You must try out the slap fights in Rose and Camellia (via TIGSource)
The future of hi-def DVD?
Some interesting rumbles going on in the retail market lately. Rumblings from the sales-outlet side indicate Target will carry only Blu-Ray players this holiday season, Blockbuster will expand Blu-ray offerings but not HD-DVD movies, and BJs wholesale will stop carrying Hi-Def DVD movies in store (although the format will still be available to online shoppers for the wholesaler). Microsofts support of HD-DVD aside, this suggests Blu-ray is going to push further ahead in the fight for next-gen DVD supremacy.
Could Sony have avoided the Beta-Max/PSP Memory Stick Duo/Digital8 losing format problem they seem to have suffered since the days of the Walkman? It is looking like Blu-ray is coming out on top this time, which has to be good news to Sony. (some information via Joystiq and more Joystiq)
[tags]Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Next-gen hi-def video, Target, Blockbuster, BJs wholesale, Format wars[/tags]
That LEGO thing seems to be catching on
I am not sure there is anything else that needs to be said. Go there now!
Given how well done the LEGO Star Wars games have been, this is one I already look forward to playing. (via Joystiq)
[tags]LEGO, Indiana Jones, Lucas Arts, LEGO Indy[/tags]
Home inspection nightmares part 6
The last (for now) scary home inspection photo gallery from This Old House
Finally done
I know I’m late to the party on this, but I have finally finished the last Harry Potter book. Bought it release day, read one-third of it, then the wife took it to read after she finished whatever it was she’d been reading that week-end. After I got it back, I only read a few chapters a day – I’m not a reader in a hurry to get to the end. So I just finished it, and now my wife can talk to me about it all she wants. Seems she has been waiting for me to finish it because there is something in or near the end she wants to talk about but she did not want to spoil the book for me.
Since I am not bothered by knowing endings of movies or books before I finish them, I told her she could talk about it, but she wanted to wait. Guess tonight she will finally get to tell me whatever it is that she wanted to discuss.
[tags]Harry Potter, Worthless knowledge, Stick a fork in me[/tags]
Bye mom. Thanks for visiting
My mother just left after spending a long week-end with us. Sadly, my wife was a real bitch to her. I understand why she doesn’t care for my mother, but she seriously over-reacts. So my week-end wasn’t nearly as nice as it could have been, but I enjoyed having my mother around and not having my wife around for most of the week-end.
Yarrrrrr, ye maties
Avast! There’s a problem at set, and someone must attend to it. Smithsonian Magazine investigates the heroes who stop the scallywags and save the cargo.
Pirates have been causing trouble ever since men first went down to the sea in ships, or at least since the 14th century B.C., when Egyptian records mention Lukkan pirates raiding Cyprus. A millennium later, Alexander the Great tried to sweep the Mediterranean clear of marauding bandits, to no avail. In 75 B.C., ship-based cutthroats took Julius Caesar hostage and ransomed him for 50 talents. The historian Plutarch wrote that Caesar then returned with several ships, captured the pirates and crucified the lot of them.
That hardly spelled the end of pirating. At the beginning of the 13th century A.D., Eustace the Monk terrorized the English Channel, and the European colonization of the Americas, with all its seaborne wealth, led to the so-called golden age of piracy, from 1660 to 1730-the era of Blackbeard, Black Bart, Captain Kidd and other celebrated pirates of the Caribbean. The era ended only after seafaring nations expanded their navies and prosecuted more aggressively to deal with the threat.
. . .
Unlike the galleons of old, which sat low in the water and were easily boarded, the supertankers and bulk carriers of today may rise several stories-and yet they pose no great obstacle to thieves. Bullets and rocket-propelled grenades have persuaded many a captain to stop at sea; at that point, almost any pirate can climb to the deck by tossing grappling hooks over the rail.
Today’s pirates range from villainous seaside villagers to members of international crime syndicates. They ply their trade around the globe, from Iraq to Somalia to Nigeria, from the Strait of Malacca to the territorial waters off South America. No vessel seems safe, be it a supertanker or a private yacht. In November 2005, pirates in two speedboats tried to attack the cruise liner Seabourn Spirit off Somalia. The liner’s captain, Sven Erik Pedersen, outran them while driving them off with a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD-a sonic weapon the United States military developed after the USS Cole was attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen in 2000.
The article is five pages, but it’s some of the best five pages you’ll read today. No word on how the Flying Spaghetti Monster feels about the capture if his faithful few. (via boingboing)
[tags]Pirates, FSM, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Noodly appendage, Smithsonian[/tags]
Fan as hair dryer
The Modern Mechanix blog shows us that way back in 1924, the June issue of Popular Mechanics ran this article on using a fan attachment to make a hair dryer as an alternative to electric fans for keeping your lovely locks dry and full of life (to borrow the modern parlance).
Drying the hair with an electric drier is a quick and convenient method, but not every one cares to buy one for such occasional use. Where some other electrical appliances such as a fan is at hand, an attachment can easily be made for it, that will serve the purpose.
The attachment consists essentially of a cone-shaped piece of sheet metal such as brass, to which a rubber tube with a nozzle is attached, as shown. The cone is made by cutting a circular piece about one-third larger in diameter than the fan guard, making a radial cut from the center to the edge, putting the edges thus formed over each other and riveting them together. Three catches made of brass are riveted to the cone so that it can be securely fastened to the guard. The tip of the cone is cut open and flared out so that a brass sleeve, about 1-3/4 in. diameter, can be soldered to it. A 6-ft. length of rubber tubing of the same size is attached to this sleeve, and a 4-in. length of brass tubing, with the end rounded as shown, is pushed into the end of the hose to serve as a nozzle. In one case a 1-3/4 in. motorcycle inner tube was used for the hose, but it may be still handier to use the rubber tubing usually provided with a fully equipped vacuum cleaner. The drier should be placed on or near the top of a radiator so that it delivers hot air.
