A friend of mine came across this really awesome video which attempts to explain a very low level (read: complex) theoretical physics problem of particle duality. Particle duality is the theory that subatomic particles such as electrons and protons which are what atoms are made of, or photons which are light itself, can exist in a state of matter as well as being a wave.
“Blah blah blah geek talk geek talk geek talk. GET TO THE POINT.”
I want you to think about that for a second. When you get down to the quantum level, these particles can exist in two phases at the exact same time. Want to hear something even more crazy? The simple act of observing a particle will change its state into a single phase. Sounds crazy right?
I know a lot of people don’t like science, but the sheer fact that not only can something exist in two states at the exact same time but change into a single state just because it’s being observed makes me wonder if consciousness isn’t just in our brain, but in the very make up of the universe around us. Hell, even if you think this stuff is “too geeky,” just watch the damn clip. For one, it’s animated so it’s not like it’s some professor who’s minutes away from walking toward the light, and two, it uses language that a toddler could understand. Consider it a way to exercise your brain. Worst case scenario? You waste 5 minutes of your life. Best case scenario? You learn something new.
Apparently earlier this year, on my birthday to be exact, the Australian town of Kellick Creek experienced a flash flood. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on whether you happen to be an optimist or on your way to suicide) someone happened to have a video camera handy and captured the flash flood on tape. I’d heard the term flash flood before; living in the flattest province in the country, flooding of any sort is always on the minds of its residents. I had no idea just how flash-y they meant.
You can literally see the wave coming from what looks like a hundred yards away, as it rushes through a “valley”, destroying everything in its path. This has got to be Mother Nature’s response to the Black Out Band.
I’d just like to apologize for the sporadic downtime we’ve been having lately. A friend of mine ran a webhosting company and offered to host my site for a free a few years back. I took him up on the offer, and up until recently everything has been peachy. As you no doubt have experienced, things have got progressively worse with things taking four or five times longer to load, and sometimes the server locks up completely. The problem is that the server went from being incredibly under utilized when he was just starting out his business, to over-crowded as his business succeeds and his client base grows. Being that he was giving me the space for free, I had no reason to complain.
Today, I was approached by another friend who has graciously allowed me to host this website on his personal webserver in his house. Unlike Canadian or American home connections however, his connection is fiber-optic based. The server is also very overpowered for it’s tasks (hosting 4-5 websites of family and friends, and a backup server for his desktop) so there shouldn’t be any issues for a good long while.
Let the partying commence.
NOTE: For those of you reading this update via E-mail or RSS, but are having troubles accessing the site in your web browser, this is the fault of your ISP and should subside within a few hours (or depending how anal your ISP is, a couple of days.) If you want to yell at someone, call up said ISP and tell them that they should configure their DNS caching services to properly honor a host’s TTL. You can say that verbatim if you want.
