life outside netflix: October 2015

Energy: A Beginner's Guide book review

By Tina - October 22, 2015

I wanted to read another book on my Kindle (I got it on Prime Day and I love it) and Mark Zuckerberg told me to read this. Okay I will!

The book (author Smil) opens with a bunch of definitions from notable old people for the word energy and goes straightaway into a very broad and kind of random history lesson of sorts of past discoveries pertaining to anything energy related. The chapter ends with some lively energy units discussion.

Then right after Smil dives into a bunch more energy topics, this time about sun rays and electromagnetic radiation knowledge and earth science and volcanoes and plant facts. Smil spouts some old civilization stuff knowledge about horses and cows and why you should choose one over the other back in the day (cows are better 'cause they eat and digest stringy veggies and he randomly just started calling them ruminants out of the blue like I know what those are... well they're basically cows... just mammals that have digestive powers).

And then it's coal talk. And turbine schematics. And big wars. And a crazy amount of other things like eating and trains and economics. And then the book is over.

There is very little talk about the future of energy, which I thought would have been the most important topic to cover.The book covered a bit about energy sharing with a little conclusion for the tomorrow.

Anyway it's a very fast read (kinda felt like reading Sparknotes for textbooks). A number of topics in the book happened to be review since I took STEM classes at school. I doubt this book would be an easy read if you hadn't. There's just too much information going all at once and at times the writer sounds a little snooty.

But overall it's ok. I wouldn't recommend it to a friend. This book is pretty much a textbook. But if you are a trivia buff, this Beginner's Guide works great. However if you're more interested about what's happening now in terms of energy and the history and general science of it isn't super important, then energy is no good. I ended up a little disappointed. The book, being a Mark Zuckerberg recommendation, I thought would leave more of an impact or something after reading.

IMAGE SOURCE: book cover

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life

Part 2: Making the Netflix cat game

By Tina - October 15, 2015

^^^^^^^^ I have for you the intro of my Netflix Cat game. Looks cute right?

And the game code writing is going ... it's hopefully going somewhere. There are major debugging problems that I have to deal with. But here is what it looks like so far. I'm sure a lot of stuff will change by the time the game is ready.

When you open up the game, you should see a couple JButtons across the top (or bottom, haven't decided where yet). I'm thinking about getting rid of the INTRO button and combining it with the HELP page

This is the HELP page, I am going to change the whole look of it. But this page is simple enough. It's just one button to go back to the MAIN MENU and a background image with instructions. If I combine the INTRO with the HELP, then I'll need to figure out a way to embed the above video I showed you here.

This is the actual game. Pizza, computers, pants, and sheep fall off the screen. For some reason.... the Netflix Cat is not appearing here!!!!!! There are a lot of problems on this page....

Most of the coding I got from this tutorial with lots of tweaks.

BIG PROBLEMS
-I have no idea where Netflix Cat went. And he is SUPER important so I'll need to fix that.
-When Netflix Cat (NC) touches the sheep, NC will turn into Sparkle Cat (SC) and will get 10 seconds of immunity meaning that whatever SC touches will just turn into major big points. I'm having trouble introducing those 10 seconds into the game writing. Also since NC isn't even in the game for some reason, I dunno if the collision detection between the cat and the falling objects is working. (Meaning that I also don't know if the points and life counter on the top right of the game is working too.) AND I dunno if NC/SC moving left and right is working properly too.
-I want to control the rate of occurrence of the objects falling down. Right now all the objects are randomly appearing along the top with random x positions. But some items should be more exclusive (like the sheep and the PC). I also want to give the sheep and PC parabolic falling down trajectories to make it even harder to get it.
-My boolean GameOver is set to false in the beginning of the game. And there is a checker section in my code where the game checks the life counter and if it is <0 then GameOver == true. But something is wrong with the section and all I get are error messages. :(((((((((

EXTRA STUFF
-I haven't added music yet to the game, of course I want to!!!!!!
-Everything needs to be prettier. I'll probably change all the background images and beautify the JButtons.
-I really want to add a cut scene once the game is over. But the internet says that it's hard to do and I couldn't find good examples on how to do it. I thought it would be easy. Like import some media package or something and just have a calling function to get a cut scene once the game is over, but I haven't found anything like that.

IMAGE SOURCE: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b4/78/1e/b4781ee18c3f9999d01203c2b46202a9.jpg... i found here but dunno original source

