Archive for May 6th, 2008
For a long time now, unbeknownst to all but a few select friends, I have been planning a project of such pure, unfiltered awesomeness that it will surely melt your brain were you to even consider it. This is what I will hereon refer to as “Project Ladybird”. There are four stages to Project Ladybird:
- Extract a working RFID chip from an ordinary London Oyster travel card
- Define the limits of the attached aerial
- TOP SECRET
- Profit!
My first attempt to extract the RFID chip from an Oyster card ended in failure - I sliced and diced but could not find that darn chip. My next move would be to dissolve the plastic of the oyster card with nail polish remover to reveal the chip. Somewhat serendipidously, yesterday BoingBoing featured a man called Chris Woebken who had done just that, and was now in possession of a neat-o naked, working, Oyster chip.
He used industrial-strength acetone, though, so one quick trip to the builders’ supplies in Soho and I was ready!
I left the mix for an hour or two, kind of got caught up playing Medal of Honour 4, and when I returned, the Oyster card had dissolved into a satisfyingly goopy mess. Project Ladybird was go!
In fact, the card had dissolved a little too satisfyingly, and the aerial (typically embedded in a loop around the edge of the card) was now detached. Still, I had myself a (hopefully working) chip!
On closer inspection of Chris Woebken’s video though, a circuit diagram flashes for a few seconds. I think Chris likewise found himself in possession of a helpless chip, and attached a variety of different aerials himself. I’m going to try out the raw chip tomorrow, but if it doesn’t work, I’d appreciate some tips on how best to add an aerial…
NEW: See the video!
May 6th, 2008
Some readers may recall that a while ago I received a much-celebrated ant farm for my birthday. Well, now the English weather has warmed up a bit, the ground is crawling with little ants, and I decided it was time to capture some guests. Having given up on my crude jam-filled ant trap (by now, a science experiment in itself), I resorted to a jar and a stick. After a bit of poking around the dirt I had ten fine ant specimens - I mean, guests, in a jar. I put them in the fridge to make them sleepy and then shook them into my farm.
At first the ants huddled in a corner, so I assumed they were a little freaked and I put them in a dark cupboard to adjust to their new blue-gel wonderland. When I came back, four ants were crawling on the ceiling of the ant farm, and the rest - were nowhere to be seen! In less than two hours, over half my ants had squeezed through the pre-drilled air holes to freedom. Apparently, when they were huddled up, the mischevious little things were already planning a jailbreak.
So I taped up the air holes and put them back. I estimate there’s about 60 cubic centimetres of air in the farm, which should be enough to keep them going for a while.
After that I captured some more ants (from the same spot, naturally) and added them to my little insect kingdom. I didn’t bother chilling them this time, and I regretted that decision. The expression ‘herding cats’ is a misnomer, let me tell you. Once again I put my guests into storage to get settled in. When I came back, I discovered this:
My captive ants were systematically tearing away the rubber seal of the lid!! I had to admire the persistence and problem-solving abilities of the little buggers. To express this admiration, I taped up the entire lid to make sure this escape attempt was doomed. Even now, the ants have rejected my helpful starter tunnels and have made no attempt at building a hive, instead putting all their efforts into escape. I’m now keeping a close eye on my guests, and will report their future exploits.
May 6th, 2008
I was browsing idly through the lonely hearts column on my daily commute yesterday, when I stumbled across an acronym I’d never seen before: OHAC. One Hot Ass Chick? Over the Hill And Crumbling? Obama, Hillary and Colbert? Once at work, a quick Google search revealed all: Own House And Car. Damn, I thought, now that’s materialistic.
This made me think, what do women really want? When faced with writing up an order in twenty words, what do they ask for? Love? Companionship? A man with his own house and car? And similarly, do men in the classified ads really fit the stereotype of ageing divorcee looking for a trophy girlfriend to spend their money on? There’s only one way to find out - with MATHS!
For this investigation my source material was a copy of the London Paper, mostly because it’s free and gets handed to me by a nice man outside Piccadilly Tube station. I drew up a score sheet that awarded a point every time a classified ad mentioned a key word or phrase. The categories are:
- Age
- Looks
- Wealth
- Personality
- Race
- Religion
- Location
- Family
So asking for a man “35-40″ will score one point. Asking for a women who is “fun-loving, charismatic and full of life” will score three points. “OHAC” scores a point for Wealth, as does asking for a “professional”. One hour of counting later, and the results are in.
I dropped religion, location and family from the final analysis because only very few people scored points in these categories. If I had a bigger sample, I might include them. There were 38 ads from women, and 32 ads from men. Overall, women were pretty verbose, scoring 126 points in total. Men tended to be more succinct, scoring only 60 points - less than half as much. Guess they’re not too fussy. Without further ado, here is the breakdown. The percentages refer to how much of the total demands an individual category constituted.
Women
Looks 15%
Age 19%
Wealth 13%
Personality 43%
Race 10%
Men
Looks 28%
Age 18%
Wealth 2%
Personality 45%
Race 7%
Great Scott! It appears that men have trumped women in seeking a partner with a personality (well, OK, the margin is probably insignificant). Men have also been more concerned with looks than the women - even when you group ‘race’ and ‘looks’ (which I felt maybe I should have done), men asked for it 35% of the time where as women only 25%. The biggest discrepancy between the two? Women said they wanted someone wealthy 13% of the time - while only one man in the 32 sampled thought it important enough to mention. Concrete, indisputable evidence that all women are gold-digging hootchies! Seriously though - this would be a fun project to apply in different countries, just to see if there were any differences. I’m sure some clever reader out there could rig together a piece of code that would do it automatically.
My next piece of classified ads stats? I’m going to look at how people describe themselves, and see if the sexes have really cottoned on to what eachother want.
May 6th, 2008