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Zott820
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Name: Zott
Location: United States
Interests: Computer Games are a major pastime mine. Favorites include: Star Trek: Elite Force, The Marathon Trilogy, The Myth Series, The Descent Series, Kings Quest 6 and Half Life 2. When away from the computer I enjoy scientific things, observations, and new perspectives on life.For athleticism: I am a fairly good runner. I choose to walk over driving if the place isn't too far. Soccer is fun also, as long as I don't get kicked or smacked in the face.
Expertise: I know quite a bit about computers, some programming, but mostly familiarity with a plethora of different situations regarding them.
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Zott820
Member Since:
11/19/2005
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| I was experimenting with the settings on my printer today. I've had this printer for a long while, but since I had a lot of printing to do, I figured I'd make it more exciting by testing out the quality of the print with different settings.
The focus of the test? Speed vs quality for black and white text scanned from a book in PDF format.
The settings were composites of Fine + Error Diffusion + Finest Detail, Fine + Fine Dithering + Finest Detail, Normal + No dithering + Microweave, and Normal +No Microweave + Fine Dithering
All were done in Black Ink only.
I'll get right to the results.
For Normal, the text was blurry and washed out if using the dithering options. Microweave seemed to increase print time with no apparent difference in quality for the non-dithered option. Non-dithering replicates the quality of a photo-copier, and so was the desired effect I wanted.
Fine detail was very readable at any of the settings. None of their variations seemed to matter on the quality and readability of the text. Print time was considerably longer than Normal regardless of settings. Fine detail without dithering would be the preferred setting for maximum readability, but took too long for printing many pages.
The winner setting then is Normal Quality, with no dithering and no micro-weave. | | |
| Today a girl came by the apartment asking if we had any butter. (Read: May we borrow some butter)
In her hand she had some Tupperware. It is standard to have some vessel when asking for anything from somebody else, to show you just aren't there to make conversation, and that your "plight" is sincere.
My roommates hesitated, I assumed that they didn't have any butter to spare, so I spoke up that I had some. I walked to the nearby fridge, and pulled out a half stick of butter.
"How much do your need?"
The girl responded "Do you need it?" (Read: All of it.)
I thought for a moment how much the butter was worth to me, (Probably like a dollar a stick) and wondering if I should ask for some money but decided to let the girl have the whole thing por gratis.
She thanked us and left.
In retrospect I should have asked her what she was cooking and had some conversation since she was probably a neighbor. Though, I feel that this pays off the time I borrowed a cup of sugar from another person.
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Ideas are meant to be shared, in all forms.
Pitcher pitching picture of pitcher.
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| A short prose written around 2 years ago. I found it in a stack of papers, and before recycling it, I wanted a digital copy. Since I haven't posted here for a while, it seemed as good a spot as any. Entirely fictional.
When my brother and I got up on Saturday mornings, we would become the warriors of the Great Kingdom of Zaramen. Slaying Orcs and cheering victory chants. Our fortress was our mother's bed, the enemy stronghold the garage. At noon our mother would traverse the great mountain peek to our fortress to meet with us. "Sires, a bountiful meal awaits you" she would announce every time the same way. Cautiously we would lower the drawbridge, a piece of string we had, and depart to the kitchen. By 4:00pm we would grow tired and sit and watch TV. Sometimes Jane would drop by from her sewing class to talk to our mother, and we would pester her for treats. She knew how to spoil us.
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| Well, it was raining again where I live, the weather has been sporadic in its daily choice of what to give us, and raining makes me think about how wet I am getting.
That in turn leads to math, and the question of, especially in harsh weather, if it is better to run through the pelting water particles, or just saw "screw it" and walk through it boldly.
I devised some basic math to find an answer to the question, imagining someone running at the speed of light, and so only hitting water in front of him compared to someone not moving and only being hit by the water on top (assuming no wind). Then you just combine those ideas for more normal travel speeds. I was going to make up a spreadsheet in Excel to find out the answer to the question, using a 6ft man who is about 3ft wide, and data regarding the velocity of falling rain, and the average walking distance of people, but many other people have done it ahead of me, so I'll just explain my reasoning without the numbers.
What I was going to do was assume that if you move through the rain, you will be hit by any rain you walk into, forming a human shaped path, of collected rain. So you will have your frontal area multiplied by the distance traveled forward to get a volume of water collected. This depends not on time, but distance, since if you stand still, and there is no wind, you shouldn't get any water on your front. Rain falling from above however depends on time, since the longer you sit in the rain, the more will fall on you and is infinitely replenished. Consequently, it is the area of the person looking down upon them from above multiplied by a "height" which is the velocity of the falling rain (distance of rain per time) multiplied by a time. Since I'm assuming that the density of the drops is also the same, I'm negating it in my calculations. I only wished to see if the sum of the frontal and rostral were larger volumes for a faster walking pace (and therefore shorter time) or smaller, over the same distance.
This version is one of the better sites I found on the matter, and even has the ability to set many variables. Furthermore, it has many bonus features that I neglected in my calculations for simplicity. Their reasoning mimics mine in many areas, so I saw no reason to carry out my calculations. Regardless, it works on similar ideas. I'm not sure exactly how "Rainfall per hour" fits into their formuli, but I'm assuming it is the rain density per area. For myself, I was just going to assume rain occupied every position in an area like one takes a bath.
And if you fill out the data in the chart and test a couple different scenarios, you get the answer to our original topic.
It is better to run in the rain not a lot better, you have a greater chance of falling and killing yourself in the rain, but it is better to run if you wish to get slightly drier. Plus it is fun too  .
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