Pitch is a black substance that is viscous and elastic. It is classified as an viscoelastic polymer. Pitch was used to seal up wooden ships, seal containers of wine for preservation, water proofing/sealing of wooden containers, making torches, and polishing mirrors and optical lenses. You might have head the term “pitch-black”. This makes sense since it is a very black […]
Color For Bash Scripts
Sometimes we want a little color in our lives. Our BASH scripts might seem a little dull with white text on a black background. And, we can get tired of adding color manually to each script we make. So, I made a BASH color library to enhance scripts with colored text and colored text backgrounds. Not only is color fun, […]
Georg Cantor and Different Levels of Infinity – It’s True!
Sometimes when people think too deeply about things they can suffer depression or discover something new that was never discovered before. Georg Ferdinand Lugwig Philipp Cantor (say that fast 3 times in a row) did both. Countable Infinity Cantor, a German Mathematician born in 1845, created set theory now well known in mathematics. One main area he investigated is a […]
How Does a Nuclear Power Plant Work? Explain It to Me in Simple Terms.
Nuclear power plants are not as mysterious as people think they are. There really is nothing special about them or how they work. It’s not magic. So, how does a nuclear power plant work? Power plants do one thing: generate power. In general, power plants use a source for energy and a method to harness and convert that energy into […]
Orion and the Star Betelgeuse – Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!
The Constellation Orion The constellation Orion has existed in human culture for a long time. It is named after Orion, the hunter in Greek mythology. In essence, the constellation forms a man with a sword/club and belt (the belt of Orion – three stars in a row which are easily recognizable) standing with a shield ready for battle. However, there […]
Karl Popper and the Philosophy of Science – Falsifiability.
Science is a big word and one definition is a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws. Philosophy can be defined as the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct. So, we could say that the Philosophy of Science investigates, […]
Figlet – An Awesome Application for ASCII Word Art
Let’s say you are writing a script of some sort and you want to create a large text graphic in the header of your file. You think to yourself, self, I can use ASCII characters to draw it (ASCII art). Then you realize it takes a lot of time and effort to do. There has got to be a better […]
Is There a Smart Doctor in the House? – The Semmelweis reflex
In the early 1800’s bacteria was not fully understood even though the basics of bacteria was discovered by Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in 1665 and 1676 respectively. Some patients were plagued with bad bacteria that cause many deaths. One doctor was determined to find out the cause of death of his patients even though most other doctors didn’t […]
MAME: Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator – Download to Live Your Gaming Childhood
MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is an game emulation package that allows one to play legacy games from their childhood days. You must first download (install) a few things to get it to work. The mainstream versions are for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. We will focus on the Ubuntu/Linuxmint version. First, go to the MAME download page and setup to […]
Only One Direction on Planet Earth
Everybody knows the cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West. However, there are two locations on planet Earth in which you can only go in one direction. Nope. It’s not at the equator. Even though Earth is basically a sphere (it’s actually a squashed sphere bulging at the equator) and there theoretically isn’t a top, sides, or bottom, humans have […]