Category: SciTechMath

Relating to mathematics, science, technology and hacking.

New version of an old joke

Statistician S, engineer E and mathematician M were going to bet in a horce race, each of them in a jolly good mood. S: I’ve figured it out. Usually the odds reflect the probability of winning fairly well, but my analysis shows that this time there’s a slight disparity. My scheme has a 95 % probablity to bring me… Continue reading New version of an old joke

Phoenix

  Mosaic on plywood, 50 cm x 80 cm (20” x 32”), portrait. Introduction Essentially, this piece of art has the humble goal of to capturing the mystery of mathematics itself. In that respect it may need some explanation. I find the phoenix itself to be a powerful symbol of mathematics. The mythical firebird periodically sets… Continue reading Phoenix

Swapping a software RAID1 disk on Desktop Linux

A brief history of mine: System OpenSuSe 13.2 with KDE (not that it matters) Operating system & boot partition on /dev/sdc 2 TB disks /dev/sda and /dev/sdb in Software RAID1 (mirrored, not striped) configuration. Two partitions on the RAID disks, one being /home the other unmounted Symptoms All desktop programs became frequently unresponsive (lagged) for… Continue reading Swapping a software RAID1 disk on Desktop Linux

The things you can do with heat

I find green energy fascinating. In this article I’m going to look into some interesting technologies that could be used to harness thermal energy. I’ll simply present technologies with brief discussions and muse how they could be fused together (and why). The criteria for the selected technologies is that they need to use thermal energy,… Continue reading The things you can do with heat

Not so free energy lunch

I was reading about green energy the other day when I heard about some “free energy” stuff somehow based on magnetism. The interesting thing was that many people – including one professional electrician – claimed that it actually worked, while others said that it is a violation of the laws of physics and a scam.… Continue reading Not so free energy lunch