What I’m working on

Since things have been slow around here lately, I thought I’d put up a
little bit about things I’m working on now. Posting-wise, I’ve got some
information on the recently released PlayStation 1 emulator for the PSP,
plus a travel security tip that I think is rather handy. I’m now trying
to standardize on a different posting style which I hope will lead to
faster page loads and more content available in a brief format while
still making it easy to see full stories on things that interest you.

I’m still trying to catch up on all the recent techie and gaming news
that I want to pass along. After being in a time crunch that forced me
to drop site updates for a few days, I find myself with still over 1000
web articles I want to review to see if there are more interesting
things I want to post. I expect to be mostly caught up within the next
week, but I’ve been wrong about that before.

I’m using some new site tools to help me better see what visitors are
doing on the site, as far as reading articles and following links. I
must admit I was surprised at how few people are following links away
from my site. Perhaps I’m putting too much detail in my stories? I
welcome feedback on what I can do to improve posts here or the site
overall.

As I get new things working over the next few days, please feel free to
leave comments here or in any other post with your suggestions.
Hopefully most of what I do won’t change the front-end function of the
site. But let me know anything you see or want to see.

US travelers will be allowed to carry liquids on planes again

This is a small step forward away from security theater ploys that don’t do anything to actually make us safer. I’ve already written a lot about how improbable the original liquids on a plane attack was, but many people don’t believe what I’ve written or what I’ve linked to that others have written. Apparently someone in the government has taken some time to find out the feasability of actually bringing down an airplane via liquid explosives and found it’s probably not that easy and that even if it were attempted, it would take a bit more liquid than people typically carry on board.

Because of these findings, the government has relaxed the no-liquids ban to instead be a limited liquids rule with the allowance of small amounts of brought-from-home liquids as well as beverages purchased inside airport screening from “trusted” shops.

The new rules were announced during a late-morning news conference at Reagan National Airport. The previous, stricter ban was instituted last month after a plot to bomb jets flying into the United States was foiled.

Continue reading “US travelers will be allowed to carry liquids on planes again”

1000 page per minute printer

(via Engadget)

I am always skeptical of extreme claims such as this recent announcement from 2 Israeli researchers, but I am also hopeful that this will come about.

The innovative printer head created by engineers Moshe Einat and Nissim Einat works in a similar way as a liquid crystal display (LCD). But while an LCD emits tiny pixels of light, collectively forming the picture on your laptop or television, their print head emits pixels of ink. Their basic design is small, but it can be reproduced and the copies combined into one large printer head.

“Unlike traditional printer heads that are small and have to move back and forth across the page, our print head can be enlarged into one that is the size of a sheet of paper or larger. One can think of it as an ‘ink-emitting screen’,” Moshe Einat told PhysOrg.com. “This means it could print one page almost instantly, and hundreds of pages in just seconds.”

Traditional disclaimers apply here. The printer is not expected to be commercially available for another 2 years. In 2 years, we’ll hear that the technology is turning out to be harder to develope than originally expected, and it will be another 2 years before super high speed printers are available. A couple years after that, we’ll start seeing shipping products, but while fast, they will run at 1/10th the predicted speeds. At least, that’s what the skeptic in me sees.

It really is neat technology. It’s just now a question of can this be made and shipped anytime soon? I just know that most big breakthroughs in tech tend to be harder to deliver than originally expected.

[tags]1000 page per minute printer, Super high speed home printers on the horizon[/tags]

Radar activated speed bumps

(via TechEBlog)

How do you slow peopleradar_1_clip.jpg down without disrupting the travel of those obeying the speed limit? You create speed bumps that pop up only when someone is speeding.

Speed bumps do a good job of penalizing non-speeders as much as speeders, and they typically force drivers to travel well below the speed limit. With that in mind, inventor Gwyn Harvey came up with a radar-activated speed bump design that would only deploy to slow drivers traveling at an unreasonable speed.


Sounds like just the thing for many neighborhoods. Of course, they cost more than traditional speed bumps.

[tags]Radar activated speed bumps, Slow down or the speed bumps will get you[/tags]

House vent cover decoration

I wouldn’t normally believe a story like this, but I’ve found Snopes to be reliable enough to trust something is real when confirmed on Snopes.

If you run into trouble with your neighbors, perhaps building vent covers on the side of your house that look like this isn’t the best thing you can do.  On the other hand, I’m sure it feels good for a little while to let everyone know how you feel.

utahhouse1_small.jpg

[tags]House vent cover art, Don’t like how I build – enjoy my vent covers[/tags]