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41st Known Mersenne Prime Found!!

On May 15, 2004, Josh Findley discovered the 41st known Mersenne Prime. It is 224,036,583-1. The number is nearly a million digits larger than the last find and is now the largest known prime number!

Find out more at http://mersenne.org/

I am involved in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search and yet Bloody Hell this happened two weeks ago and somehow I missed it. My current stats are as follows.


LL P90* Exponents Fact.P90 Exponents P90 CPU
CPU yrs LL Tested CPU yrs* w/ Factor hrs/day
------- --------- -------- --------- -------
49.868 17 2.033 1 2628.03

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Manhattan streets flooded

Today, if it is clear, Manhattan will flood dramatically with sunlight just as the Sun sets precisely on the centerline of every street.

See the magic here.

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Nipponese Archery

Whilst bored at work I was playing around with Google and discovered that I am the top 5 results for a search for Nipponese Archery.

But what is Nipponese Archery?

For answers why not visit The Meishin Kyudojo Homepage.

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Is America held to a higher standard?

The following is a post from the 37 signals weblog called It’s good that you’re upset found via plasticbag.org

The world is rightfully disgusted by the treatment of some Iraqi prisoners, but the fact that the world is outraged is a good sign that America is still held to a higher standard. The Arab street remained mostly quiet when Saddam tortured for three decades or when American soldiers were dragged through the streets and hung to dangle in public a few weeks back. And how many leaders in the Arab world will be outraged that one of their own ruthlessly beheaded an American contractor after forcing him to name his parents and his siblings (and don’t forget about Daniel Pearl who had to admit he was a Jew before his head was cut off)? The world barely gave notice to the Taliban’s systematic and despicable treatment of women in Afghanistan or the destruction of ancient works of irreplaceable art and culture. The world was barely interested in stopping the carnage in Bosnia until over a half-million were killed (and then the UN still didn’t want to get involved). The world is still barely affected by the genocide taking place right now in Africa. But, when the US humiliates some Iraqi prisoners, people are outraged and are calling for resignations at the highest levels of our government. And that’s a good sign for America. We’re held up to a higher standard and it’s something we should be proud of. Not the vile treatment, of course, but the world’s response. We’re in trouble when people stop caring about how we act as a nation.

I don’t know whether America is held to a higher standard I tend to the opinion that it isn’t but that this belief that it is is born out of the American Superiority Complex. I think America truly did change after 9/11 but rather than move on it fell back to the position it had in the Fifties and Sixties before Vietnam and Watergate. I think the Bush Administration imagines itself to be in some Manichaean conflict against evil and is itself incapable of doing wrong.

The beheading of Nick Berg was horrific and was condemned by people all round the world including those in the Middle East as were the actions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The torture of Iraqi prisoners though blamed upon a few bad apples does seem to have been if not directed from the top then at least permitted. The incidents of torture are not restricted to Iraq either but have been reported in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay the difference being is that we have photographic evidence of the abuse in this case. The outrage from the world is not for a single incident but for the US government policy, which has been exposed to be that of using any tactic to get the result wanted.

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More movie trailers: Incredible!

Pixar have released the trailer for their new animated feature The Incredibles. To be honest I didn’t like it as much as the teaser trailer, but then I was totally blown away by that.

The teaser was a beautiful masterpiece that could have stood alone as a short animated film. If Pixar are cunning they should submit it for the best short film at the Academy Awards as well as submitting the full movie for the Best Animated Feature award.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I saw this on Wednesday and loved it, the idosyncratic writing of Charlie Kaufman really gels with me. The film is a bizarre romantic comedy in many ways and Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet make a great couple in a difficult and turbulent relationship.

If only Carrey could make more films like this and Man on the Moon and I would be a very happy man.

The supporting cast were great as well particularly Elijah Wood who escapes from his hobbithood by playing a slightly creepy guy who is trying to seduce Clementine by using stuff from her memories that have been erased.

IMDb’s page for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Again questions are raised in my mind concerning memory and the importance of integrity of the memories in your head. Losing parts of your memory robs you of more than you might imagine. I think you lose a part of your personality with everything that is erased.

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Constantine teaser trailer

Just seen the teaser trailer for the new Keanu Reeves film Constantine based upon the comic Hellblazer published by DC. The trailer is available here at Straight to Hell.

Initially reaction is Constant-een (WTF I’ve always pronounced it Constant-I-ne) but then I got into it, I quite liked it.

But if I had seen it and not known what is was supposedly based on I would never have guessed it had any connection to Hellblazer.

Rachel Weisz’s character seems pregnant, is it with the Devil’s child I hope not. It’s becoming more like a remake of End of Days rather than an adaptation of Hellblazer.

IMDb’s page for Constantine.

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Ninja no Gaiden

I tried to buy Ninja Gaiden yesterday but I couldn’t because it doesn’t go on sale until Friday.

Arse, I felt like such a fool and the twelve year old kid that was serving behind the counter mocked me and my stupid twentysomething lack of knowledge of all things video gamey. That didn’t really happen it just flashed through my head at the time.

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Kikkoman

Crazy Nipponese Animation

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Clive Sinclair has no hair…

but he launched a generation of computer geeks in Britain. If you are in the mood for some reminiscence of simpler times where 48k of memory was ample why not check out Hey, hey, 16K.
[via]

Do we really miss the games such as Jet Set Willy and Dizzy where the trick was to manoeuvre with pixel-point precision in order to complete the game? Maybe not, they were fun at the time but having to complete the same movement but incrementally better the next time is just not fun anymore.

Having said that Chuckie Egg is still fucking fantastic and I still can be found playing using a Speccy emulator on my PC.

I’ll tell you what I do fucking miss the prices. Premium games such as Robocop or Operation wolf would be £9.99, but there was also a huge selection of budget games to be had for £1.99 or £2.99 many of them being completely new games and not just rereleases of older games. I used to have hundreds of games for my Spectrum but now my game collection for my PC and Xbox is barely in double figures and I probably spent far more money on them than I did for my entire Speccy collection.

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