Odd Lots
- A lot happened while I was down in Taos, and I’ll do my best to catch up a little here today. But as you’ve seen from my two entries about the workshop, it was tough to pay attention to anything there but the challenge at hand.
- More photos from the workshop: Christie Yant has established a single page linking to all four of her Flickr albums from Taos Toolbox 2011.
- Several people sent me invites to Google+, and I established an account several days ago. (I already had a Google account, so it was no big deal.) Google being insanely paranoid about how real your name is, look for me as…Jeff Duntemann.
- In the wake of Tuesday night’s epic natural gas leak here, I discovered that the ethyl mercaptan molecule resembles a balloon animal weiner dog with its hindquarters on upside down. Hey, I wonder if a balloon artist has ever done balloon hydrocarbons? (Google comes up empty.)
- Motorola is finally rolling out an Android upgrade that enables use of the Xoom’s SD slot. Guys, why was that so hard?
- Only a handful of people ever make it to 114 years old. And, weirdly, that’s when virtually all of the oldest of the oldest of the old actually die.
- Here’s a photo of the largest cannon ever built. No points for guessing who built it.
- And while you’re browsing Gizmodo’s Monster Machines category, don’t miss the largest Diesel engine in the world. Your flip-flops got paddled across the pond by something very like that.
- This SSD might well make that seven-year-old PC a little bouncier…but I still recommend maxing out RAM to 4 GB, cleaning the registry, and getting rid of crapware. I’m less convinced than some people that hard drive speeds are a serious bottleneck when your registry looks like an empty lot in a war zone.
- QBit, who on beach walks favors dead fish but will gladly settle for seaweed, has refused to answer the question: Why do dogs roll in stinky stuff?
- I doubt that this would ever work, irrespective of its cool halfway-to-dieselpunk looks. It does make me wonder what other cool stuff might have been drowned out in the racket coming from WWI. (Thanks to Gary Kato for the link.)
- And I know damned well that this wouldn’t work, but it goes all the way to full-bore, balls-out dieselpunk fantasy. (Thanks again to Gary Kato.)
- Perhaps you’ve seen the Dyson Fan on TV ads. Here’s how they work.
- The site is in German, and is well-known in Europe for high-end licorice. Pete Albrecht assures me that the name of the company really does translate as “Bearshit Pharmacy.” Wow.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: dogs · hardware · humor · science · software · steampunk · tablets
"
Shameless product promotion 😉
http://www.pandalicorice.com/us/#
Shameless product promotion continues…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol
Eric S. Raymond has been discussing the ethics and practicalities of Google’s “no handles” rule.
Also, there is a Venezuelan affairs blog called “The Devil’s Excrement”, which is what a Venezuelan statesman once called petroleum.
The “Gustav” may have been the largest-caliber cannon ever built, but in the general category of size, it has a few competitors. Ever heard of the
“V-3”? (Also known as the “Tausendfussler” – millipede). It was a fixed gun 130 meters long, with many branching combustion chambers to sustain acceleration of the shell. It was only 6″ in caliber though.
“The electric cannon delivers shells over 200 miles at Mach 5”
http://www.gizmag.com/us-office-of-naval-research-electromagnetic-railgun/11035/
I believe the largest canon ever built was designed by this gentleman not all that long ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull
Long but interesting story.
So what are your thoughts so far on G+? The whole thing slipped past my radar, then it became “the Thing”.
It has its moments, granting that I’ve been on it for only a little more than a week. I’m still trying to figure how best to use the Circles metaphor. I’ll write about it more once I’ve had more experience with it and thus more to say. So far, not bad.
The “Gyroptere” looks bizarre, but it’s really just a giant maple seed — and they certainly fly! You recently wrote about your nieces flight-testing some. 🙂