JovialJman - More Special Numbers (And Other Interesting Mathematical Anomalies)

Numbery things again, I wonder if you can see it is an interest of mine?

Numbers can be a rather big interest of mine because with certian parameters it can be said for certian things will come up. Not many other fields can say the same. So let's talk about some of the mathy things.

So in the last post I talked a bit about Pi and things around it, well Brady on his YouTube channel Numberphile uploaded "Mile of Pi" as a thank you to his million subscribers. In the video they talked about some of the interesting things that are in Pi and have printed the first million digits of pi end to end and this is where the Mile of pi comes from. I would recommend watching the video and the extras in the second video as there is really fascinating things in each video.

I have talked a little about the Golden ratio in how things are beautiful and where it crops up in the human body, but I never really got into it. So now I am going to talk more about it. The golden ratio is a relation of 2 lengths. If you have length A and length B, the golden ratio is when you have (A + B) /A is equal to A/B. Now if you want you could go work this out, and find that it only holds true for the one ratio. The way you can work out the ratio is (1 + √5)/2. This is what gives the 1:1.618033... and many people have worked with it in many fields. There are links between this and the Fibonacci numbers. I shall urge you to try and do some research on this and see what you find. Google is your friend here.

I have recently found out an interesting thing about paper sizes. There is a standard way of measuring paper, and it is often referred to the A scale. It starts off with A0 and the area of this size paper is 1m^2. Now most people will know the A4 and A5 as these are the sizes of normal standard books used everywhere, (or at least here in South Africa anyway.) Now there is a cool thing about the A scale, if you were to fold the paper exactly in half along the long edge, you will get the next size paper in the sequence, but the ratio of the long side to the short side will always be the same. So if you fold a paper of A0 in half you will get A1, then if you fold A1 in half you will get A2, and so on and so forth. Now this ratio of these sides will only work like this with a ratio of √2. If it had any other ratio, it would not work at all.

Since we are talking about √2 I think I should mention this video where Numberphile talked about it, along with the paper example, and the maths behind it. Now √2 has had a tough time trying to get recognized, as since in previous times there were people that really acknowledged the works of mathematicians, and they really liked rational numbers. Rational numbers are and number that can be written in the form A over B, where A and B are integers. Now since √2 was not able to be written like this, these people did not like it and tried to dismiss it. By using the Pythagorean theorem you can get it by having a right angled triangles with the short sides being of equal length 1. The hypotenuse will the be √2.

Now we go onto a greek letter Tau. This greek letter, (it looks like this τ , it is like Pi but with one leg.) The main thing Tau is used for is another way to write 2 times Pi, and in some cases it would make equations a lot nicer to look at, and make some of the teachings easier, (as said by a few people), but there is a whole debate amongst people which is better and which we should use. Numberphile did a very entertaining video about it as well. 

Anyways, that is all I have fro today, I hope you have enjoyed reading today's post, which I might add to it later. Thank you for taking the time to read it, and if you know of anyone who would like to read this post, please share it with them, as we would greatly appreciate it. If you liked what you read, or have any questions or ideas, please leave them in the comments below, or on Facebook/Twitter. While you are there, can you please like our Official Facebook page, and/or Twitter account, and if you are not there, you can use the associated buttons on the bar to the left. I hope you have/had a brilliant day, and I shall talk again overmorrow.

Never stop learning.

JovialJMan - 100 Posts Special

"Because writing 100 posts is comparable to having a birthday... right?" - OddballGreg
"Who brought the 100 candles?" - JovialJman

98 Days ago (on the 18th of June), we started writing daily blog posts. Today, we've written 100 posts, (imagine that ...) Let's talk about some of the interesting things regarding the journey here, and crack a few jokes too.

Did you notice that there are more posts then days? (I didn't until yesterday). The reason for that is the fact that OddballGreg published 3 posts on one day, (I think he got a bit too excited ...) There have also been 2 days which the post were a bit too late and were not counted and indexed for that day; Greg's post yesterday ,being one, as he had no internet access (I am sure he facedesked when he realized that he could not post it on time). The other being Greg's Blogging Music post which went up at midnight but was seen as the next day.

This is my 19th personal post , and boy has it been a strange journey here. I have had the very kind help of Greg, to help improve my writings, and he has said it has improved, (let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree). Ideas are limitless but when I have to think of a post for a day, then all the options seem to disappear, like magic, (somewhat strange for a novice magician)

TCSA has been going for 38 days, if you start counting from Greg's last Storytime Sunday, which, of course, I do, (that is over a full month of OddballGreg and JovialJman's joint ramblings on TSCA, (who would have thought it's been that long).

