The Blue, the Bluer, and the Bluest Ocean

The Blue, the Bluer, and the Bluest Ocean
"Bottom line: Low nutrients + low phytoplankton + low chlorophyll =  very clear, very blue water.
Where in the world can the deep blue of the ocean be seen without traveling to Easter Island?
If traveling to Easter Island is out of the question – there is a unique place in the United States that provides a window on the clear blue of the ocean. That place is Crater Lake in Oregon."

A subtle connection

NICTA's coffee machine: Melitta Cafina Alpha (250 cups per hour; 100 variations of coffee)

Melitta's connection with computer science: "The Utah teapot is a 3D model of a Melitta teapot which has become a standard reference object in the computer graphics community. Martin Newell was looking for an object to make a digital model of for use in his computer graphics research in 1975 and his wife, Sandra suggested the white ceramic Melitta tea pot they were drinking tea from". (Wikipedia)

The UI of the coffee machine and its embedded control software have often been the conversation topic when people get their coffee there. Perhaps it is just a matter of time before some ICT researcher uses the Melitta coffee machine for some research, again. :-)

The origin of the word "Naked" in Naked DSL

"Naked DSL is a term originally coined by Qwest to describe having high-speed Internet without a landline" around 1999/2000.

Sans Souci

The question was about Voltaire's life at Sans Souci, his relationship with Frederic and "Volt/Voltage"...

1.Volt is named in honor of the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta(1745–1827), who invented the voltaic pile, possibly the first chemical battery. (from wikipedia)

2. Frediric was openly gay and exchanged voluminous letters with Voltaire on "gay culture". But Frederic's lovers may or may not include Voltaire himself. Frederic's open lovers include Katte, Fredersdorf, Count Algarotti, the abbé Bastiani.
http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/frederick_great.html

Shotgunning a Tim Tam

As discussed, the practice of using a Tim Tam as a straw to drink coffee/hot chocolate - which I knew as "shotgunning a Tim Tam", but which wikipedia calls a "Tim Tam Slam".

3D cinema and television

We were discussing today how does the 3D technique work in current cinematic releases.
As Liming pointed out, the company Real3D appear to have the monopoly on this at the moment. I was always quite sure that the technique of presenting two separate images to each eye involved light polarisation - the projector rapidly switching between the left eye and the right image being projected by applying plane-polarised light in different orientations, then counter-filtered passively by the different lenses on the glasses
I was right, sort of. The light is indeed differentially polarised, but not plane- or linear-polarised. It is circularly polarised, the physical description for which is described in Wikipedia here. Although I can't quite follow this from the description, I think I get it in principle. One of the key benefits is that apparently you can tilt your head and have the 3D effect retained, which doesn't work with linear-polarised light.
And also apparently, the effect of bouncing the light off the cinema screen doesn't significantly affect the polarisation physics either.

For 3D TV, a quick glance doesn't reveal what the 'standard' display technique will be. It seems there are two options under development - one requiring special shutter glasses (left and right eye lenses conversely open and close in quick succession), which just seems like a bad idea to me (surely the glasses will be too expensive, and will somehow have to be synchronised to the display?), and the polarisation technique, which I would assume naively to be compatible with the Real3D cinematic method - in other words I would guess you'd be able to use the same circular-polarised glasses that you got from seeing Avatar, etc.
I'm happy to be corrected on this point, but please provide a reference!

FWIW, there are at least 6 other methods for 3D viewing (especially for static images - not cinema and TV):
1. Sterescopic: This is the prismatic lens method in which two physically-separated images are presented to each eye. Some people (including me!) can sometimes even fuse the two side-by-side images by making oneself go cross-eyed while looking at them. You can even make these yourself with a standard camera if you know how...
2. Analglyph: this is the red-green glasses technique
3. Random dot stereograms: can use either of the above techniques, but allow for shapes to be revealed from patterns of dots.
4. Autostereograms: Like random dots, but within the one printed image. This is the so-called "Magic Eye" technique that was popular in books in the 90s.
Here's a reference to one that I helped make a couple of years ago...
5. Wiggle-grams: Two images (or more) put together in an animated image to produce a rotation effect. Not true stereoscopy.
6. Lenticular: A grating effect to present two (or more images by titling the subject (or the viewer) at different angles. This is commonly used in novelty cards stuck in cereal boxes, etc., where you tilt the card to see different images appear, or produce pseudo-animation. Also not true 3D.

Real-life Soldiers who make Rambo look like a pussy...

Thanks Mark - here's the original source:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy.html

Here are some of my favourite parts:

1."...the Russians just carpet-bombed everywhere they thought he might be. Supposedly, they had the location right, and he actually got hit by a cloud of shrapnel that tore his coat up, but didn't actually hurt him, because he's the fucking White Death, damn it."

and 2. "In spite of having come down with a nasty case of shot-in-the-face syndrome, he was still very much alive..."

3. "[Fighting Jack] Churchill's basically a crazier, Scottish version of [Colonel Bill] Kilgore [(Robert Duvall) from Apocalypse Now]. With a big fucking broadsword. Like if Kilgore was played by William Wallace from Braveheart on crystal meth."

4. " They gave [Audie Murphy] a Distiguished Service Cross, and made him platoon commander while everyone apologized profusely for calling him "Shorty." "

I now feel compelled to look at one of the follow-up items, namely, The 11 Most Badass Last Words Ever Muttered...

Paul B. follows up with his reference to Battleground 625 (= Welcome to Dongmakgol), the story of North and South Korean Soldiers and an American teaming up to protect an idyllic and remote village during the Korean War.