The number in my username is the inverse of an important number in physics, the fine structure constant, which roughly measures the fraction of the speed of light achieved by the electron in a hydrogen atom. Something I spent a lot of time studying earlier in my life! I also like it for being a random enough number that I can get this username pretty much anywhere.
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I thought it was more of a ‘fuzzy cloud of probability’ thing? If so how is the electron’s speed defined?
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https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-speed-of-an-electron
My understanding is that you’re right about electron position being a cloud of probability, but that doesn’t stop us from assigning a speed to these things.
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The uncertainty principle says that for it to be localized into a “cloud” around the nucleus, an electron must have an uncertain momentum, so it can’t stop completely and is in fact zooming around pretty fast, somehow!
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In other words physicists be like: “Just watch me!”
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The particles are saying that too 
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Note: It’s funny reading this thread after months, reading the explanation for a username/ pic that isn’t there anymore and scratching your head trying to remember what that person was called some time in the past. 
So… I thought I had shared this here, but reading back I guess not:
My real name is somewhat unusual in Greece, so even people who know me tend to mix up my name with some other one, from teachers to colleagues, basically since forever.
I never liked my name, because it’s too long and nobody remembers it easily and there’s no way anyone could pronounce it correctly if they are from another country (try growing up in a touristy area with a difficult name). And I had to endure years of cheap jokes about a famous person who shares my name, so that didn’t help.
It starts with Γ, and nobody non-Greek has ever managed to pronounce it without completely butchering it, so early on when I had to converse with people outside my country I shortened my name to Gia.
However, I never had a nickname in Greek, it annoyed me to no end when someone tried to give me one.
For some reason, although it’s a common enough female nickname, I get misgendered a lot on OGS 
My profile pic is just some quote in pink, because I like quotes and pink. I keep saying I need to change it and I keep forgetting.
It’s bittersweet to me that nobody got my Søtsten 
, but I guess it would take some prior knowledge to do so… 
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from someone whose name was mispronounced at my high school graduation over the loudspeaker, i feel this 
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Perhaps it’s because you’d rather be shopping.
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Going outside:
.
I know nothing about anime, I just chose a pink one, please help me gods of googlesearch not be one of those
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I haven’t seen it, whatever it is. Pretty Cure, maybe?
Mine came from a blog name many years ago when I was very into another hobby that I totally can not stand today …
I can’t tell you more than that. If I do, I have to kill you.
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A few already noticed that I changed my avatar
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Interrupting my read of this nice thread at comment 77 (noting it just so that I can continue later) … and want to comment a few of your stories (because, in German, I’m of the kind that “always wants to contribute their mustard”, in English: I must always butt in, whether you want to hear it or not 
For my own nick and avatar image see the end of this comment.
Back in the distant past, I read some (IIRC Chinese) erotic stories (can’t remember titles or authors), and when I first read “ruby mineshaft” I immediately thought, “uh-oh, NSFW!”, as it was one of the terms used in those stories for … well, use your imagination.
Being a Floydhead, that album was the first that sprang to my mind when I read your new nick 
Hey, K
Yeah, German “konfus« Yet another opportunity to post one of my fav. quotes:
Anyone who isn’t confused doesn’t really understand the situation.
— Edward R. Murrow
For me you remain some ancient pharaoh 
I always associated it with lysergic acid 
… AND, yes, having been a boy scout (BDP, Stamm Fürschteberg in Donauäschingä), OF COURSE also with Fleur-de-Lys
LOL no, please explain 
(NO, DON’T!)
I’d never admit that publicly lest opponents think it’s “doping”.
Ehh, noooooo
Ah, I’ve kept bees for almost a decade, and it is SO NICE to see someone use the IMNVHO correct name rather than the commonly used “mellifera” … “mellifica” is “honey maker”, whereas “mellifera” is “honey carrier”. But what they carry into the hive is nectar, which contains a lot of water, and they dry it in the hive and add enzymes (“bee spit” ).
About myself:
The nick I use here is very simple, AFAIK the naming standard from the very beginning of email:
- First letter of first name,
- followed by last name
Usually, if available, as some of you know, I use Bonobo (and no, I’m not the musician, I’ve used the name—and registered the domain name also—long before he turned up). But when I first joined a Go server (I think it was IGS, must’ve been 20+ years ago) I settled for “trohde”, out of this odd (?) reasoning:
I thought that if I take the game serious I should also be recognizable as a real life person with an name, and so I carried “trohde” with me, from IGS via KGS…DGS…Kaya·gs (long dead) to OGS
And … “oof”, later OGS created its own forum … there I’d actually have wanted to use “Bonobo” again, but someone else had taken that nick on OGS already 
(which p!ssed me off quite some … I know it’s totally irrational, immature and stupid, “first come, first serve”, but still … I admit I’m a neurotic).
And about the avatar image, and how I came to use “Bonobo”:
When I registered my first domain name, around 1992 I think, I had to decide for a name, and I also wanted sort of a Totem animal or “heraldic beast” … first I decided for “Volvox”, which, AFAIK, is the “simplest” life form that knows “natural death” (namely when its beautiful hollow sphere tears and thus sets free the daughter colonies inside of it).
But “Volvox” was taken already …
So I settled for “Bonobo”, the friendly ape that is the humanimal’s closest living relative … they weren’t much known in the early 90s … this decision will make my heirs quite happy because meanwhile it is worth quite some money (even though I never really used it except for mail) Two years ago I declined an offer for 70K€ 
I told them I’d give it away for an island in the Caribbean Sea with 1. WIFI, 2. sweet water, and 3. a hill higher than 500 meters (in case of the mega-tsunami ).
A few years later I got the book “Bonobo. The Forgotten Ape” by Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting as a gift from an internet friend, and I asked another friend, a painter, whether she could make me a line drawing based on some of the photos in the book … and so she did … I think I first used it as avatar image in the late 1990s or early 2000s.
Forgive the epic prose, but as I said, lots of mustard
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My profile pic is this:
I’m not sure if I should really be using it but I liked it. If I should remove it do let me know!
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Surely you mean bulletin boards if you’re going back that far 
You’re welcome
I’ll have to give that a go
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I started my telematic adventure on bulletin board systems indeed. Internet wasn’t a public thing back then, there was Fidonet, a private free bbs net. Private messages were called “matrix”.
Public messages were shared in “areas” just like our forums.
I met my wife in an area where talking about books. 
There was no graphic to spice up things back then: just plain DOS characters. Some primitive ascii art sometimes.
So no profile pictures!
That old pic of mine arrived later, with Internet and forums. If I recall correctly, I bought my current motorcycle in 2002 and shortly after I started posting in a forum dedicated to that specific model. That’s when I did that picture.
So it was for a forum indeed. 
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This makes we wonder what sort of ascii art you used to woo your wife…
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