I always wanted to know - what is Lorem Ipsum?

I am sure you at some point came across text 'Lorem Ipsum' many times when searching for web templates or blog themes. At first I thought that this was just random, but apparently not. Lorem Ipsum is a dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. It has been industry's standard dummy text since the 1500s - yes that long. It was 'invented' when an unknown printer scrambled text to make a type specimen book. Funny, that this scrambled text has survived not only five centuries, but also got into the today's electronic age and remains unchanged. It became popular in 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages. Recently popular with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Recent Quakes Definitely Doing Their Job - Relocating Cities & Shortening Earth's Days

That is all I need - a shorter day! Researchers at NASA calculated that the Chilean earthquake shortened Earth's days. It shortened by one-millionth of a second, still small but shorter. I think this is a second earthquake in a decade to result in a shorter day.

After the catastrophic 2010 Haiti earthquake at magnitude of 7.0 with 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater, a chain of other earthquakes surf through the Earth's crust. The second one to start was Chile with an 8.8 magnitude. If I correctly remember, then it was Japan, Turkey, Kosovo, Japan again. I probably missed some. This may be normal after after all, shake the world and it will move - like everything else.

Well, these earthquakes did shake the world enough to relocate cities in Chile. Researches found that cities and islands physically shifted west. From the satellite data, scientist at Ohio State University and University of Hawaii found that city of Concepcion moved about 3 meters to the west. When compared to Earth size it may not be big shift, but to me three meters is a lot. In addition, the Chile's capital Santiago moved only 30 centimeters. Buenos Aires in Argentina moved 2.5 cm.

Scientists say that this usually happens with earthquakes, but usually too small to notice. However, this time it was definitely noticed.

Just Spreading The Word - Earth Hour March 27, 2010

The Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) calling every individual, every business and every community throughout the world to turn off the lights. Earth Hour originally started in Sydney, Australia in 2007. About 2.2 million homes and businesses turned off lights for one hour to stand against climate change. In the following year the Earth hour yet to become a global moment, where 50 million across 35 nations started to participate. The following landmarks participated also: Sydney Harbor Bridge; The CN Tower in Toronto, Canada; The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco; and Rome's Colosseum. They all stood dark for one hour.

This year in 2010 the Earth Hour will take place Saturday March 27th at 8:30 pm, local time.

Bejeweled - Online Puzzle Game To Waste Your Time

This is how sometimes I waste my time. I love those games, and I could play them for hours, but not anymore. I don't even know why I am suggesting one here, but this can be a complete waste of time.

Simple Equation Editor - Converts Equations To Graphic Files

If you like equations and formulas like me you will enjoy this simple equation editor.

How To Use It?

Simply hover over Characters, Math or Symbol tab. Select any of the three, and move your mouse down to hover over individual Characters, Math items or Symbol items. Click.

Below you will see two windows. First one is the formula in text format. Second one is the formula in the graphical representation.

Note you can edit characters in the first window by changing them to numbers if desired, or words. Characters which you have on the key board like =, +, (, ) etc. signs can be just typed normally from your key board. For some reason I couldn't locate the x (times) symbol and percent (%) symbol, so if you figure out how to get it please let me know.

Once your equation is completed, simply click on the second window with the nice formula, and it will prompt you to save the file in PNG format.

Then you can use it any way you want to. Have fun!

Let's Talk About Snails & Snakes

Snails yes, snakes no. I am petrified when comes to snakes; spiders and dogs too but that is a different story for another rainy day. I was reading something about snails and let me share this with you. There are more than 80,000 different species of snails, yes 80,000 that is darn a lot. I think I probably seen 20 the most including the one I ate. They are widely distributed on land, in the sea and in the fresh water. Land snails have two pairs of tentacles where their set of eyes reside on the lower set. Water snails have only one pair of tentacles, with eyes at the base.

Now my favorite subject - the snakes. What can I say about the snakes? They hatch from eggs - and no they are not related to the chicken. However, there are some species of snakes that do give birth to live young snakes.

What is a Berry? - Blueberry, Raspberry, Cranberry, Tomato

Some fruit-full definition here today. A berry defined in botany (a study of plants) is a fruit in which the plant's entire ovary wall ripens into edible outside layer or skin. The seeds are embedded in the flesh of the ovary. Interesting to know, and to point out, according to this definition, the tomato is a berry and the strawberry is not. Oranges and lemons are modified form of berry called a hesperidium. In every day language, a berry is referred to all small, edible fruit that has multiple seeds. Enjoy your berries every day because of their amazing nutritional value.


OTHER READING SOURCES:

The Promise of the Solar Power

This is going to be a short post. I know that solar power is something that is used to generate electricity - its clean and green.

But then why do we have to abuse everything? Just look at the photo in the linked article. What is wrong with this picture? When we are out in the woods, we should be enjoying the woods and nature, and not playing video games - yeah that is the promise of the solar power.  You can access this article here - Highlights - A new twist on solar cells. (Note: link is invalid, article removed)

We shouldn't promote such things to our children.