I'm probably the only person in the world who both cares and needs Jason's coverage of the Mythbusters plane/conveyor belt experiment. My hotel here in Aktau doesn't get the Discovery channel, so I actually sat around reloading Jason's live coverage of the show, before going to breakfast (I'm 12 hours ahead... you are all way behind). I'm glad to see that some esoteric engineering details didn't get in the way of the physically correct answer to the question, which is that the plane should (and did) take off.

Have successfully relocated to Aktau. Excellent view of the Caspian and the Mig-On-A-Stick. Pics and commentary to come.

12:37 MST I'm in the Albuquerque airport, enjoying their complimentary wireless (fu, t-mobile). I checked two bags, one of which is a massive equipment case that was considerably over-weight. But because of my uber-status on Delta, they didn't charge me for it. They did, however, launch into a conversation about an impending bowling convention in the Albuquerque area. Apparently this happens every year, and goes on for about a month. During this time, they have massive numbers of people with over-limit baggage, trying to bring five or six bowling balls with them in addition to their normal luggage. Also, there is some sort of hazardous compound used in bowling-ball cleaner that they confiscate by the liter during the convention season.

18:31 EST (16:31 MST) I'm in Cincinnati, eating a turkey club at a restaurant called "Max & Erma's Bar." Due to some serious tailwind, my flight got in 35 minutes early. As a result, I've got a longer layover than I anticipated, so I payed t-mobile for a damn day pass at their non-complimentary wifi hotspot here. And I opted for the sit-down meal, which is always nice. Because... ya know... I'm not spending enough time sitting today. The next flight is the big one, at almost 9 hours. Set phasers on Ambien and prepare for snoring.

10:43 CET (02:43 MST) Frankfurt is a confusing airport. I have a 3 hour layover. Even though t-mobile has their "hot spot" service here, it doesn't seem to be compatible with the thing I bought back in Cincinnati. When I try to log in, it tells me "There is a general technical problem." Awesome. I'll post this when I get to my hotel tomorrow. The longest flight is behind me, which is good. The in-flight movies were Balls of Fury and Stardust, which were good enough that I stayed awake for them. Lots of fun turbulence once we got over the European mainland. Next up is the 7 hour flight to Almaty, the last flight of this series. I'll arrive at approximately 00:30 local time, which means that January 26th is sort of non-existant for me. The entire day in local time was spent on planes and in airports.

02:31 ??? (14:48 MST) Have arrived in Almaty to a thick fog and -20°C temperature. I don't understand how you can have fog at a temperature so far below zero, but that's what's here. I slept for most of the flight from Germany and am now wide awake at 2:30 local time. Tomorrow (er... today) I get the day off in an attempt to acclimatize to the 12 hour time difference. Ran into the IAEA delegation at the airport, but they are staying at a different hotel and traveling to Aktau tomorrow, so I won't see them again until Monday.

Do you know the aspect ratio of the flag of the United States? No? Care to guess?

I'll bet you didn't guess 10:19, which is the correct answer. This is not surprising, since this shape is only shared by three other countries¹. Can you guess which they are? Probably not, since the correct answer here is Liberia, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia.

Most countries use either a 2:3 or 1:2 aspect ratio (86 and 51 countries, respectively). I refer to this latter set of countries as the "wide screen" set, because 1:2 is almost the widest flag shape seen in the world today (see below for the two exceptions). The third most popular aspect ration is 3:5, which is used by 18 countries, and falls nicely between 1:2 and 2:3 in its widescreen-ness. Coming between 3:5 and 2:3 is 5:8, which is shared by 7 countries. With these groupings out of the way, the remaining flags of the world are all of rather odd shapes (granted they're all² right rhomboids... but if there is a word similar to oblateness or eccentricity for rectangles, I don't know what it is).

We've already covered the 10:19 set, which is the next most popular shape with 4 countries participating, and is almost as wide as the widescreen set.

So now let's take a look at those countries that really wanted to break the mold and have a flag of a really weird shape—ostensibly for the purposes of making an accurate depiction of the flag in ASCII art require a really really big canvas. First, the ultra-widescreeners:

Rwanda comes in second place with a 6:13 aspect ratio. The big winner is Qatar, with a 11:28 aspect ratio. I mean look at this thing—it's more of a banner than a flag.

At the other end of the spectrum are the squares and square wannabes. Switzerland comes in with 1:1, the only square flag. Belgium is close, with a 13:15 aspect ratio. Third place goes to Denmark at 28:37.

Papua New Guinea, at 3:4, has the distinction of being the only country with a flag that will perfectly fill up a standard-definition television screen without distortion or letterboxing. Note that there are no 9:16 flags, so all of you high-def early adopters will just have to deal with letter boxes and side bars when you buy your Blu-ray copy of "Flags Gone Wild: Too Hot for TV."

