastrophicFailure]

I pushed the button. 

well... technically the wife did...

but the button was pushed  

...and I get to sit in it...

And this just needs to be repeated... 

Spoiler

The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the panametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-deltoid type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremmie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters.

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by CatastrophicFailure

[Selective Genius]

"Finished meshing in 420.42 s."

The 'Ultimate Question' was answered twice at my workstation just now!

[Delay]

The rand() function in C doesn't seem to be very good at generating pseudorandom numbers, so I tried to improve it a bit.
Apparently taking the output of rand(), shifting it to the left twice and then XORing it with another random number works quite well.

Generating 1000 numbers between (and including) 0 and 999 I got 0.8% 1-digit, 10.6% 2-digit and 88.6% 3-digit numbers. Matches quite well with the expected chances of 1%, 10% and 89% respectively, it could be worse!

Like just using rand() by itself...

Edited August 8, 2019 by Delay

[Shpaget]

Does that actually work?

I mean, there is that saying "Garbage in, garbage out."

 

[Delay]

13 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Does that actually work?

At least it seems to produce more evenly distributed results than the stock rand().

[Shpaget]

But even distribution is not random, right?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... is very even. Not particularly random.

I'm trying to wrap my head around chi-square, but I'm not doing well.

[Delay]

1 minute ago, Shpaget said:

But even distribution is not random, right?

Maybe that's the wrong word. What I mean is that there seems to be less "bias" in the generated numbers.
Single-digit numbers appear 10 times less than 2 digit numbers, 2 digit number appear 10 times less than 3 digit numbers, etc. and when sorted there seem to be only a few repeats.

However course it generates the same numbers every single time as I'm not changing the seed between program starts. Easiest way to fix that seems to be changing the seed according to the current (unix) time.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Delay said:

The rand() function in C doesn't seem to be very good at generating pseudorandom numbers

Mersenne Twister worked enough well for me.

[roboslacker]

Today, I got my first paycheck.

[KerbMav]

On 8/8/2019 at 7:41 PM, Delay said:

changing the seed according to the current (unix) time.

Best I have seen was webcams watching a wall of lavalamps to generate random seed/salt for encryption.

[kerbiloid]

Don't astronomers provide an online service, like a Galactic Radiation Random?

Edited August 14, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Delay]

5 hours ago, KerbMav said:

Best I have seen was webcams watching a wall of lavalamps to generate random seed/salt for encryption.

Doing that would be a bit overkill for my purposes.

I just don't want to have the same numbers generated on every program start.

[cubinator]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Don't astronomers provide an online service, like a Galactic Radiation Random?

random.org uses atmospheric disturbances to provide us random numbers.

[Shpaget]

I was browsing ice cream section and I see some with "brown muffin" and "yellow muffin" flavor. What could those taste like? 

And don't say brown and yellow muffins.

I settled for hazelnut and pistachio.

[Cheif Operations Director]

On 8/6/2019 at 5:12 AM, kerbiloid said:

Just found these amazing threads.

https://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=22998

(from the 1st link). That's how the world was beginning. KSP 0.3, still 2d.

  Hide contents

 

Wow that is really old, they should re-release the code as a free DLC add on for nostalgia

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Wow that is really old, they should re-release the code as a free DLC add on for nostalgia

I would throw some money on The Barn. Hell of an idea, I would like to start an Career that way 

[kerbiloid]

What  is amazing me:
2013, @Aladran "Look, just found this!"
2019, me: "Look, just found this!"

[cubinator]

Tonight I watched Ganymede rise over Jupiter. Normally my telescope isn't big enough to let me see the moons as more than points, but when the moon was right next to the planet I could actually see it as a round object, and maybe even with a little of that characteristic gray color. It was amazing, and a little surreal - watching an alien moonrise from my own home.

[coyotesfrontier]

Not today, but I still want to talk about it. Me and my dad found a little girl (around toddler age) just wandering around in our hotel's parking lot, with nobody around her. Oddly for kids her age, she followed my dad back to reception, and started hugging his leg when we got there. She even jestured to be picked up, and really enjoyed it when my dad held her.

After waiting 15 minutes for someone to attend the desk, an employee walked in, but cared shockingly little about the child. We finally figured out that the girl's highly irresponsible dad had left his room's door open and fallen asleep, allowing the girl to walk down the steps and into the lot. I kind of wonder if he was smoking something, as that would explain the open door and his irresponsible behaviour.

[Jeb1969]

I was watching Scott Manley's newest upload on YouTube about The upcoming Kerbal Space Program sequel, and before the video even started I got an ad ( Usually I loathe ads because I just want to go straight to the video), but this ad was none other than a trailer for the Kerbal Space Program sequel.