Binary… its used by computers… for computers… its simple. Millions of billions of trillions of lines of 1’s and 0’s make up everything we know of about computers, and everything computer related. The behind the scenes stuff - which makes everything tick. Its all the code which a computer can read to generate everything so we understand it… because, well, humans can’t really understand it for obvious reasons - the title for one would have most if not all of you baffled. But! Obviously if your computer ever fails and you still need your important emails delivered - there’s always an alternative. Yes. You could encode it yourself into binary, and pour all the 1’s and 0’s down into your phone line to be sent to your recipient. Its true - I’m calling it the SEI - the Self Encoding Initative, where we reduce power usage by self encoding emails - and thus - no use to use up electricity powering the PC as you don’t need it.

It’s all pretty simple, all you have to do is generate the polynomial as X^4 + X + 1 and then encode the bits 1001001101. Or atleast that is what we were asked to do ‘on the fly’ in our Midterm Networking exam the other day… nice…

Anyways! to you and me the title in other letters means ‘1/2′ indicating that tonight, we are exactly half way through our time here in America - which is pretty weird! It doesn’t feel that long we’ve been here, but, there’s plenty more to do in the coming couple of months!

Friday night Myles’ uncle who lives in South Carolina took us to the Motor Speedway track here in Charlotte to watch a NASCAR race! The race started at 8pm and so was at night which in a way was pretty cool, however as we found out later may not have been the best as it got very cold with the race not ending to around midnight.

 Before the race started we had to go buy ear plugs from a vendor outside the stadium - I would find out the nessacity later when 40+ cars with beefed up engines roar past 300 times - it becomes very noisy, unbearable without any ear protection. Outside seemed a hive of activity in itself, with loads of golf cars racing each other and driving around in groups. There was also the team trailers selling official merchandise along side sponors and thier own adverts and competitions. Of course there was also TV-ness, with a live TV soundstage outside, and a TV-Media village made up of loads of satelitte trucks and trailers, serving to broadcast the race to TV, as well as being a hub for all things media related - rightly called the NASCAR Technology Center.

Sorry if some of the photos are blurred. With it being night time, and the speed of the cars it was difficult to get good photos.

Anyways, onto the race itself, which was great, we had pretty good seats, close to the track, just past the corner of turn 4, allowing us to clearly see the pit lane aswell as being abloe to see the start / finish line and the majority of the track. Along with a ton of crashes, a few of which happened just in front of us, and a couple I cought on camera, the cars were going so fast the majority of the time taking photos was a challenge! I resorted to video for the majority of the race, which you can see a short 3min video at the bottom of this blog post.

All in all it was a great night, seeing the race was great, and some of thier equipment, such as after a crash having 2 trucks with jets which sounded like an airliner landing!, which blew all the debris off of the track, as well as the crashes of course! And how a guy went from 42nd place - to 2nd!

Well, the second day we woke up at 8am for an early 9am start to make sure we didn’t miss out on anything! To start with, we headed across the street to the Old Post Office, now used as a food court where once again we got security scanned…. Once in though, we headed to the far side to get to an elevator to get us up into the bell tower so we could overlook the city in all its glory and get some shots looking out over the cityscape.

After that we started wondering around much of the same areas as the day before. The weather was much better today, bright blue skies and by mid afternoon turned to be pretty hot indeed, well into the high 20’s, especially with walking around non-stop all day. Aswell as re-visiting the Washington Monument, White House and WW2 Monument, we also saw the Jefferson Memorial, which was very grand and impressive. Following on from that and after seeing several US Government Helicopters flying very low past, we decided to wonder across the state line in Virginia to have a peak at the Pentagon. However, while ripping my jacket on a barrier we ended up turning back after we read signs which prohibited photography… and… with how the US is with security, especially with it being the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, we thought we would be better off if we headed back!

By this time it was getting pretty late in the afternoon, so, along with getting something to eat and heading for another look at the White House to see George, and more importantly to get some better photos than the previous day, we then headed back to the hotel to sort through the photos again. By this time I was fast approaching the 600 barrier of photos for both days so far. That even we headed across the street outside our hotel to the ESPN Zone. Now, as I’m obsessed it would seem by all this media related, this was my media fix for the trip. Along with a shop where I got a couple goodies, it was mainly a sports bar with 700+ screens! and arcades on the bottom floor, all by ESPN, Disney’s Sports Channel.

Anyway, after that we had a quick wonder around to see if we could get a few pics of DC at night, which we didn’t really, and then headed back to the hotel room yet again, for yet another early wake up call Monday morning at, well, this time it was about 8.30am but we got out around 9 or so, so all was good. Monday was never going to a be a full day as we had to be back to the hotel around 5pm to get the coach back, and anyway, it was mainly a day to get souveniers and such like. It would seem DC relies alot on mobile vans to sell souvieners by the roadside, so our plan was to wonder around them and buy some stuff… until something happened!

You see, the North Koreans decided that on that same day they were going to go crazy and test out one of thier nukes… making George Bush a very busy man and having to cancel his tea party with Tony. Either way, while wondering towards the White House (which happens to be where alot of the souviener vans are located) after taking some pics of the FBI building, we notice the road blocked off… so we waited for… well.. under a minute… until we noticed a motorcade or cars giving it all they’ve got to get to the fastest speed possible while turning out of the road where the White House is. Yes, I am talking about President Bush’s motorcade! Along with several police cars, bikes and a crazy amount of secret service (I think - Myles will correct me if I’m wrong on that) vehicles such as 4×4’s, vans and an ambulance were two limos! I got a few pics which are below to show you, a few of which have a few guys staring at me - probably thinking - if you take a pic we’ll kill you… while a guy in the back of one has a sniper-type gun…

After that excitement was over, we started getting bits and bobs to buy to take back, and sooner rather than later after wondering around them all, getting something to eat it seemed as though the time had flown by and we headed back to the hotel where we waited… sooner or later the coach arrived, we got on, we traveled… watched a movie… and a agonising 8 hours later we arrived back in Charlotte at around 1am.

