Douglas Adams

Who was Douglas Adams? :


Douglas Adams was a science fiction comedy writer.  He was best known as the author of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".  He was born in England 1952 and died in California 2001 at age 49. 


What other books has Adams wrote?:

Adams was also known for writing other books such as "Dirk Gently's Hostile Detective Agency", "The long Dark Teat-Time of the soul", "The Meaning of Liff", The Deeper Meaning of Liff", "Last Chance to See", and "The Salmon Of Doubt". 

What did Adams believe in?:

Adams was a staunch atheist he liked to imagine a sentient puddle waking up one morning thinking "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"

Interesting Facts :

Towel day is the day two weeks after Adams death were his fans carry around a towel with them as a result of a joke in his book "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy". Also in his book " The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", Adams chose the answer to life, the Universe, and Everything to be 42. At age 31, he was the youngest writer to receive the "Golden Pan" award for his book The Hitchhikers Guide. He then won the award twice more.

 

Mortal Kombat

What is Mortal Kombat?

Mortal Kombat was, at first, an arcade game. When it became more popular, it was ported to many other consoles, including SNES, Gameboy, Xbox, PlayStation, and so forth. It was originally going to star Jean-Claude Van Damme, but as the idea fell through, a fantasy-based fighting game was made instead.

When was Mortal Kombat made?

Mortal Kombat was released in 1992 and is still extremely popular. In fact, it has many sequels. The developers are also making more.

What's the objective?

The story objective of the game is to win the tournaments  that take place on Earthrealm and stop Goro (see "What are The Characters?") from taking over the world. The player's objective is to use their character(s) to win all the tournaments and beat the game in doing so.

What are the Characters?

Some of the original characters of Mortal Kombat are Goro, who due to a glitch is an unselectable boss, Scorpion, who is an undead ninja, and Liu Kang, who can turn into a dragon as a finishing move.

Space Invaders

Description: 

Space Invaders is an arcade game, one of the earliest shooting games ever. You use a laser cannon to defeat invading enemies by moving the cannon horizontally. The more aliens you defeat, the more points you get. 

Development:

Space Invaders was developed by Tomohiro Nishikado and was released in 1978. Japanese computers were not powerful enough to make it , however, so Tomohiro had to create an arcade board. Over 100,000 machines were installed and over 600 million dollars were made in Japan alone. In short, it was very popular.  

How many systems has Space Invaders been on?:

Space Invaders has been on many systems. They include Arcade, Atari, Handheld Video Games, NES, Sega Saturn, Wonderswan, VG PocketCaplet, and Mobile phone. It has been on a ton of different systems so you can play it pretty much anywhere. 

Interesting facts:

Space Invaders was so popular in Japan, a coin shortage came. This led to the creation of the 100 yen coin. Entire arcades were made just to have Space Invaders machines inside of them. People waited for hours outside of the arcade, just to play Space Invaders.  It was released for use in the United States in 1980. 

Capybaras

Capybaras are the world's largest living rodents, growing up to 140 pounds, or the size of a large dog. They are semi-aquatic animals from South America, frequently living in or near swamps. They generally live in groups of 10-20. Females are slightly larger than males.

Capybaras can be adopted as pets, though they are difficult pets. They are very dominant, and usually will not be submissive to a human. Some people call them "giant hamsters," and it's believed that the best veterinary care you can get for a capy is an exotic vet who's worked with hamsters a lot.

Because of their need to swim, sharp teeth, special dietary requirements and other hardships, sometimes capybaras escape from captivity or are set loose. Introduced capys are known to be in wet areas of Florida and California.

Capybaras could be the inspiration behind "The Princess Bride's" Rodents of Unusual Size, of which the movie's Man in Black claimed, "I don't think they exist." However, although capybaras have very sharp teeth, the ROUS animals in the film bear little resemblance to real capybaras.

Torrents

Description:

A torrent or a torrent file is a computer file that contains meta data ( data about data ) about files and folders that need to be distributed and usually also a list of locations of trackers. Trackers are computers that help people in the system find each other and create efficient distribution groups called swarms. Torrents files don't contain the content that is being distributed, just the information about the files like their names, sizes, and their folder structure.

Why people use them: 

People bring up and look at torrents because torrents contain files. These files are what they want. Files can contain all kinds of things like movies, videos, books, songs, and text files. 

Who invented torrents?: 

Torrents were invented by a guy named Bram Cohen. He first designed in in April 2001. He then implemented it in July 2001. He developed it as an open-source program. 

Where can you find torrents?:

You can find torrents at multiple sites including The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, Extratorrent, Yify-Torrents, EZTV, 1337X, ISOHUNT.To, bitsnoop, RARBG, and many many other places.

How Computers are Built

Computers are fabulously complex devices, and their construction reflects that.

No single person could ever build a modern computer from scratch. Experts in many fields who have very special knowledge about manipulating elements and electricity work on various parts of the design. Many of the components needed in a modern computer are only manufactured in certain parts of the world. Some of the elements needed to create these same components often have to be shipped from the one or two places they are available on Earth.

Copper Ore

You can't build a computer without raw materials. The first step is to extract these from the Earth. These include iron, manganese, copper, aluminum, tin, silver, gold, silicon, lithium, glass, latex, artificial gemstones, and compounds that are extremely rare in nature, but serve specific purposes in circuits.