Israel and Norway share an aspect ratio of 8:11, and very little else. Albania and Iceland share 5:7. Andorra, Brazil, and Japan share 7:10. Djibouti, Iran, and Mexico share 4:7.

Here are some more countries with their own special aspect ratios: Estonia with the convenient 7:11, Finland with 11:18, Myanmar with 5:9.

Finally, my favorite: El Salvador. Why is it my favorite? Because they really dare to be different. Not only do they have a unique aspect ratio, but they aren't afraid to pick one that is really really weird. Notice that all of the countries mentioned so far (and that's all of the countries except two) have an aspect ratio that can be represented as a ratio of two small numbers. I know Denmark is a bit of an outlier, but that's just how they roll. Anyway, back to El Salvador. Here, they feel very strongly about their 189:335 flag aspect ratio. Yowzer. It's only slightly wider screen than 4:7... but that would fail to convey the complexity and uniqueness of the El Salvadorian people, which is really the sort of thing the aspect ratio of one's flag should denote. Just look at this bad boy.

I'd suggest a flag that had a ratio of γ:π or something, but being a ratio of transcendental numbers, this flag would be impossible to accurately manufacture.

The only country I haven't touched on here is Nepal, largely because they cheated and don't have a rectangular flag at all. It's sort of two triangles that overlap a bit. It's the only country that has a non-rectangular flag, and the only flag that is taller than it is wide (take that, Switzerland).

How do you suppose countries come up with the aspect ratio for their flag?

1: For the purposes of this examination, I am only looking at countries that are currently recognized as independent by the UN.

2: Not really. See Nepal.

See also: The Humans are Dead

This kid will be a millionaire.

Watch the videos, in order. They get progressively more awesome; the last one blows my mind. But don't just skip to the last one; watch all three.

Sunshine was released on Blu-ray yesterday. Netflix conveniently shipped it such that it would arrive yesterday, and I watched it last night. It is great. The third act is a little weak, and the disc interface is a lot less cutting-edge than it had been hyped up to be, but these things don't matter. The visuals are just incredible as are the sound and score. Despite its total lack of marketing and its meager release, I think this is destined to become a classic in the genre.

A big winter storm descended on Los Alamos this morning. I had to turn on the 4WD on my way to work to prevent mad fishtailing. Unfortunately, I got stuck behind a liquid nitrogen tanker truck going up the steep hill on Pajarito Road. This is a one mile stretch of significant grade, and the tanker was doing approximately 1 mile per hour. I know this, because it took an hour to get up that hill. Fun times.

Nina calls to report that this morning, at a gas station, a woman drove off with the pump handle still in her car, stopped when she noticed it, then just kept going. Then, a guy with a PBR in his hand lit up a cigarette while waiting for his tank to fill. Sweet.

Update: it snowed so much they let us out of work at 2! woo

I drove up into the forest this morning to do some hiking. The temperatures were low, so the dirt roads were frozen solid but I managed to get pretty far out into the sticks before I started hiking. While I was out there, the temperature rose a lot and the roads turned into a real mudslide. Coming home, I found myself in the position of being unable to get my truck safely up a steep section of mud that had been a good solid road on the way in. I had to take an alternative route out. Unfortunately, the only other road that didn't seem dangerous at the time went through the Santa Clara Indian Reservation.

At the reservation border, there was an open gate with a sign which said that there was no trespassing, but that motor vehicle traffic was allowed (on established roads only). It wasn't clear if this meant it was OK for me to drive through, or not... but the alternative seemed unsafe and I only needed to traverse a short stretch of road on pueblo property, so I went ahead with it.

I got pulled over by a reservation cop about 100' after getting onto the main road. I explained why I was there and it was clear that he could care less. He gave me a $300 ticket for trespassing. WTF. I asked the guy why they didn't close the gate or make it clear on the sign that only pueblo members could drive on this road without getting a huge fine, to which I got the "FU whitey" smile.

I somehow never got around to offloading the tracklog from Rainier out of my GPSr. Anyway, I finally did so last week. I didn't have good topographic data for Washington to visualize it with, but Bob does. Here's the result:

click to embiggen

That big blob at Camp Muir is the result of 2 days spent waiting for a storm to pass, and goofing off.

Now I realize that booking travel to Almaty, Kazakhstan might not be super easy... it isn't exactly serviced by every airline out there. But damn. Lab travel just set me up with a flight that arrives in Almaty at 1:30AM on the day my business there begins, and leaves at 4:05AM the day after the work is complete. This is going to rock...

Note: this is probably actually my fault, as I specified that I would prefer a Delta flight at any time over any other airline. And why did I set myself up for this miserable itinerary? Because one trip to Kazakhstan is enough miles for a free trip to Europe later—a trip for which I will arrive at a decent hour and won't have to do work. Boo-ya.

PS: 6 hour 15 minute layover in Frankfurt. Aw yeah.