What Cheer, Netop?

Last night, after many phone calls and some thought, it was decided that Craig (who's visiting for the weekend and is sleeping on my futon couch) and I would go to Federal Hill to pick up some Sicilia's pizza and some desserts from Pastiche, and then would head over to Keeney Quad (one of Brown's dorms; during reunion weekend visiting alumni are allowed to rent a dorm room to stay in) to pick up my friend Greg, and we would then head back to my apartment to watch videos, eventually to be joined by a few other people.

When we picked Greg up he suggested stopping by a convenience store to get some diet caffeinated soda (he's diabetic), so we stopped by the East Side Mini Mart. It turned out that a bunch of people in my knitting group happened to be in front of the Mini Mart just then, so I was greeted with hearty shouts of "Jake!", "Hey! We were just talking about you!" "Hey, Jake, we were just talking trash about you!" and "Jake! I am sooooo absurdly drunk right now!" Craig and Greg were confused and befuddled by the commotion and retreated into the store to get soda while I stayed outside and chatted with the knitting folk for a few minutes, until they suddenly announced that it was "time for phase two" and disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as they appeared. Craig and Greg emerged from the store and asked, "Who were those people?" All in all, it was extremely awesome.

We then returned to my apartment and watched a bunch of videos. Craig recently bought a DVD and has been capturing little bits of teevee ephemera that he thinks are funny or particularly notable; possibly the best (for the crowd of mathematicians and engineers that collected at my apartment anyway) was a late-night ad for the Forever Shaker Flashlight, which starts out normally enough with an illustration of the problem with regular flashlights but then at a key moment says, "Based the Faraday Principle of Electromagnetic Induction!" and flashes something like the following equation on the screen:

∮Eds = -∬BdA

It was pretty much the only time I've seen a double integral used in a late-night advertisement. (Or a path integral for that matter.) Edit: The equation on the screen is actually slightly different from the above. Pictures under the cut.

( Pictures of the ad )

We then watched two episodes of the new Doctor Who: the Dalek one and the one with the crashing flying saucer. At that point it was like quarter to two in the morning so everyone went home.

Now I am in my bedroom typing away (thanks, wireless network!) waiting for Craig to wake up so we can embark on today's adventures.