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fact

The common cold and why old people insist you wear extra layers in bad weather

By Tina - October 14, 2015

The body reacts and acclimates to the cold in a number of ways. Our bodies shiver and our teeth chatter. Goosebumps form. All this is done by the little almond in our brains (the hypothalamus- responsible for thermoregulation) to make sure that we keep warm when the weather outside is frightful. Now as the temperature outside gets cooler, the old people in your family are probably telling you to bundle up as a preemptive measure against "getting sick" because of the chilly weather outside.
Well is it true?
The idea that the temperature can make a person more susceptible to getting a cold has always been regarded as an old wives' tale that isn't true and is just told to scare the children. What happens instead of the cold giving you a cold is that people generally stay indoors when the weather outside is bad. They stay inside with recycled air and cough on each other. It's a people behavior thing.
So it's not true?
But actually being lazy and staying inside (and coughing on everybody) might not be the only reason why people get colds more often during chilly weather time. Rhinovirus (aka RV, the germs that cause the common cold) strains replicate way better in colder temperatures. Why?
Researchers at Yale first started out by modifying a strain of the rhinovirus to infect mice ('cause the people rhinovirus doesn't infect rodents). Then they used these strains to infect airway epithelial cells of mice and compared the transcriptional response of the cells at 33 and 37 degrees Celsius. Incubating the cells at a lower temperature showed that the antiviral defense response was not as strong when compared to incubation at a higher temperature. How? Well, the results indicate that during rhinovirus replication, higher temperatures reveal more RLR ligand accumulation (RIG-I-Like receptors that detect viral RNA species by triggering interferon response for antiviral response) which leads to stronger antiviral gene expression... meaning that there is a possible temperature dependence of common cold sickness and you should wear a sweater and not breathe in cold air.

IMAGE SOURCE: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00789/flu-460_789486c.jpg, http://files.mom.me/photos/2014/12/10/6-86303-big-red-jacket-1418253983.jpg, http://files.mom.me/photos/2014/12/10/6-86300-puffy-pink-baby-1418253965.jpg
SOURCE: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/scientists-finally-prove-cold-weather-makes-sick/, Foxman, Ellen F., James A. Storer, Megan E. Fitzgerald, Bethany R. Wasik, Lin Hou, Hongyu Zhao, Paul E. Turner, Anna Marie Pyle, and Akiko Iwasaki. "Temperature-dependent Innate Defense against the Common Cold Virus Limits Viral Replication at Warm Temperature in Mouse Airway Cells." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112.3 (2015): 827-32. Web., http://news.yale.edu/2015/01/05/cold-virus-replicates-better-cooler-temperatures

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life

Very mochi waffles

By Tina - October 10, 2015

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life

Gimme a pizza that biscuit

By Tina - October 07, 2015

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fact

Schrodinger's cat: to be && not to be

By Tina - October 06, 2015

A lot of people have heard of Schrodinger's cat, but not many know the purpose behind the thought experiment.

Schrodinger came up with a thought experiment

A cat is placed in a box with a Geiger counter, a hammer, a radioactive substance, and a vial of poison. Once the radioactive material decays, the Geiger will detect and trigger the hammer to smash the vial of poison. This kills the cat. The decaying of the radioactive material is completely random. → Meaning that the cat status cannot be determined and it's status is considered to be both dead and alive. Key word to know: SUPERPOSITION (pretty much meaning adding multiple quantum states together... in this case the cat having both dead and alive statuses)

Um, why?

The Schrodinger's cat paradox was used to critique the Copenhagen Interpretation saying that the quantum mechanics behind Copenhagen interpretation for everyday big objects (like stuff that's not atoms, classically big stuff) is not very good at describing what's going on.

What is Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?

The Copenhagen Interpretation basically said that the superposition of a quantum system will only cease once observed, and once observed (just once you know what is going on), the superposition collapses into definite states.

Schrodinger's cat today

New studies are revealing that the weirdness of really small things being able to exist in several states at once may also extend to big things (like cats!!!)... but other new studies are also revealing that this weirdness may not extend to big things (like cats!!!) too..........

Quantum physics: Schrodinger's cat is still alive (challenge of achieving ground state... to show cat object quantum superposition can exist, cat object system need to be at quantum ground state to begin experiment--- hard to do!!!! but possible by coupling between cat oscillator and laser light cooled electron spin)

Schrodinger's cat is now fat (superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) rings show current decay through quantum mechanical tunnelling... oscillation between two states characterized by clockwise or counterclockwise current flow of SQUID ring dunked in microwaves show coherence gap)

How gravity kills Schrodinger's cat (maybe in space, cats can have quantum coherence, but on Earth it is not possible because gravity)

Fattening up Schrodinger's cat (physicists in Austria made fat Schrodinger cats of up to 430 atoms wide)

Reincarnation can save Schrodinger's cat (people from University of California Santa Barbara un-collapsed an almost collapsed quantum state by shooting microwaves at a phase qubit)

IMAGE SOURCE: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/04/bb/18/04bb1878f1a377f4c5064d3112deba82.jpg
SOURCE: Wrachtrup, Jörg. "Quantum Physics: Schrödinger's Cat Is Still Alive." Nat Phys Nature Physics 5.4 (2009): 248-49. Web., Blatter, Gianni. "Schrödinger's Cat Is Now Fat." Nature 406.6791 (2000): 25-26. Web., Gibney, Elizabeth. "How Gravity Kills Schrödinger's Cat." Nature (2015): n. pag. Print., Ball, Philip. "Fattening up Schrödinger's Cat." Nature (2011): n. pag. Print., Merali, Zeeya. "Reincarnation Can save Schrödinger's Cat." Nature (2008): n. pag. Web.