Today's Around the Net

Around the Net - March 2nd 2009

Science of Watchmen


Professor James Kakalios of the University of Minnesota goes into great detail about the physics of Dr. Manhattan from the comic/movie The Watchmen.  How did he acquire his powers? How does his power of multiple imagry work?  How do these relate to real life/theoretical physics?



A Walkthrough and Cost Breakdown of Brewing Your Own Beer - The Simple Dollar

Trent over at The Simple Dollar has a good example of how to process your own booze.

All of these items are available at a beermaking supply store. I acquired all of the above for roughly $35.

A big part of the fun of homebrewing is that you can experiment with the recipes as much as you want. For example, my wife and I made an oatmeal stout that went off the recipe quite a bit and it turned out sublimely delicious.

I can personally attest to the fun of brewing your own beer.  Though even following the directions to a T can some times end up with strange concoctions.  If you're looking for something even cheaper and easier, with little taste, try just making some "closet wine"

The Eater of Meaning

Leonard Richardson has created a piece of software that when you enter a web url, changes the words/end of words/characters into others usually creating semi-sensical meanings.  For an example I'll take the previous article about Franck Ribery...

Original
United to Replace Ronaldo with Ribery?
Franck Ribery’s agent, Alain Miggliaccio, is telling the world that Manchester United is set to make a switch for the Bayern Munich star French midfielder should they decide to cash in on Real Madrid’s nonstop pursuit of Cristiano Ronaldo...

Converted
Uninterruptedly to Repletion Ronald witchcraft Ribbed?
Francois Ribbed’s agencies, Alabama Migratory, is telescope theses worm thanks Manifold Unionize is setups to makeup a swimsuit forth theatricals Bayreuth Municipally startles Frequenters midday shorter thermal decimated to cascadable in on Realizable Madeline’s nontermination purifier of Crimes Ron...

There is potential here for great amusement.

The $16,000 Water Cooled PC - Geeky Gadgets

I've considered water cooling in my computers before, but the costs, amount of work, and risks associated really didn't factor up well for me.  Doesn't seem any of those were problems for these guys.

So what exactly does spending $16,000 on a custom PC get you? This crazy PC features four quad core Opteron processors, 32GB of RAM and eight hard drives in various RAID configurations.