Any rumors you hear that suggest I know from experience that attaching this to the rear of the fan instead of the front creates insufficient suction for true enjoyment are pure fluffery. I assure you I never commented on how poorly this worked when I experimented with the idea.
[tags]Modern Mechanix, Last century hacks, Fan as hair dryer, Popular Mechanics[/tags]
Phone number to geography
Get a general geographic location from for US or Canadian numbers
House of the future, from 1954
Honestly, I’m a little surprised we don’t see more of the ideas from this house that was designed and built over 60 years ago. Designed with as much innovative use of technology as the builder could manage, the house had windows which would shut automagically in case of sustained strong winds or rain, lights that would turn on and off when people entered rooms, and an automagic doorbell that went off when someone stepped on the porch.
Guests never trip over the wires to a floor lamp in Fletcher’s living room.
The floor lamps in this “House of the 21st Century” have no electric cords. Their fluorescent tubes, in fact, could be burned out and still operate perfectly when placed over certain spots on the living-room floor.
. . .
To operate his cordless floor lamps, Fletcher [the primary designer and builder] buried induction coils at various points in his living-room floor. Contained in the base of each floor lamp is a secondary coil. The current flowing between the coilsprovides enough wattage to fluoresce the gases in the fluorescent tube at the top.
The walk-a-light switching system throughout the house operates on the capacity principle. The presence of a persons body changes the capacity of a plate connected to a vacuum-tube circuit. A relay then switches on the lights. The same capacity effect operates the doorbell when a person walks onto the porch. It is used outside the house to operate lights on a burglar-alarm system.
This is one of the coolest things to my humble little brain that I’ve seen on the Modern Mechanix web site since I started reading it last year. I can see how some of the technologies would need updated to modern needs. I’m likewise sure that people might not always want all the automated conveniences that this house provides, but that should be adjustable at some control center or via software on a home computer. I’d love to get some of the features from over 50 years ago into my home. Maybe not the vacuum-tube stuff, but that could easily be modernized.
[tags]Modern Mechanix, Home of the future from 1950s, Automated home conveniences, Automagic[/tags]
New portable applications USB hardware spec
If you are part of the geek-set, you probably already know about U3 format USB keys. These are USB drives with a special partition that has an auto-run tool used to enable specially written programs which run entirely off the USB key. This means they don’t store information in your registry. It’s handy, because you can just carry your U3 drive and have all your applications and data available on pretty much any modern Windows system. Sadly, the U3 format doesn’t work with Windows Vista for most hardware versions of these drives. So much for any modern Windows system, then (well, Vista kinda sucks and doesn’t seem so modern from what I hear, but it’s still going to infest most of the home computing market).
To rectify this, Microsoft and Sandisk are working together on new technology to let you do pretty much the same thing while still giving manufacturers more of your money to let you do what you are already doing with XP.
Microsoft is teaming up with peripherals manufacturer SanDisk in an effort to develop smart USB devices that will allow users to carry their complete personal computing environment on a device as small as a thumb drive, Microsoft announced Friday.
Under the plan, Microsoft will develop software that will let users store their applications and data on small, Flash memory-based devices that connect to their computers’ Universal Serial Bus. SanDisk will design and manufacture compatible hardware.
The first products from the collaboration will be available in mid-2008, Microsoft said.
Oh, by the way, we won’t actually have this option any time near the launch of the latest Microsoft infestation system, what with Vista already launching and the technology being nearly a year away. Still, it won’t be too long before you can pay your fees to Microsoft and others to keep doing what you just paid companies for a year or two ago when you got your U3 drive.
Might I take this opportunity to point out that you would probably be better off just buying an inexpensive USB drive and loading it with portable open source applications that usually do all the same things for far less. If you don’t like that site, well, you can choose any of numerous other such sites for your legally free portable software and not continue to pay unneeded fees every time Microsoft and others decide they need a new way to get your money.
Here are a few more sites which provide links to other portable application information, if the previous four didn’t suit your fancy.
[tags]Portable applications, Portable freeware, Windows wants more of your money, U3 format dead, New portable software pen drives next year[/tags]
Colorful Book of skulls
I’m artistically inept, but I love looking at good art. Of course, for me, good art often differs from what many others think is good (and no, I’m not talking about pr0n). As an example, I think the colorful skulls in this awesome book, Skull Project, are amazing and very artistic.
Skull Project, a book based on Skull Reference by Matthew Amey, is a collection of finished pieces created by artists from all over the world. Each artist was given a page from the Skull Reference book and asked to create a finished drawing or painting based on the unique position of the skull they were given. Skull Project is the culmination of those efforts is available here as a limited edition hardbound copy. Each book is individually numbered and comes with a slipcase to protect this fantastic collection of artwork.
I’d try to put more from the site or make all the links work, but the fuck-heads running the site put in extra “protections” (easily worked around, but I spend enough time just getting posts together to bother with that extra effort) against having their work used. I’m taking a fair use clip here to let my readers know why I think this is a project worth spending money on. If the sellers want any more help from outside, they might consider making it easier to provide enough information to my readers to drive some of them to the project.
I had to spend far too much time just to get that image so you could see why this project is worth checking out. At this point, I’m not even sure I care if anyone goes and thinks about buying. I want to buy one of the books for myself (they are $150), but I don’t even care if anyone else is interested enough to look now. I suppose in the future I should just make my HTML img tags point to their servers so I can leech bandwidth instead of assuming responsibility for my digital footprint. (via boingboing)
[tags]Skull Project, Skull Reference, Sellers who make it hard for bloggers to send visitors their way[/tags]