Category: Useless knowledge

Information you have no need for. Ever. Usually about me, but possibly about other trivial crap in the world.

The robots, they do all the work now

I know we all dream of the future when the robots do all the work (and prior to the robot uprising in which they cleanse the earth of us miserable puny humans, of course) and we get to sit on the porch, sipping lemonade, chatting amicably with our neighbors, and just generally enjoying the bounties of the mechanical workers we command.  But would it interest you to know that we’ve already passed that time?  Yes, we had robots doing the work, and we flat missed it.

You don’t believe me, do you?  Well here, let me prove it to you.

mm-lrg_robot_plows.jpg

ROBOT PLOWS WHILE FARMER RESTS
While its owner sits comfortably on his porch, a new farm tractor operated by radio control plows his field for him. Radio impulses governing the tractor’s movements are supplied by an automatic radio transmitter, and are picked up by an antenna on the tractor. A receiving set starts the tractor’s engine, works the throttle and controls the steering. The new robot, exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair, is an improved model developed after earlier experiments.

See?  I told you.  This happened all the way back in September 1934, according to Popular Science magazine (thanks as always to the Modern Mechanix web site for  providing this delightful look back on the world as it was).

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Popular Science, Robots do the work, The robots before the uprising in which they crush all the puny humans[/tags]

How to get robbed

Well, if you’re going to be ballsy enough to steal a laptop in front of several employees, this looks to be the way to do it.

At 3:30pm today, I asked one of the other guys at work to setup a new machine we’d had delivered, he goes out to do it, and noticed that one of the laptops we have on display is missing, which he thinks is odd, because if anyone was going to sell one they would have sold one of the ones we have out the back, so he comes and asks me if I had sold it, or lent it to anyone, yadda yadda. We search the shop, workshop and our store, and can’t find it anywhere, so we resort to the video camera footage.

So we’re searching through the footage, rewinding hour by hour, at 2pm, it’s not there, at 1pm, it’s not there, at 12pm, it’s not there, but at 11am, it bloody is there! So we watch from there on in. We have a lady that works out in the shop, mainly receipting stock into our POS system, sales, accounts, banking, that sort of thing, and shes helping a couple of people with a hire purchase agreement, when this old dude, probably early 50s, walks in with a large coat on. I go out to serve him.

. . .

I go back out to the workshop, and think nothing of it. He walks around the shop a bit more, looks out the back to where he can see our security monitor, so he can see exactly what we’re recording, and then heads over to one of the laptops. He folds the lid down, then looks up at the counter where there’s still the couple and our retail lady are. He gets in between the line of view from those three and the laptop. He picks it up with one hand, walks away with it a bit, does a kinda swing around motion, and then slips it into his jacket, grabs his cellphone out of his pocket, and pretends to talk on it as he walks out of the shop!

So this video is all over the net now, and hopefully someone will know who this guy is and they’ll get the laptop back soon. The kicker for the thief is that this is a brand-new laptop with no battery. He didn’t get the charger, and because of a higher power drain and a new plug, the older HP laptop transformers don’t work, nor do current generic transformers. The laptop won’t work for this guy until he gets a battery and a transformer, and HP has put an alert out for any orders of batteries and/or transformers, and warned all their retail shops to do the same.

[tags]Laptop thief[/tags]

Frets of Fire – free Guitar Hero style game for PC

(via MAKEzine blog)
It had to happen sooner or later.  Nearly every great game for consoles has someone in the open-source or freeware world try to recreate it on the PC (e.g. StepMania from Dance Dance Revolution).  The latest game to get this treatment is the incredibly popular (often referenced by Bill Harris as the greatest game ever) Guitar Hero, now mimicked as Frets of Fire.  Although designed to be played via keyboard, I expect this will soon be setup to work with a Guitar Hero controller, as the hook-up to PC mod has already been worked on.

Frets on Fire is a game of musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible.

fretsonfire1.jpg

A video demonstration of the game is available at YouTube.

[tags]Frets on fire, Guitar Hero[/tags]

The why of the 24-second shot clock

More useless knowledge that I found in my daily readings. Apparently, basketball used to be a slow-paced boring game (and yes, I know for some it is now a moderate or fast-paced boring game – this is for the folks that like the sport). When professional basketball leagues first played, a team could hold the ball as long as desired – typically until fouled or a realllllly wide open easy shot was seen. As the NBA was facing serious economic issues from declining attendance, a rule few changes were implemented. One of these was the 24 second shot clock.

This sped up the game, and attendance quickly recovered, growing significantly over the next couple of seasons. Scoring also went up, as the option was now try to score or just lose the ball.

