APOD: Crescent Earth from the Departing Rosetta Spacecraft

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APOD: Crescent Earth from the Departing Rosetta Spacecraft

Explanation: Goodbye Earth. Earlier this month, ESA’s interplanetary Rosetta spacecraft zoomed past the Earth on its way back across the Solar System. Pictured above, Earth showed a bright crescent phase featuring the South Pole to the passing rocket ship. Launched from Earth in 2004, Rosetta used the gravity of the Earth to help propel it out past Mars and toward a 2014 rendezvous with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Last year, the robot spacecraft passed asteroid 2867 Steins, and next year it is scheduled to pass enigmatic asteroid 21 Lutetia. If all goes well, Rosetta will release a probe that will land on the 15-km diameter comet in 2014.

Two-Dimensional Pathology: Befunge

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scienceblogs.com: Two-Dimensional Pathology: Befunge

In Befunge, there’s a read-head that moves over the program. Each step, it executes the instruction under the head. But instead of just moving left or right, it can move left, right, up, or down. “>” is an instruction that tells the head to start moving to the right; “<" tells the head to start moving left; "^" means start moving up, and "v" means to start moving down. So, for example: >v
^<

Is a program that runs an infinite loop: the head will just cycle over those four characters. An even more interesting infinite loop (taken from the befunge documentation) is:

C’est rien, compare a l’autre exemple de code que vous retrouverai sur le site via le lien plus haut. Outch! 🙂

Goldman’s Fabrice Tourre: Much more than a faceless math whiz

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theglobeandmail.com: Goldman’s Fabrice Tourre: Much more than a faceless math whiz

Fabrice Tourre has led a life most mathematicians can only dream about – ski trips to fancy resorts, a $2-million annual salary and at least a couple of girlfriends in exotic European cities.

In one e-mail sent to a girlfriend in January, 2007, he lamented that he had to “mentor others, in view of the fact that I am now considered a ‘dinosaur’ … I feel like I’m losing my mind and I’m only 28!!! OK, I’ve decided two more years of work and I’m retiring.”

Liberte 30! C’est mieux que mon but de liberte 35! Ca sera peut-etre Prison 30 😉

Rochefort 8

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J’ai goute hier a une biere que j’ai trouve excellente, quoi qu’un peu inhabituelle. C’est une biere que je me suis procure aux States, au magasin Oliver’s Beverage situe a Albany, NY. Ce magasin a une cote “A” sur le site beeradvocate.com. Le choix y est totalement incroyable, surtout pour un quebecois qui se fait limite par la SAQ cote bieres importees.

La biere en question est la Trappistes Rochefort 8. Pour ceux qui sont membres de beeradvocate.com, vous pouvez lire plusieurs reviews dont celle d’un des proprietaires du site, Jason Alström. Avec mon incapacite chronique a decrire ce que je goute (ce qui ne veut pas dire que je ne l’apprecie pas 😉 ), je vous laisse avec la fin de la description suivante:

The complexity alone is staggering for the taste buds.

Excellente description!

Voici un lien vers la page de la brasserie sur wikipedia.

P.S. Ca donne le gout de s’informer sur les possibilites d’importation privees au Quebec, malgre toutes les excellentes bieres developpees ici.