Category: Geekdom

Party Scrabble

mike d. 0 Comment A Day In The Life..., Blogpost, Geekdom

Perhaps the most pretentious way to play scrabble is Party Play on an iPad. You lay the iPad on the table, and it acts as the board. Meanwhile, the players each see their own rack on their respective iPhones. The iPhones connect to the iPad via Bluetooth and everyone can have a wildly thrilling electronic night of scrabble.

Shaun, Darcy, Sarah, Brian, and I participate in Maximum Scrabble Dorkiness

Scrabble for the iPad costs about about 10 bucks, but the comedic value alone makes it worth it. Since purchasing this app a few weeks ago, I’ve played three times. Twice with friends at the House of Rock*, and once with Shaun while waiting for my turn at the open mic. It’s fun knowing that wherever I am, I am always prepared for a rogue game of Scrabble.

*Note: we have two editions of the real scrabble board at the HoR. But I’m fairly certain that hereafter these will be no more than dust magnets.

Burritos, an exercise in simple mathematics.

mike d. 14 Comments Blogpost, Geekdom, Ryan-Schenk-Is-So-Awesome

Ryan Schenk sent out an e-mail this weekend to document his mathematical approach at optimizing burrito filling.

Let’s take a look at his work:

Sheet 1
Sheet 2

End result?

Pi*((.816*dT)/(2*Pi))^2 * 2 * sqrt( (dT/2)^2 – (.816*dT/2)^2)

or roughly 0.031*dT^3
(where dT is the diameter of the Tortilla.)

It should be noted that this is the theoretical maximum. Experimental results are forthcoming.

Still, what does this mean in layman’s terms?

Basically, the optimal filling ratio is a square with dimensions in a ratio of ~8.1:5.7 laid out with the longer dimension NORMAL to the axis of wrapping (wrappation axis)

SAY WHAT?!?!

It’s true! I have been wrapping my burritos completely wrong! Readers, for heaven’s sake, don’t pack your burritos long, pack them wide! WIDE! This is the key to maximum filling.

Who knew?!

Math knew.

UPDATE: better scans and a third page of calculations
burrito 1.
burrito 2.
burrito 3.

Space Shuttle.

mike d. 5 Comments A Day In The Life..., Astronomy, Geekdom

Hey Internet.

Anyone interested in heading down to Florida on April 19th with me to watch the Space Shuttle launch.

Risks:
1. It may be postponed and thus, a complete waste of money.
2. Flights are crazy expensive.
3. This is one of the last few flights for the space shuttle, so it’ll probably be absurdly mobbed.

Leave a message in the comments!

Boggled.

mike d. 2 Comments Geekdom

On Friday, at Shaun’s recommendation, I downloaded Boggle for the iPhone.

Best/Worst decision ever.

For those of you, like me, who are plagued with a word game addiction – a new wordy iphone app is not the key to a productive weekend. Since that fateful download, I have played 5 hours and 49 minutes of Boggle.

Curiously, this morning Goss shared this unenlightening story that described how mobile gaming devices are losing sales because people now play games on their much more versatile smart phones.

Between Words With Friends, Boggle, and (apparently) Taboo it’s good to see that party-style board games are jumping on the smartphone bandwagon too. That said, I can’t help but wonder, once tablets (or MS surface equivalents) gain more market share, will regular board games go fully virtual?

If nothing else, clean up is a heck of a lot easier.