That’s really the problem. Mashable does have a list of WolframAlpha easter eggs (also try entering ’hello world’) which are truly awesome from a pop-culture standpoint, but not really the computation knowledge that W|A is promising. It won’t answer ‘How many boroughs in new york city?’ or ‘teenage mothers in 2000′. A query of ‘population of West Germany in 1957′ returns nothing but a suggestion to retry ‘Germany in 1957′, to which it then ignores the year and provides current data for the nation. So maybe I went back in time to far: ‘population of Germany 1990′ provides a data point (79.4 million people) and plots it on a graph with data since 1970. What if I give it two data points, then, and ask the big calculator in the cloud to find the net change? Alas, querying ‘(population of Germany 2000) minus (population of Germany 1990)’ returns ‘(82.31 million people) Subtract[79.43 million people]‘, which is all too small of a step away from being what I would call ‘powerful computational knowledge’. Perhaps I didn’t use the correct syntax, but honestly, for this to work, I shouldn’t really need to bend my query to the esoteric whims of the Mathematica code. The correct syntax, by the way, is apparently ‘population germany 2000 – population germany 1990′, returning a useful answer of ’2.876 million people’.

So then I ask myself the question, “What would I want WolframAlpha to know?” The simple answer is ‘everything’, but that’s not fair. So below are a few questions I’d like to be able to ask a giant computer programmed by a genius. I welcome commenters to add the questions they’d really like to ask WolframAlpha, if it were everything we want it to be.

1 – Aggregates, like ‘How many cities are named Springfield?’ or ‘How many Main Streets in the USA?’
2 – Blue-sky sorts of questions, like ‘How much money would I need to start a new auto insurance company?’ or ‘How much fuel would a traditional rocket need to take a Voyager-sized satellite to the nearest neighboring star system?’
3 – Future events, like ‘What will be the next 10 years when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday?’ or ‘What is the current payoff date for the US National Debt?’

Okay, maybe that last one isn’t fair, either. but now I put it to you: What other questions would you like to ask WolframAlpha? Please add your comment.

I’ll probably stick with WordPress (though I need to upgrade to the latest version), but the template is just not meeting my needs. This being my final semester in my web design program, my final project is probably going to include putting together a new WordPress template. So I’ll probably use that experience (along with the Flash programming experience I’ll have by the end of the semester) to start from scratch.

If you have tried visiting this blog regularly and wonder why I don’t update more often, it’s because I’ve been posting links and notes over there. If you know me personally, become my friend on Facebook, and you’ll see a lot more activity there. If you don’t know me well enough to befriend me on Facebook (I try to keep it to actual acquaintances), here’s another option: I’m also becoming more active on Twitter, so follow me there if you like. While I haven’t touched FriendFeed, my sources tell me that you may be able to aggregate all the stuff that I post everywhere. While that’s a fairly scary thought, I don’t suppose I can stop you.

I went ahead and posted a Twitter widget here and a YouTube widget on my Video page (click the Video tab above). I don’t think anything else will be changing here before, say, May. But who knows. You may want to keep your eyes open.

On the other hand, robotic dinosaurs are always cool.

Freaky, yeah, I know.  Well, we were watching that on The Soup a few nights ago, and Jessie didn’t get to see it, she just heard the weirdness from her vantage point in the other room. She asked what it was, and I told her: “It’s some freaky, freaky dog. At least I think it’s a dog.”

Well, last night they replayed that episode, and baby Joshua and I were playin gon the living room floor, and his mom was on the sofa. When the dog came on, Josh looked at the TV and then started freaking out like he was scared of it (not that I can blame him), so scared that when I turned him around to face me instead of the TV he shrieked when he saw me, and it took probably 5 minutes to calm him down. The dog came back on the TV a few minutes later, so we had to turn it off and soothe the baby all over again. Poor guy! This is the first time he’s ever acted frightened of something other than just his parents leaving the room, so it was a new experience for us.

Well, Jessie & I were debating whether it was the noise or the image of the dog that scared Josh so much, so Jessie looked it up on YouTube when Josh was not able to see the screen. Guess what? He got scared again, and his Mommy actually had to change his diaper after that!

So many of my childhood movies were viewed on VHS. Playing them over and over and over helped me and my brother bond with each other, and there are many film quotes that only have special meaning to us and those like us. But now it’s the end of an era, and I can mark my generation by the fact that my baptism was not recorded on video, but my brother’s was. Conversely, my wedding tape is on VHS, but my brother’s is on DVD.

So let’s open up the floor: What memories (fond or otherwise) do you have of VHS?

Hue Test Results:

Based on your information, below is how your score compares to those of others with similar demographic information.

• Your score: 0
• Gender: Male
• Age range: 30-39
• Best score for your gender and age range: 0
• Highest score for your gender and age range: 1464

Subitization Test Results:

Oh, and Cade brought up the Sarah Palin Family Name Generator. Here’s my name:

Dones, if you were born to Sarah Palin, your name would be:
Stick Freedom Palin

Who knows, Stick Freedom Palin you just might be president one day!

Emotiv Systems out of San Francisco has been developing a human-machine interface called the EPOC that enables the user to command a computer simply with thought power. This is potentially going to be the replacement for keyboard & mouse or an xbox controller that my children or grandchildren will grow up with.  It’s actually here now, though, as they’re about to start selling these little headsets for $300 a pop, including a game and some utility software.

What prompted me to blog (aside from just the coolness of all that) is the way IGN described the experience as what ‘using the Force’ would feel like.  You visualize a boulder lifting into midair, and an onscreen boulder rises in response. It also senses your moods and your facial expressions, and it could probably tell you what you’d like for dinner.

In purchasing the headgear* you get a chat client, a game, and a way to interact with your music & photos based on your mood. Not sure how all that will work, but you also get a little utility that lets you interface the EPOC with regular PC games & software. What brings this all together is that The Force Unleashed is a soon-to-be-released Jedi game that lets you wreak havoc as a Force-wielding badass.  Imagine actually using your mind to play that game, and bring down a Star Destroyer with your brain! Couple this with a hacked Wimote and you’re a Jedi in your own mind! Of course, I already am, but now I could prove it.

For video click here

For IGN article click here

For Emotiv Systems focus your thoughts on this text

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*I’ll put my skeptical hat on now and ask: Does it seem weird that you don’t have to shave your head for this interface to pick up your brain waves? What if all this is accomplished with a camera, a motion sensor, and clever programming? Any neuroscientists out there who’d like to share their thoughts?