Happy Pi Day

Today is 3.14 which is the first 3 digits of Pi, and is also known as Pi day (July 22, November 10, and December 21 also enjoy enjoy this honor - anyone know why?). Of course we all know that pi represents the number you get when you divide the distance around a circle by the distance across. Pi expresses the simple truth that some things we simply can not know, but can only get close to knowing. pi is a fundamental truth that shows up everywhere, even in things that have nothing to do with circles such as economic statistics and the measurements of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

remember, pi is an irrational number, so make sure you do something irrational today, enjoy a slice of pi(e), and reflect on the mystery that is pi.

Here are a few trivial facts about Pi:

• Albert Einstein was borh on Pi Da. Coincidence?
• Some Say that Archimedes was murdered while trying to stop a roman solder from ruining his work, shouting "Do not touch my circles".
• German scientist Ludolf van Ceulen spent years of his life to calculate only 35 accurate digits.
• William Shanks also spent years to calculate 70 digits, however only 527 were accurate. All of his calculations after that were wrong. How many years do you think he spent calculationg incorrect numbers?
• A Japanese computer scientist calculated 1.24 trillion digits of pi in 2002.
• Carl Sagan surmised that pi contained hidden messages from our creators. Granted with an infinit number of digits, you could probably make pi say anything you wanted it to.
• If you count the letters of the words in the following poem, you can get pi to the first 20 decimal places: "Sir, I send a rhyme excelling; In sacred truth and rigid spelling; Numerical sprites elucidate; For me the lexicon's full weight"

March 12, 2008: HDTV's & Antennas

Antenna, originally uploaded by The Whittier Family.

So with our tax money, I finally got that HDTV that I have been eyeing for about 2 years (a nice little Vizio). So far, I love the thing. It is amazing. The picture is so clear and pretty.

However, I didn't want to spend money on all of those fancy HD channels on our satellite plan. I did a little research, and found that the "Over-The-Air" channels were better quality anyways. In researching that, I found that I was going to need to spend $60 - $100 on a good amplified antenna; still more than I want to spend after all the money on the TV.

Fortunately, I found a site that instructed you how to make your own (here). It is as ugly as a pig wearing taffeta, but it seems to work really well. Then I got to wondering how it compared to the store bought antenna, so Monday I went and bought an amplified one for about $55. When I hooked it up, it found less digital channels, and the channels that it did find were not coming nearly as well. So the result of my scientific testing is that my ugly home-made coat hanger antenna is better than the $55 amplified store-bought antenna, and it cost me about $50 less.

我們家上個禮拜用退稅的錢新買了一台液晶平面電視, 可是舊的頻道沒有支持新液晶電視, 所以電視畫面品質不是很好. 可是我們又不想花多額的錢請電視公司幫我們加頻道, 所以呢, 聰明的肖恩就上網去找如何自己做小耳朵...他去店裡買了10元的材料再去衣櫥裡找舊的衣架, 依照網路上的指示把這個小耳朵做好了. 哇, 我們真的可以收到許多新的頻道呢 (還不是普通的頻道, 是給液晶平面電視看的哦). 我們好興奮...為了試試看自製的小耳朵到底有多好, 肖恩去店裡買了50元的小耳朵回家裝上去試試看. 哇, 店裡賣的50元小耳朵還不如我們自己做的小耳朵清楚呢. 而且自己做的小耳朵還可以收到更多頻道. 我們當然是把店裡買的小耳朵拿回去還囉! 現在每天都可以看到清楚 (免費)的畫面實在是不錯.