Six years ago, Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton set out to reignite programming in schools with a cheap, compact computing platform. Despite targeting students, his foundation’s $US35 computer captured the imaginations of tinkers worldwide, resulting in overwhelming demand.
It’s Pi Day! Which, OK, whatever, if you were really hardcore about celebrating you’d figure out what nanosecond corresponds to 3.14159 or whatever and pop the Moet then. But you didn’t and you won’t so whatever, right? Hang on, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have some fun with the nerdiest holiday in the land, thanks to YouTube mathemagician Vihart.
Happy Pi Day! But while you’re getting your 3/14 on, it’s worth noting that pi is worthless! A sham. A fraud. Don’t believe me? Check out why we’d all be worlds better off if we threw out our pi and embraced the power of tau.
What do you get when you transpose the first 31 digits of the number pi into musical notes? Math that’s never sounded so good. And if ever an unofficial holiday needed an anthem to get some much-deserved recognition, it’s 3/14. [Reddit via Geekosystem]
So, this is what Yahoo employees do during work hours? Crack Pi records, using 1000 of Yahoo’s computers over 23 days? Glad to see they’re working hard on simplifying what their company actually does…
The Pi Necklace lists the first 100 decimal places of everyone’s favourite irrational number, pi. It’s the perfect accessory for Pi Day, or any other day, for that matter. [RGB Laboratory via Craziest Gadgets]
Some people drive a 1.2. Others a 2.2. Few drive a 3.14159. But whatever you drive, beware of the logarithms and remember to throw away your 420 in case you see a 5-0. 10-4?
I’m starting to believe in those Apatow movies about nerds suddenly becoming popular without having to shed their nerdiness: A dude name Paul Slocum—who I’m picturing looks exactly like Michael Cera of SuperBad/Juno/Nick & Nora fame—hooked a crappy old amp to his little laptop, told the laptop to continuously calculate the digits of the magical constant pi, digits that run to infinity to the right of the decimal point, and turned those digits into synth commands for surprisingly danceable house music.
