It’s great spambots can’t do this, but obviously they are keeping out people who have no idea what they are doing.

For a while since the Lord of the Rings movies came out we’ve known that Peter Jackson was planning on making a Hobbit prequel.  And now it’s being filmed.  And they are making two movies.  And we have the film titles and release dates.

The first film is called “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and is to be realeased December 19, 2012.

The second film is called “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” and is to be released a year later on December 13, 2013.

Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, the character he played in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Martin Freeman, who just won a BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the BBC series “Sherlock,” takes on the central role of Bilbo Baggins.  Also reprising their roles from “The Lord of the Rings” movies are: Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Orlando Bloom as Legolas; Ian Holm as the elder Bilbo; Christopher Lee as Saruman; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo; and Andy Serkis as Gollum.  The ensemble cast also includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Armitage, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Graham McTavish, Mike Mizrahi, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Lee Pace, Mikael Persbrandt, Conan Stevens, Ken Stott, Jeffrey Thomas, and Aidan Turner.

More can be found on the Hobbit’s Facebook Page.

Imagine putting on some classical music, turning on your computer, and checking and writing email without touching a mouse or keyboard again.

This is Google’s newest feature to Gmail.  Check it out!

Researchers at Purdue and Stanford University found a strange correlation between the cycle of the sun and the activity of radioactive elements.  Comparing data from laboratories elsewhere, they noted how during different parts of the year or during solar events there was also a correlation.

What does this mean?  It is suspected that it’s not neutrinos that make this happen–that means we may have an undiscovered particle.  Also, if we can understand what is going on, we may be able to predict solar events such as coronal discharges or solar flares.

Full story here.

And here comes Pi day, and I have nothing.

Sure there are activities and food on campus…but I kind of need money for that…and I’d need a wallet for that…which is lost somewhere in my room…

Last summer I was trying to figure out a way to calculate pi by the DEC digit (there are algorithms out there for HEX); unfortunately, I didn’t find enough time to really solve that problem, so it never got done. There was a “Question of the Day” poster a couple weeks ago that sort of went about the same thing, but…yeah…grad school…

So I WISH I had the answer to something like that. Instead, I’ve got an infographic for you, thanks to Lauren.

(Click to enlarge.)

Stay tuned for some really cool things.

But I’m learning.  Slowly.

I’ve come across a number of articles about people who find themselves in similar situations–they spend too much time on homework or on a certain task at work.  What I learned from them is they learned that taking half-hour breaks every half-hour helps them get the job done in half the time.  There are other sources (Roach Post, Valley Psychologica Services) that hint at a similar tactic for different situations.

It’s kind of tough trying to figure out how your brain works, and probably many don’t care to find out.  For example, I’ve been trying to work with my subconscious (because the subconscious is smarter in many ways).  I noticed this years ago when I was struggling with a problem into the late hours of night, decided to save it for the morning, woke up, jumped in the shower, and DING!  Like a toaster strudel, the answer popped up in my mind as clear as can be without having to work out the whole problem.  I found that extraordinarily creepy at the time.

And again, last night, my flatmates and I were getting our creative juices going for….a prank…*ahem*…so I just posed the needed problems to my brain, focused on something else, and soon enough something popped out.

Which reminds me of something from the Big Bang Theory…Sheldon was trying something similar…

Anyway, the main thing I wanted to share was this video (I went Stumbling after about an hour of homework…try to clear my mind a bit).

Kind of interesting, how motivation seems to be different for different kinds of tasks.  Just think about it.  It is partially why Google or similar companies have been so successful–it’s not only about the financial profit, but to contribute to the creative collective.  I’m glad that someone figured this out.

What you see above is bacteria called GFAJ-1.  Let’s blame it on a recent alien hype.

Earlier today, NASA held a press conference presenting some of the work of researchers they funded at ASU.

These little guys live in Mono Lake in California, a hyper-saline and alkaline lake with apparently large traces of arsenic.  Arsenic is often thought poisonous, but is very similar to phosphorous–one of the building blocks of all organic material.  So in some cases–like in this bacterium–the phosphorous can be replaced with arsenic.  To me, this isn’t such a big thing–I’ve always expected such things can happen and do happen.  Life on Titan?  Probably.  It might be in a form more or less like the bacteria here on Earth, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

From PhysOrg: Wolfe-Simon says. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet? Now is the time to find out.”

Again, I don’t think this is something new.  But still, I think we’re jumping the gun a bit:

Key issues that the researchers needed to address were the levels of arsenic and phosphorus in the experiments and whether arsenic actually became incorporated into the organisms’ vital biochemical machinery, such as DNA, proteins and the cell membranes.

…

Commenting on the significance of the discovery, Davies says: “This organism has dual capability. It can grow with either phosphorous or arsenic. That makes it very peculiar, though it falls short of being some form of truly ‘alien’ life belonging to a different tree of life with a separate origin.

So it’s not completely phosphorous independent.  This still has quite a way to go before we can say that it is something “new” in terms of our definition of life, I think.

I’m not sure where to point the finger here, as I didn’t see the press conference–are they scientists hyping this one up, or the press?  I don’t know, but it’s starting to feel a lot like one of those situations best shown by a couple XKCD comics:

Other sources: KSL,