Mathematics

"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."


- John von Neumann

I've got no network! -The nightmare of any procrastinator-

All of us have felt something similar to what this flower is feeling now ...
... The Net has the strange habit of abandon us to our fate in the most important moments...

To The Bible of the procrastinator:

Ch.1 THE NET

No matter what are you procrastinating, THE NET will be there for you.
No matter the time you spend procrastinating, THE NET will be there for you.
But, my friend, if you try to do something productive...if you try doing something productive, THE NET will leave you as it has done with all the others.

The Procrastinator

Picture via:
http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/

Step 1: Recognize that you're Procrastinating

Three simple steps to have a well procastination:

Step 1: Recognize that you're Procrastinating

If you're honest with yourself, you probably know when you're procrastinating.

Step 2: Work out WHY You're Procrastinating

You find the task unpleasant; or
You find the task overwhelming

Step 3: Get over it!

Make up your own rewards. For example, promise yourself a piece of tasty flapjack at lunchtime if you've completed a certain task.

And a paragraph with which 'The Bible of the Procrastinator' should begin:

Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don't understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren't actually important.

via:

Mindtools

(via Microsiervos (spanish) - Each day more, I think that Microsiervos is a kind of synonymus with procrastination)

Rocket from-building-to-launch vehicles

As I told you yesterday, we're working in our first amateur rocket. Soon you'll find some interesting news about it @ http://spacesheepone.blogspot.com .

Today we've finished the first construction sesion of two hours, here I left the results:


You could see here our SpaceSheepOne rocket placed on the Transportation Vehicle (we're still waiting for the wheels and the engines ;-) ).

At the final of the session, while taking the rocket to a safe shelve, the rocket-carrier platform reminded me (I'm sure that most of you'll have thought in it while seeing the picture above) the train which carries the russian rockets from the builder hangar to the launch platform :

Proton rocket during transport to the launch pad at Baikonur in Kazakstan.

And, as an experimented procrastinator, I've remembered the Space Shuttle,


and its massive mobile launch platform above the crawler which carries both mobile launch platform and the Space Shuttle.

NASA’s massive mobile launch platform and the crawler that carries the space shuttle
from Kennedy Center’s Vehicle Assembly building to the shuttle launch pad.

You could continue procrastinating in this way following:

Aeronautic/Astronautic pics:

http://isdc.unige.ch/bin/images.cgi?ALL

Curious things:
http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/2007/07/modern-wonders/

Recommended (spanish): Space Shuttle
http://www.taringa.net/posts/imagenes/808341/Space-Shuttle:-El-Transbordador-Espacial-Estadounidense.html

News about the SpaceSheepOne:
http://spacesheepone.blogspot.com

Smallest Camera vs. Biggest Pencil (WTF?)

This morning, while looking for a mini-camera for our rocket (maybe some day I will tell you something about it). I discovered the one that is called the world smallest camera (in the photo you can compare it with a pencil). This camera, developed by Omnivision may help in medical research giving the surgeons a new and less-invasive-to-the-patient method to many medical procedures. It also allows certain medical devices such as intubation systems and endoscopes to be made even smaller to allow for use on infants and small children.

Some people could say that it could not be as small as it seems ...if the pencil were the biggest pencil ever built... I'm sorry of those who wanted to procrastinate looking for the biggest pencil, because I've already got it:

...Faber-Castell's facility in Malaysia near Kuala Lumpur. This pencil is nearly 65 feet tall and is housed in a glass enclosure. (...)The project required over 7000 man-hours over a two year period to complete. The pencil is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest.

But..friends..I've never find the way to finish my day-by-day procrastinations and I would suggest very hardly 'The Pencil Pages' where you could find lots of 'amazing'(WTF?) things, photos and 'posts' like 'LEFT-HANDED PENCILS - do they exist?'

All this and much more seen @:

Camera:
http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/8687/omnivision_camerachip_ov6920/

via (http://www.therawfeed.com/2006/06/worlds-smallest-camera-for-inside-body.html )

Pencil:
http://www.pencilpages.com/gallery/largest.htm
http://www.pencilpages.com/misc/trivia.htm
http://www.pencilpages.com

via (http://www.therawfeed.com/2006/06/worlds-smallest-camera-for-inside-body.html )

32 nearby stars

Guys,...in my mind I can only see an advert that shows a child with an airplane, the text says: It's exams time!



But I love procrastinating so I couldn't study as I think I need so here I leave for you a 3D map of the '32 Nearby Stars'. I hope you enjoy it!

source:
http://kisd.de/~krystian/starmap/

via...I can't remember it...:(

Upload:
I've just read in 'Microsiervos' (Spanish) a similar applet which shows a simulation of our Solar System and some Extrasolar ones: Solar System Visualizer
via: Microsiervos

Arp 147: Good news from Hubble

Here you have the first image from a recovered Hubble Space Telescope.




From Hubble Space Telescope Site:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty.

The two galaxies happen to be oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation. The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth.

But good news never come alone, so here I left you a link to read while procrastinating some productive things.

Via:
Hubble Space Telescope Site

Flightglobal

(Both via Bad Astronomy Blog)

The perfect game for those moments..

I think that I've just found the perfect game for those moments when you are trying to do nothing but you have lots of things to do :-)

Use the arrow buttons on your keyboard to navigate and move your way around the maze to find the exitto the next level.

You need to upgrade your Flash Player

via:
http://www.theprocrastinator.co.uk

If Larry Page and Sergey Brin could, why dont I?

As all of you could have seen, yesterday, while registering a name in blogger I made the mistake of searching for 'the-procastinator' instead of 'the-procrastinator'. I found the domain available so I was able to get it.

see:
http://procrastinator.blogspot.com
http://the-procrastinator.blogspot.com
http://procrastinate.blogspot.com

This story reminded me of those which happened somewhere in the 'Gates Computer Science Building' at 'Stanford University', where Google was born:

...Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as "google.com," which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name "google.com"...

Sources:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html
From Googol to Google: The Stanford Daily

Welcome! (...or what does 'procrastinator' mean?)

Hi Proc(r)astinator's guys,

I'm pleased to announce that from now and (I hope!) once a day I'll post a new thing that would help you in your day-by-day's procrastinations.

At first I would say that the things that would appear in here will be related with aeronautics and science but some interesting games too.

I hope you like them.

As an 'Procrastination for dummies' tutorial for those of you who don't know what procrastinator and procrastinate means,I left here some definitions.

procrastinator, postponer, cunctator
someone who postpones work (especially out of laziness or habitual carelessness)

procrastinate, stall, drag one's feet, drag one's heels, shillyshally, dilly-dally, dillydally
postpone doing what one should be doing; "He did not want to write the letter and procrastinated for days"

An exemple of what procrastinate means:



And a very accurate definition:




And before my first goodbye I'd recommend this classical post about what procrastination is. And you'll also get an important idea:

There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.