Refined Copper Coils

These raw materials are in most cases refined several times to meet very specific quality requirements. These raw, refined materials then go to factories that build components.

Motherboard

Component makers buy raw materials and craft the individual parts that get built onto circuit boards. Iron and steel are turned into wire. Sand made of silica is refined and melted into high quality glass. Aluminum cans that look like small batteries are formed to make capacitors. Silicon wafers are etched with circuits that contain wires hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. Complex components, like motors and transformers, are usually wound with thousands of coils of wire in moments by robotic machines. These raw components are offered to OEMs, or Original Equipment Manufacturers, in many different varieties. The OEM designs the needed circuitry and determines what specific values are needed among the components, and orders the needed parts in the tens of thousands of units.

Resistors on Paper Tape

The new components arrive at the OEM in long strips of paper tape, with the thousands of components lined up on the paper like a machine gun belt. A motherboard is a large silicon board that these components get installed onto. The board has holes and traces that match with the components that should go in each space.

Special machines are fed the paper rolls of components. These machines separate the component from the feed roll, align it with the correct location on the board, and solder it in place. This kind of assembly makes it possible to build thousands of boards per day.

Like motherboards, other devices are designed, have parts purchased for, are built by sophisticated machinery, and are produced in the thousands or millions. Hard drives, monitors, RAM modules, SSDs, cases, and nearly any other part that might be installed in a computer are made this way and then shipped to the computer manufacturer.

The computer manufacturer buys components and assembles them into fully-built computers. A single computer generally contains several large devices that can be swapped in and out for the purposes of upgrade or repair. Cables and devices are matched in relatively intuitive ways to keep errors in the build process from ruining hardware.

Usually, a build starts with the computer case, which is prepped with various screws. Then, the motherboard is lowered into the case and screwed down. The processor and RAM are then plugged into the motherboard. Any expansion cards needed, such as specialized video and sound cards, network cards, or GPU-based hash miners are added to the available slots. Hard drives, optical disc drives, SSDs and other storage devices are added and plugged into the motherboard. The power supply is installed, and since all devices must have power, is connected in many places to the various devices in the system.

Various small tweaks can be performed at this point, and the case gets the cover screwed on and the hardware build is complete. At this point, the computer needs an operating system installed.

The Julian Calendar

The Julian Calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar (below) in 46 BC. 

What is the Julian calendar?

It was created for the purpose of not having to add or subtract days in order to keep up with the seasons, which yes they did do before the Julian Calendar.

When Used

This calendar was used from 46 BC to 1582. The calendar after that was The Gregorian Calendar, and before it the Roman Calendar.

How it Works

As said earlier, this calendar is based on the rotation of the earth around the sun. It is still used for predicting certain holidays, ex. certain movable feasts.

Why not often used today

The reason it is not widely used today is because of the mistakes in it. Also, we now more accurate calendars that(in my opinion) are more convenient. Also because this new calendar had one mistake.Every 128 years, one of the tropical days shifted backwards. This made it harder to predict certain days, ex. Easter.

What still used for

Well, for one thing, almost all Orthodox Christian churches celebrate Christmas and Easter according to the Julian Calendar. It is also still followed by many, including the Berber people of North Africa.

Facts about The Julian Calendar

The months of the Julian Calendar were named as follows-
 Ianuarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December.

 The Kalends was the first day of the month, from which the word "calendar" came from.

 The days of the week came from certain planets, and the list is as follows-
Sunday from the Sun, Monday from the Moon, Tuesday from Mars, Wednesday from Mercury, Thursday from Jupiter, Friday from Venus, Saturday from Saturn.

ICBMs

A Brief Overview of ICBMs

Description:

The ICBM is a rocket-based delivery platform for explosives. ICBM Stands for intercontinental ballistic missile which means an explosive missile that travels from one continent to another.

Development:

The ICBM was originally intended to be used against New York and other American cities. It was made in Germany by the team of Werner Van Braun under the Projekt Amerika. Then Russians started their early development of the ICBM. Their bomb was focused on being able to hit European targets but this changed after Sergei Korolyov started to develop a true ICBM to carry hydrogen bombs. The earlier ones carried conventional explosives. This was so mutually assured destruction did not occur.

History:

Immediately after WWII both the US and the USSR worked hard on designing their own rockets. The earlier designs were only short range rockets but improvements were quickly made.

Reasons Not To Use:

Mutually assured destruction or MAD is when, if a country sends a missile over to another country, they can tell by using detection devices. Many countries have these detection devices, so they can send one straight back at that country. That is why we should never use our nuclear warheads. Because both of the countries that launched the missiles would get severely injured.

Creation:

Creating a rocket is very difficult. The Atlas A was launched on June 11 1957 but the flight lasted only 24 seconds before it blew up. Most ICBMs have three flight phases. The first phase, the boost phase, was took 2 to 5 minutes. The rocket would go strait up. The second phase, the midcourse phase, Is when the rocket hangs over its target. The last phase, the reentry phase, is when it goes down. Some of the rockets split into multiple parts so they can hit several targets.

Intro to Our Damn Thing (Summer Vacation is Wasted)

Welcome!

This is the online summer home of Harrison, Rachel, Crystal, and Jake.

Who knows what might end up here?