2012-02-03
post/16993188092
Main Tunnel on the Hida Tunnel. Taken from a truck for high-lift work, looking down from the tunnel ceiling before opening to the public.
From the new iPad application Tunnel for iPad ($10), with images and captions by engineering photographer Hoichi Nishiyama. (via)
2011-07-02
“Not even numbers”
Dealtalk: Google bid “pi” for Nortel patents and lost (via):
“Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” one of the sources said.
“It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi,” the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.
Well.
Firstly, of course they’re numbers. They might not be round numbers (by which, more specifically, I mean numbers with only one or two significant digits), but they are certainly numbers. Does “the source” also believe that humans should only communicate with the simplest of business jargon, because words are too confusing?
After all, comparing $3 with $3.14 is no harder than comparing $4 and $5, unless you’re in the early days of school.
Secondly, wasn’t their bid not pi, but π×10⁹? More accurately, π×10⁹ to either nine or eleven significant digits? (I suspect the former, since the other numbers listed are integer dollar amounts.)
Historical footnote: π wasn’t calculated to eleven significant digits until as late as 1400, by Mādhava of Sañgamāgrama, an Indian mathematician.
2009-01-01
2008
A running total as I tot up my online activity throught the year. Hopefully all of this will turn into pretty over the next day or so.
Status updates on Twitter: 1218 (on 347 distinct days)
Links posted to deilicous: 856 (includes non-shared)
Photos posted to Flickr: 492
Photos marked as a favourite on Flickr: 714
Flickr photos where I added a comment or note: (tricky)
Images posted to ffffound: approx 310
Images bookmarked via ffffound: approx 265
Images added to ffffound (post + bookmark): approx 575
Notes posted to notes.husk.org: 299
Broken down as: photos: 212, posts: 38, videos: 18, links: 15, chats: 6
Long-form posts on Vox: 70 (includes private)
Long-form posts on chaff: 1
