The “journey of your life in numbers and dates” at population.io is a kick

There’s an interesting website called Population.io that gives you a quick overview of the significance of your birthday.

Most sites give you the plain old “you gonna die” shtick, but this site talks about what countries share your birthday, what number of person you are on the planet, how many people are older and younger than you right now, the next big milestones in your life numerically, and lets you drill down into each subsection for a little more data. The site’s finale is a brutally hardcore version of the “you gonna die” shtick with graphs and overlapping line charts.

Some quick stats on yours truly…

  • I’m the 5,269,918,218th person alive on the planet. Suck it 5,269,918,219!
  • China has 67,102 people that share my birthday
  • India has 41,328 people that share my birthday.
  • Just China and India take up 50% of the countries that share my particular birthday – my birthdate is moderately rare in the US!
  • The exact day of my predicted expiration is… well, that can’t be right, so I’m not going to post it. Obvious computer glitch.

Check it out. It’s a quick distraction with a hint of “memento mori, foo” here and there.

Staples now sells an “ultimate travel bag” online for $2 billion dollars

Staples.com is now selling an “ultimate travel bag” for the low low price of two billion dollars.

$2 billion, 147 million, 483 thousand, 647 dollars and 99 cents to be exact.

 

Ultimate Travel Bag!

Ultimate Travel Bag!

 

Wow. They’re not joking around when they whip out the “ultimate” label for something!

What’s mildly freaky is that I have apparently ordered this item before since it is showing up in “My Previously Ordered Items”, but there’s no photo available of what it looks like.

Either I’ve been “flashy thinged” by the Men In Black, or someone at staples.com needs to run some database maintenance ASAP.

NASA, Birds, Pigs and gravity : a new collaboration with the “Angry Birds : Space” game

The latest version of Angry Birds has a direct tie-in with NASA’s recent Mars / Curiosity rover mission in addition to adding NASA rovers and landers to the game dynamics.

Sneaking legitimate education and real-time events into a game about birds that shoot at pigs in space through gravity wells?!

Why… thank you very much!

Here’s today’s NASA press release in full…

RELEASE: 12-285

EPIC STRUGGLE BETWEEN BIRDS AND PIGS GOES ON WITH A MARTIAN TWIST

WASHINGTON — NASA is helping pigs and birds explore the Martian terrain and shed light on the agency’s missions to the Red Planet in the latest update to the game Angry Birds Space. Rovio Entertainment, creator of Angry Birds, announced the update Thursday, complete with a cast of agency rovers and landers.

Earlier this year, millions of gamers were introduced to concepts of microgravity in Angry Birds Space, which was supported through a partnership with NASA and includes links to a variety of education information.

“Rovio is teaching huge new audiences about NASA’s missions to Mars thanks to this collaboration,” said David Weaver, associate administrator for communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It’s a great way to introduce both kids and adults to the wonders of the planet in a fun and entertaining way.”

NASA participated with Rovio on Angry Birds Space under a Space Act Agreement to share the excitement of space with the Angry Birds community, educate players about agency projects and programs, and collaboratively create interactive informational experiences for the public.

The game will include links to NASA web content about Mars exploration and NASA missions that are represented in the game. The content can be found at:

http://www.nasa.gov/redplanet/

“We’re huge NASA fans, and we were all cheering the Mars Curiosity rover as it touched down,” said Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer of Rovio Entertainment. “So, working together on the Mars update was a perfect fit, especially since we got such an amazing response to our previous collaboration, the ‘Angry Birds Space: NASA announcement’ video, which quickly surged to the top of 2012’s viral video charts. We’re thrilled to continue working with NASA. Stay tuned for even more great fun and educational content coming up.”

For more information about NASA’s Curiosity rover and Mars exploration, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

For more about NASA’s other missions and projects, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Ever wonder why your dog is so happy to see you when you get home?

Have you ever wondered why your dog is always so very happy to see you when you come home? Assuming you work 8 am to 5 pm, it may be because you have been gone for 56 hours in their timeframe!

Assuming the idea that one human year is seven dog years, every hour to us works out to 7 hours for a dog.

Here’s my math…

There’s 8,765.81277 hours in a year
168 hours in a week
And 1 year = 52.177457 weeks

So a dog year would be 7 * 8,765.81277 hours a year = 61,360.68939 hours to a dog
61,360.68939 dog hours / 24 hours = 2,556.69539125 dog days a year
2,556.69539125 dog days a year / 365 = 7.004644907534247

1 day for us, 24 hours of human time, is 7 days in dog time.

Breaking that down a little more, 24 hours human time = 168 hours dog time (7 * 24)

So 168 / 24 = 7 dog hours for every human hour.

Going backwards…

7 hours * 24 = 168 dog hours a day

168 dog hours a day * 365 days in a year = 61,320 dog hours a year

61,320 dog hours a year / 8,765.81277 hours in a human year as comparison = 6.99 dog years for every human year (rounded)

Yikes.

The whole seven years to every human year is really a guideline more than a rule, and the lifespan of dogs vary greatly from breed to breed, but regardless I think I’ll take my dogs out to run and play catch a little more this week.

Yale’s digitizing collection and some quick math

Yale recently announced they are going to scan and post very high res images of their “collections of art, natural history, books, and maps, as well as photos, audio, and video documenting people, places, and events that form part of Yale’s institutional identity and contribution to scholarship”.

There’s 250,000 images out there already to start with, but there are 12,000,000 items left to scan. (And all of this is supposedly coming from only ONE of their museum collections!)

Assuming they’re going to scan 15 pieces an hour on a high-end scanner, that means it’s going to take 800,000 hours to scan 12 million pieces.

Scanning 15 pieces an hour for 8 hours a day straight will take 100,000 days.

100,000 days divided by 365 days in a year would make it a 273 year job… for for one person.

Add 99 more people scanning at the same rate and the entire 12 million piece archive can be done in 2.7 years.

That is a LOT of artwork left to scan.

The main search window for the Yale collection is here. A sample list view of what is already online is here.