On 30th of July 2014 OddballGreg achieved 1000 total pageviews, (OddballGreg was all by his lonesome then). Today we are sitting at ± 2600. What an achievement! I would like to thank each and every one of you who have shown your support. Thank you.

Let's recap on some of the post that has seen a fair amount of attention (their page views are accurate as of the 23rd of September) :

The Magic of Performing Magic (75 views)

This was my 4th post and a somewhat follow up to my first post, The Disillusion Of Magic, which was recommended by a dear friend of mine, Clinton. I am rather passionate about the topic, which I really think shows in the amount of views it has gotten. It is my favorite post I have written so far as it allowed me to talk about a favorite pastime of mine.

Parkour and Muscle Damage (60 views)
"A story about a younger me jumping around on things, swinging on things, and hurting myself like you would expect. Also, turns out that parkour is still really fun even though I tend to hurt myself. I quite enjoyed telling this story about my usual bad ideas, and was quite proud when Parkour South Africa shared the article on their Facebook community."-OddballGreg

Tabletop Roleplaying Games (44 views)

"I may be a nerd, I may play Dungeons and Dragons, but so do a ton of other people in world, even though we have computers and videogame consoles. People really enjoyed reading this article, and I really enjoyed writing about a really awesome hobby. In fact, perhaps Jerome and I will write an article about the escapades of us playing DnD eventually." - OddballGreg

Statistics (And The People That Believe Them) (37 views)

"You probably still believe statistics, but since they make up such a large part of our lives, we can probably let you off the hook for that. Apparently, a fair percentage of people like reading about the potential statistics have for being wrong, but hey, percentages can be fudged now can't they?" - OddballGreg

The Truth About Spongebob (34 views)

This post was one that was recommended or suggested by my sister. I was struggling for an idea on the day and she said Spongebob is a representation of the 7 deadly sins, and thus the post had formed. I was still learning how to write a post with more accuracy so Oddball had to help a bit with that one. While doing the research for that one I came about a fair deal of other cartoons and their supposed connotations.

With the top page views as they are, if we were to speak about Spongebob giving magicians statistics of Role Playing games, after his accidental muscle damage from parkour, would that be the most popular post so far? maybe, (let us know down in the comments, what your idea would be for a popular post). Geocaching (Glorified Treasure Hunting) is less then a week old, but it has already climbed to the 6th position of the most viewed post. It goes to show that if the right audience is achieved, the amount of views should go up, and since there are people out there ,that I know of, that would like to start or already have started Geocaching they find it somewhat interesting and share it with others.

We have had views from many different places, here is a list of some; The United States, South Africa, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Kenya, Italy, Ireland, France and the Philippines. We have a very diverse audience but it is scary to think that we have gotten a few more view from America, than South africa, they represent about 44% and 41% of our total pageviews respectively.

Do you have any thing that you would like us to talk about, or have any questions, please ask away down in the comments, over Facebook or on Twitter. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post. If you know of anyone that you think might like the blog, please share this with them, as I am sure they could find it of some interest. If you would like to see the newest posts as they are published, please like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. Thank you for your support and I hope you have/had a wonderful day. I shall write again overmorrow

Enjoy National Heritage Day (aka. National Braai Day) tomorrow buddies.

Thespian Thursday - Method Acting (And Philosophical Thoughts)

Hello and welcome to Thespian Thursday; that day of the week where I share some interesting stuff I found while perusing the boundless indices of the internet, and then point out why I still have much to learn, especially about myself.

Black and white faces on a black and white background? This could be the edgiest thing I've ever put on this blog...

Did you know that there are multiple schools of thought in how acting should be done? I didn't until today. If you're an acting enthusiast or simply enjoy the theory of things, then this may prove to be of interest to you. (It certainly was for me for a few reasons.)

Seven days ago, I wrote a blog post about some handy tips to know if you're looking to be a better actor. As it turns out, today, I learned two things. Firstly, what I spoke about was essentially some of exercises used in what is referred to as "Method Acting", which is interesting. The other thing though is, admittedly, that it did technically make me wrong. I remember writing that post in the mindset that the advice I was giving was part of the way to be a better actor. While I may not have been wrong, my tone is incorrect in that there actually are multiple possible methods for achieving thespian excellence, so my apologies in that regard.

