Specifically in honor of Math Monday:

Still Alive: The Laser Version – Someone realized that their shape-cutting laser made musical sounds, and so they programmed it to play Still Alive. Wouldn’t you?

Ten Coolest Sidekicks from SciFi/Fantasy – Lots of great names on this list, although the entire crew of the Serenity should probably be somewhere

Musical Tesla Coils – Electricity, science, and music. Yeah, this is cool!

Ant Spiral of Death – You can confuse ants so that they walk in circles until they drop dead. Crazy! I wish it kept them out of my kitchen.

Frustro – an MC Escher-esque font, I’m sure I can find a use for this

Game of Thrones Catch-Up – Need to review before the next season, or watch just enough to join the fun? Check this video out!

Anyway (it’s Friday, I ramble), the newest Symphony of Science is all about dinosaurs! Scientists, talking about dinosaurs, autotuned, and put to music. I LOVE it!

Here is your fun thing for Friday. The World of the Dinosaurs

Thanks, Sara, for the Bingo card picture!

Here are the rules!

This is a full board bingo game. You have to fill every square to win. Unless specifically stated, you cannot use your own party or any other known game players to fill squares. Things have to be spotted or overheard of other PAX going people. Game starts when PAX starts Friday morning and ends either when someone wins or after the Omegathon with no winner. Here is our list of items to put on the bingo boards. There are more than one board’s worth of items so we should all have different boards. Make the middle slot on your board “See Gabe and Tycho” and then use whatever random choice skills you have to make the boards. We use excel.

You think I’m crazy, right? Trust me, I totally had the same reaction when I started putting this post together. Why would anyone want to dress like Princess Peach? I couldn’t leave her out, though – she’s such an iconic character to geek girls everywhere. However, that over-the-top pink cupcake dress is not really my idea of a fun night out.

Don’t worry though. I’ve got this. I have pulled apart the little details of that cotton-candy couture that you can actually fit into some of your outfits everyday. Yes, you can dress like Princess Peach every day without turning into a bubblegum explosion.

Fashion tips: Don’t wear all these ideas together at once. That’s where clothes turns into costume. If you’re looking for cosplay, great! I’ve included an outfit that can work for that also, made from everyday pieces.

All right, let’s get inspired!

Pink and Girly

Wait, I said no pink, didn’t I? Well, not exactly. One of the biggest inspirations you can take away from Peach is her color palette, however monochrome. Pink is scary, I know, but don’t worry. Wear one bright pink piece (I recommend a top) with simple neutrals.

Simple Tops with Sleeve Detail

Check out those puff sleeves. This girl is famous for them, right? However, puffy sleeves can quickly turn into a faux pas. Tone it down a little bit by finding a simple solid colored top with an accentuate sleeve. Big shoulders can draw the eye to your face, so they are actually great.

Accentuated Waist, Full Skirt

This is my favorite style, and my favorite part of Peach’s ensemble. She’s got that itty-bitty waist, and then poof – huge skirt. It looks good on almost everyone, and here are a few dresses that have that bit of flounce. They all have conservative tops because Peach isn’t super showy.

Make-up and Jewels

Oh Peach’s jewellery is so important. She’s known for those huge turquoise earring and a brooch complimented by a tiny crown that sits atop her head. Wear make-up that accentuates  eyes and a light pink lipstick.

Full Outfit 1: Everyday

Let’s break this outfit down. There’s a pop of pink – a pale, baby pink in this situation – in the top and the shoes. The shirt also has puffy sleeves and a romantic neckline. The skirt is full with an accentuated waist. The gold headband pulls a little bit of Peach’s princess accessorizing into the outfit. The whole thing pulls from Peach’s style, without screaming costume.

Full Outfit 2: Borderline Cosplay

Though speaking of costume, here’s where it gets fun. Now, I’m not talking full out cosplay here. If you’re going to do that, I suggest sewing (or finding a friend! Rosalind made me an awesome Sleeping Beauty costume!) your own so it’s canon. But this is an example of what you can do with items you might find in your local thrift store.

Daisy’s Creations

What do you make?

I dedicate much of my time to making jewellery although I am a craftlady of many sorts.

Who are you and/or how did you get started?

My name is Daisy; I am a 22-year-old artist living in Wiltshire, UK.

I started my business just as I was finishing my degree last year; I found my self with lots of spare time and no job prospects to speak of! Having been predominantly a painter/illustrator it felt nice to be working in a new three-dimensional medium for a change. Then people actually started buying my jewellery, which I must admit was quite surprising to me at first, but now it just feels great to know my customers are willing for fork out for my handmade creations!

What makes your items great for geeks and what do you geek out about?

