abducted's New Writeups

Flux capacitor (thing)

2001-03-14T23:03:16Z

Just what is a flux capacitor? Because the term came from a movie we may never know. But using the ideas from an elementary electricity and magnetism class we can take a guess.

Flux is basically flow. Like when you are using flux in calculating charge on gaussian surfaces in e&m. A capacitor is something that temporarily stores charge. That would make a flux capacitor something that temporarily stores flow.

In the case of the movie that the term was invented in, Back to the Future, there was time travel involved. This would suggest that flux was used generally to indicate flow of time. That flow of time would then be temporarily stored in the capacitor, and make time travel possible.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go feed Einstein.

Super Mario Kart (thing)

2001-03-04T12:48:23Z

There have thus been two incarnations of Mario Kart. The first was for the SNES and the second for the N64.

They had a great number of features in common including:
- Use of popular Nintendo characters
-A cartoony theme
-Weapons to slow down other players and speed yourself up
-Speed boosting powerslides
-Huge fun factor and replay ability.

A great many people were disappointed when the N64 reincarnation of Rainbow Road, once a skillfully designed, difficult course, was turned into an obscenely long course that was almost impossible to fall off of, thus requiring next to no skill. Other changes made to the N64 version were wider tracks and the all-mighty four player mode.

It was the N64 version that I probably have the most experience with. This is mostly in part due to my former girlfriend that loved to play it with me. Because she did not enjoy losing we came up with an interesting method for handicapping myself. I would lay on my back and play the game viewing the screen upside down. There were also other... distractions.

Intelligent life and entropy (idea)

2001-01-24T09:36:12Z

The constant increase in entropy, or randomness in the universe, can be used to explain why intelligent life exists here on Earth, as well as why it is very possible for intelligent life to exist in other regions of the galaxy as well. The reason for this is simple, the greater the intelligence of the being, the more capable it is of destroying things. This is demonstrated by our atomic bombs verses other animals clawing and shredding. The greater the destruction that occurs, the more entropy there is in the system, and since processes that have more entropy are spontaneous it would then be more likely it is for that particular thing to occur.

In order for this destruction to occur, however, there has to be a tendency to use it's power of destruction. Seeing as humans fight wars all the time, we can observe that this nature is defiantly with us. However, the nature can not be so great as to wipe itself out completely and therefore stop progression on to more devastating devises. This…

hug (idea)

2001-01-24T07:40:01Z

Despite popular opinion there are guys that really enjoy hugs. I know this because I'm one of them. Preferably from females, of course, but there's just something about human contact that is very comforting and enjoyable. For me there is nothing better than a warm hug from someone that I care about. They bring happiness and peace.

Sadly, however, hugs are something that I do not get nearly enough of. This likely has to do with me being a shy computer geek, though I don't know if it would be possible to ever get enough of them. So if you see me, or anyone you think would like one, give a hug. Even if it's just text, you'll be bringing a little sunshine into someone's life.

New Coke (thing)

2001-01-23T18:32:04Z

The new coke was the result of the coca-cola company performing taste tests and finding that their sweeter test product scored better. This was because in the amounts and time period that they gave their test subjects, they did actually prefer the new coke. When the product was released coca-cola soon discovered that when consumed under every day living conditions their new product was an abysmal failure. They soon reintroduced the old coke as "coca-cola classic".

As for the addictive substances variety of coke, the "new coke" seems to be Everquest.

node (thing)

2001-01-23T17:53:09Z

In computer science the concept of a node is used in a number of data structures. Some of these include Graphs, Linked lists, Trees.

In these data structures the node serves as a temporary location that a pointer is pointing to for a program variable to traverse the data structure or access the data within it. A node usually contains a link or links to other nodes in the structure as well as some data.

There are two basic kinds of nodes. There is a parent node, which has links to other nodes and leaf nodes, which do not.

In E2 we try and avoid leaf nodes with hardlinks and softlinks.