Moving past apologies and onto the interesting things, (lest you begin mimicking my headdesking habits in frustration.), here is a link to a rather well explained list of acting methods as written by "wrenfrost56" written in April 2013 on a website called Hubpages that I've never heard of before.. (I did attempt to see if I could find further information on this person to better credit them, but the most I found was an inactive twitter account under the name of Karen Edwards) 

In any case; the article explains, in far less confusing terms than the associated Wikipedia articles on the same disciplines, (Which I am loathe to link to due to Wikipedia's inherent proclivity towards incorrect changes and subjective opinions), the origins and constituent practices of these different acting methods. Beside some non-developed/named methods for things like Shakespearean acting, Wrenfrost56 makes mention of most acting methods, although does not make mention of classical acting. I highly suggest checking out that article for a bit more insight into the ways that actors portray their roles. Perhaps you will even find something of use.

The interest in all this information for me, however, does not come solely from the existence of those acting methods; but instead in Philosophical terms of my unfounded belief that I was correct. In a discussion which perhaps would have been at home in tomorrow's blog post for Philosophical Friday as well as today's; I find it interesting that based off of my apparent successes as an actor, I immediately believed that the means which I used to act so effectively "must" have been the best or most correct.

To disconnect the concept from the subject, I subconsciously decided that since what I was doing was clearly so effective, there could not be any other effective methods of acting. Of course, having disproved that myself, it is now interesting to think; why is it that I, or perhaps other people, would so quickly dismiss the possibility of other effective strategies? Is it one of the strange differences in my thinking which I so often find contrast that of other people, or are humans as a whole possess an inherent proclivity towards a "Not broken, don't fix it." belief with regards to methods that work in completing tasks. Since I also just said I don't think like normal people, I'd probably say it's an issue only people like myself suffer from, but there's no way for me to effectively answer such a question. Regardless, it is still interesting to notice the ways our minds work, and thereby correct errors in our own judgement and thinking with that insight.

In any case, thus ends today's blog post before I find myself pasting this into tomorrow's post instead. I hope you've found something of interest  or use here, and don't forget to leave a comment below if you have something to add, or simply which to tell me that I'm weird. If you have a friend looking to improve his acting skills, I would appreciate you sharing this post so that they may find information which could help them decide how they want to go about that. If you find my writing interesting, entertaining or informative, perhaps consider liking my Facebook page or following me on Twitter using the associated button on the bar to the right. As always, I hope that you have/had an AWESOME day, and I will see you tomorrow.

Beannacht mo chara.

Technology Tuesday - Why messaging makes your brain melt

Welcome to the first Technology Tuesday, the day where I talk about all things related to technology since that stuff is interesting...

Today's Topic: Why messaging does not actually make your brain melt, but does make you terrible at real life conversations. (I had no idea how to title this post.)

I dunno if you've heard, (just maybe... I mean, it's possible you missed it.), but a rather massive amount of people in the world do this thing where they press little buttons on a mobile device, (or more recently, just fondle the damned thing.), in order to send each other messages. Apparently this "messaging" is taking the world by storm. I personally don't believe it'll take off. Next you'll be telling me that we'll have metal boxes in our homes that show us stories or cars that drive themselves.

Anyways, that's not what I wanted to talk about today. (As cool as those things are.) My good friend Yestin Johnson (@yestinj) and I started talking about a rather interesting social issue that's been arising as a result of the messaging that's going on these days is that younger generations of people are beginning to lose touch with the finer nuances of actual face to face conversation. (Yes, that means if you're old, you are entirely safe. Your kids aren't though...)

Bearing in mind that the original article that brought this topic to my interest was actually brought to my attention in one of my final school exams (but so was Hatsune Miku ^_^), so you will have to excuse me for paraphrasing. As I remember it, the article spoke about how the younger generations that were growing up with this easily accessible technology and social media were developing in ways different to previous generations. They found that among other things, these younger generations were losing the ability to take note of social cue's such as vocal tone and body language and even emotional understanding. (basically, they're becoming robots. Just kidding.)

As I remember it, the article discussed the fact that these younger generations were losing the ability to differentiate the emotions of shock, anger, fear and excitement, due to their typically similar associated facial expressions. I dunno about you, but when I'm excited and someone asks why I'm angry, that's a bit confusing...

But it's not all doom and gloom. An article on the blog Nvate found here speaks about this subject in more depth, (and perhaps less humorously), than myself and makes note of the fact that the internet has become a great place for the development of social skills in the shy and those uncomfortable in public situations, provided that they do not spend all their time doing so online. The key, as I always say, is moderation.

So my advice is simple, be a good parent and take an active part in your kids life and, most importantly, help them to understand that, as cool as the internet is, real living happens in the real world. Here's a fun song from Rhett&Link to help get the message across.

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you have an AWESOME day. Got anything to add or suggest, do so in the comments, maybe I'll even talk about it in my next blog post.

Anyways, that's enough out of me. Adiós amigos.