The solution to this dilemma [ed. note – of declining attendance] was another rule change, one which might seem simple and obvious to today’s fans, but which was revolutionary for professional basketball at the time. Danny Biasone, the owner of the NBA’s Syracuse Nationals franchise, argued that the league needed to place a limit on how long a team could hold the ball, thereby preventing one side from stubbornly hanging onto the ball until they were fouled (or until the clock ran out) and forcing both teams to play the game at a faster pace. The implementation of this change — what Taylor described as “the single most important innovation in basketball since James Naismith invented the game” — was the 24-second clock. From 1954 onwards, every time a team gained possession of the basketball during a game, they had to attempt a shot within 24 seconds or turn the ball over to the other team — no more hanging on to the ball for minutes on end to run out the clock or force the other side to commit fouls.

The new rule was implemented a little crudely at first (typically by giving a recruit a stopwatch and having him stand on a sideline and yell “Time!” whenever 24 seconds elapsed during a possession), but by the end of the season all the teams in the NBA had set up 24-second shot clocks around their courts that made the timers visible to players, officials, and fans. The innovation was an immediate and obvious success: In 1953 and 1954 combined, only three times did a team score as many as 100 points in a playoff game; in the 1955 playoffs alone, one or both teams scored 100 points or more in over half the contests (eleven out of twenty-one games), and over the course of those two years attendance at NBA games jumped by 50 percent.

Not everyone was a fan of the rule change, but professional basketball is still around today, so enough people supported it.  Read the full article for more details.

[tags]Basketball, 24-second shot clock, Sport history[/tags]

A slew of animated kitty goodness

In my recent web meanderings, I’ve stumbled upon a huge number of animated GIFs and stills. I’ve been collecting these. Some of my favorites have been the stickfigure animations and the kitty animations. I’ll do a big post of some of the good and not-so-good stickfigure animations soon, but right now, I wanted to get the kitty animations in place first. Some of these are WTF is that? animations, some are moronic looking, and some are funny. You decide which is which for you. Hit the read more link below to see all of them.

kitty-boxer.gif kitty-attack.gif kitty-in-bushes.gif

Continue reading “A slew of animated kitty goodness”

Radiation-proof bike suit

Just in case you ever worried about the need to exercise with 200 mSv (see linked wikipedia definition) or higher radiation levels here is your bike suit, as displayed in the March 1952 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.  I’m guessing that a lead-lined suit makes biking in a century ride a bit impractical.  I suppose after a major nuclear strike, though, we’ll see more short-distance biking, given the extra weight of our protective suits.

lrg_lead_bike_suit.jpg

Lead-Lined Suit specially designed to protect against radioactivity in an A-blast, was designed by Leo Pauwela of Los Angeles and is modeled here by his son. “If it doesn’t land on us, we’re safe,” they say.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Mechanix Illustrated, Lead-lined bike suit, Exercise after nuclear war[/tags]

Get the latest playlists around the country

(via LifeHacker)

If you have ever wanted to see every song played on every radio station in the US (or at least every station that makes playlists available online, I suppose), then you need to check out yes.com. Using a flash interface, yes.com shows what stations across the country are playing via song name pop-ups in the location played.

yescom.jpg

Continue reading “Get the latest playlists around the country”

Cartooning for fun and profit

Folks, I’ve shown you how to get lessons for playing guitar Cowboy and Hawaiian style, as well as how to get lessons for playing the saw. I know some folks have already done these things, profitted tremendously, and are planning on soon giving me a large grant to support my wild lifestyle for the rest of my life. For those of you out there that haven’t quite reached that level of fame, might I suggest you get away from trying to succeed in music and instead start working on that cartooning career you’ve always wanted to try?

cartoon-your-way-to-popularity-and-profit-sml.jpg

FREE BOOK Shows How To Make Money With Simple Cartoons
Cartooning, Commercial Art and Portrait Painting may open up a vast new future for you. You can now enjoy the thrill of a cartoonist’s popularity while earning. Our exclusive, revolutionary new inventions simplify and shorten students’ training time. Look at these sensational features that you get: LAUGH FINDER—COMIC CHARACTER CREATOR—MAGIC MARIONETTE, a sensational, yet simple device that will amaze you—also our new PORTRAIT COURSE just out-all at NO EXTRA COST. No previous art experience needed. 34 big lessons. Profusely illustrated. So simple even a sixth grade pupil can start learning first day.

Send no money, just name. Get booklet, “How to Make Money With Simple Cartoons”. Fascinating facts on your future in cartooning. Rush.

CARTOONISTS’ EXCHANGE, Dept. 351-D, Pleasant Hill, Ohio

By the way, this ad originally appeared in the January 1946 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. Thanks again to the Modern Mechanix web site for posting this tidbit.

[tags]Modern Mechanix, Cartoon your way to success, Ads[/tags]

The wisdom of children

Tonight, at dinner, my older son (6.75 years) was not listening very well.  After arguing about after-dinner plans, he walked away from the table:

“Get back here, if you want any more dinner before bedtime,” I said.

“I’m not talking to you ever again,” he said.

My younger son (3.5 years) then interjects himself into the conversation “But you just talked to him now.”

Sometimes, I think he is much wiser than his years suggest.  🙂

[tags]The wisdom of children, I’m not talking to you[/tags]