I make plenty of geeky things and always have! The N64 Controller Brooches are one of my oldest items and have evolved considerably over the time I have been trading. I was inspired to make them because of all the Zelda I’d been playing on my N64! I am also greatly intrigued by space and all sciences, hence the whole section of my shop dedicated to this topic. The Solar System Necklaces and Bracelets have been by far my most popular item to date suggesting that there is many more space geeks out there just like me!

So, there you have it, planets and game controllers in jewelry form so you can accessorize your science … even more than you usually do!

Basic Gameplay

Unlike so many of the games out there these days, Killer Bunnies has one win condition. You need to be holding the correct carrot at the end of the game. In addition, you must have at least one bunny in your possession. This is much harder than it sounds, trust me.

During the game, your goal is to acquire many carrots, to improve your chances of holding the right one. Each time you get a carrot card, you can pick which carrot you want. They have really interesting portraits and personalities. When I played, I won with one named Presto, a magician carrot. At the end of the game, a random carrot is drawn, and the player possessing this carrot is the winner.

Weapons cards

In addition, your goal is to keep at least one of your bunnies alive while destroying everyone else’s bunnies. After all, you must have a bunny to win. At the end of the game, any player who holds carrots but no bunnies must give their carrots away, which is an awful way to lose.

Starter and Boosters

When I played Killer Bunnies, we only played with the original game, which is the blue starter pack. However, there is so much more to the game that I would love to try out some time. There are ten colorful booster packs for the quest game, which is the original.Some of them are Twilight White Booster and Chocolate Booster. These can only be good.

In addition, there are other games, which I haven’t tried. There is the Conquest series of cards, Odyssey, and Jupiter. Check out the Killer Bunnies website for more information, and some trivia!

Sounds Like Fun

It is a lot of fun, but trust me when I say this game isn’t for everyone. If you are super morally opposed to bunnies killing one another, bunnies spontaneously dying, or any other violent actions that could happen to or at the hands of bunnies, you probably shouldn’t play.

On a more serious note, if you don’t like games where you don’t have full control over your win, this is another to avoid. I could definitely understand the frustration involved when a player who did terribly all game wins because he inherited carrots at the end, when you worked your butt off collecting carrots and protecting your bunnies.

If neither of those conditions applies, I thought this game was hilariously amusing. Play it with a big group of friends. You’ll have a blast.

The basics of knot theory mostly involve things like naming knots, determining how many different knots exist with a certain number of crossovers, and finding out why knots randomly occur in that piece of string you put down thirty seconds ago. What I really want to do today is just show you some of the cool knots that mathematicians have found. Just one more note about mathematical knots: they are always complete circles that cannot be undone versus knots we make that have two open ends. Mathematicians just connect those ends.

So, here are some of the knots I really like. They are labeled by the number of crossovers and then subscripted because as the number of crossovers gets higher, you can have different knots with the same number of crossovers. For example, there are 7 different knots with 7 crossovers (how cool is that!).

The trefoil knot – 3₁

Now this is a Girl Scout knot!

Figure 8 Knot, 4₁

This one is pretty common in Celtic designs, here you see three of them

Cinquefoil Knot, 51

A delicious version by Fadkins and Wikimedia Commons

The Miller Institute Knot 6₂

Named for the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at UC Berkeley

Septafoil Knot 7₁

So pretty!

Some of these are already used in Celtic knot jewelry if you are the type who like wear your math. Also, a circle to a knot theorist is an “unknot”, so use that in conversation the next time you get a chance!

Bad Romance: Women’s Suffrage – A parody video of the Lady Gaga song that also teaches you some women’s history

EaTheremin – this is a fork that plays music depending on what food it’s currently touching

Glowing Sushi – If you can get your hands on genetically modified, glowing zebrafish, which is safe to eat, then you can have some serious fun with your food

Living Electron Microscope Photos – Scientists managed to keep these ticks alive inside the chamber of a scanning electron microscope and got some awesome pictures and even video

Kermit, the Frog, on the Colbert Report – and he’s talking smack about Republicans!

Launch into Space Video – NASA has put together a great video of a shuttle launch from the view of the external cameras

Game Boy Music – no game required, this is an interesting use of a Game Boy

So, being the music geek I am, I was like, I bet I could also play the Star Wars main theme!

So, I did. Here’s how you do it. Get on over to Geeks Are Sexy, press play, make sure it loads, and then hit these number keys (the dashes indicate wait a moment)

9 – 5 – 6 7 8 2 – 5 – 6 7 8 2 – 5 – 6 7 6 8

Oh, you want more music? We could do Twinkle, Twinkle/ABCs

9 9 5 5 4 4 5 – 6 6 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 -

Essentially, it’s close enough to a scale that we have a nice match-up that from numbers 9-1 is a low to high scale, and actually, it’s nearly a perfect C-scale!

Accidentals won’t work so much, but you can play almost anything that falls within a typical major scale.

I can fake the chorus to Birdhouse in Your Soul semi-effectively

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How about it geek musicians? What can you play?