So that was the trip. A few pics are below, but alot more are in the gallery, such as pics from the Mall area, Capitol Hill, the Monument, WW2 Memorial, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the White House and alot of oyther places! Check them out by clicking the piccie below.

In a lecture in Networking… granted the teacher is Chinese or something and seems to struggle with English in a sense.. but… Im pretty sure if there was such a thing as one-sided paper, it would be a world-wide thing? Not just in China?

What I’m getting at here is that our teacher seems to believe there is such a thing as one-sided paper. Now. How would this work? Surely everything in existance has to have more than one side to have a physical state? Lets work this out… if there was only one side… there would have to be a void in time and space on the other side, as there would be nothing there… but… because there isn’t another side, there isn’t even another side for the void to exist and so would create some sort of paradox in the space time continum?

What if you somehow worked out how to move the paper… obviously you couldn’t pick it up as there is no sides to hold onto… but lets say you managed to move it - What would happen to everything behind it? Would everything disolve and fall through a crack in time or something? As nothing can survive in pure nothing-ness - what even is pure nothing? Maybe the space between 2 parallel worlds? As stated on Dr Who, there is absolutely nothing inbetween parallel universes… not light, no time, no gravity, no nothing - just -nothing-.

As you can tell I’m pretty darn confused. If someone can work out a plausable way as to how one-sided paper could exist in physical form I would like to hear it…

Hey everyone, I’m back from the Fall Break trip to Washington DC with the International Club here at UNCC. Got back on Tuesday morning my time at the crazy hour of 1am or so after a 8 hour coach journey! If we had driven for that long in the UK we would have driven off of a cliff or something… well… probably…

 Anyway, thats all a bit ahead of myself, we left Friday afternoon at 3pm (oops… 4.15pm as our driver was incapable of telling the time). Either way, off we left stopping off along the way in a couple places either for food or just a toilet break and to stretch our legs. Along with a couple of movies to try to help pass the time and listening to music and such, after a while we arrived at around midnight / 1am or so - I can’t exactly remember when - but - it was late! Either way, after after getting into our room and settling down, I finally got some sleep a couple hours later… ready for the start to exploring DC at 9.30am when we had to meet everyone else for a little orientation on what we should expect and just a little feel for the place.

The first day was pretty miserable weather… kinda damp (it had been raining the night before), overcast and pretty windy and cold! Either way we left the main group when we all went our seperate ways in our own mini friend groups I guess you could call them… we started off taking a quick peek in the Natural History Museum, but after 30mins or so and being security checked we left to explore DC itself. We wondered around the city’s Mall area, which is basically a very long strip of a grassy park area in the central area, with the Washington Monument in the middle, Capitol Hill at one end, and the Lincoln Memorial at the other. The White House leads off in another direction from the Washington Monument at another right angle…

I’m sure you all like my Rory Blyth style (er…kinda) piccie above showing you where everything is located! Its a work of art…

Anyway, all that day we wondered round taking photos of this and that, we wondered around looking at all the major areas, Capitol Hill, Washinton Monument, The White House, The Lincoln Memorial and all the other memorials nearby such as for WW2, Vietnam and such like. It was all pretty good, and I took alot of pics - around about 250 on the first day! After looking at all of that we strolled back to the hotel to meet up with the entire group for around 5pm to go to Georgetown, a suburb of the city about 20mins or so drive away.

Now, this town was pretty amazing. It was an old street, built a couple hundred years ago and so had a very England feel to it. As a matter of fact, if the cars were on the other side of the road it would pretty much be England! It even had several English shops and the like, a very nice place with alot of bars and resturants. For all of you in the know, quite a few movies were shot there (I only found out afterwards!) but for example, the scene from True Lies where Arnie is in the bathroom fighting the terrorisrts and then follows one out on a horse while the terrorist is on a motorbike was all shot there down that street and in the shopping mall! Also Will Smith’s house in Enemy of the State was also somewhere in the area. Apparently a whole host of other films have used it as a location before too! Either way… we stayed there for a few hours and got something to eat in one of the resturants, and then made our way back to the coach to go back to the hotel at 10pm or so just to rest and look at all our photos - ready for another early start the following day!

I can see this blog post lasting a while, so, its gonna be a two parter, I’ll post the second part of the trip after I write it! Which will hopefully be later today or for tomorow. I’ll also get all the photos ready and uploaded in time for that blog post too… (Unless you’re reading this on Facebook, as there are some photos to look at already on my account on there of us generally being fools of ourselves)

Its October, and its still hot during the day! Seeing people walking around in shorts at this time of year does seem pretty weird. It does seem to be getting cooler in the evenings and overnight, and the humidity has now gone from the day, but other than that it seems just like a normal Torquay / UK summer day in mid- July or August with the bright blue skies!

Went down into Charlotte yesterday mainly really just to take some photos of the city itself. It was a beautiful day and so in that way it was perfect, check out the gallery for them.