On Vacation

I'll be on vacation next week. So posts may be a little less regular. In fact, I may not have much in the way of Internet access. But I'll be back on the 9th.
So TTYL

Instructables: Do it yourself website

Some of you may have already found the instructables website, but for those who haven't, I thought I would point it out. Instructables is a website devoted to documenting detailed instructions on how to "do it yourself." it's a community oriented website, where all of the instructions are written by the users. The idea is that we all have things we know how to do, so why not share our expertise. To that end, once you sign up, you can create an "instructable" on nearly any topic. You just put in your own step by step instructions, and images. The instructable is then available to anyone who wants to do the project. Furthermore, the instructions are in a format that allows anyone to comment on them. So your instructions can be expanded and enhanced by the comments of other people who followed them. there are instructions on how to do almost anything on the site. Sewing, cooking, art, construction, and many more topics. Most of the instructions even have details on where you can buy the materials needed, and how much they cost. All you need to get started, is to sign up for an account. Signing up is free, so you really should.

www.instructables.com

Kinetic Sculpture

The guy in the video above is named Theo Jansen and he works in Holland. Uses the crank shaft model to translate pedal movement into the circular motion of a wheel, thus maintaining his "animals" level with the ground on impact. All of his "animals" are powered by wind and nothing more. Even though he is an artist rather than an engineer, he and others have recognized the potential applications of his sculptures in the robotic field.

Here is his official website where you can watch several more videos and see a lot of pictures of his sculptures. www.StrandBeest.com
For a few more videos check out the links below.

Religious Meme map

The above map shows the spread of religious Memes throughout the world. It also highlights the major wars that were directly a result of clashes between religions. I'm not sure about some of the dates for the foundings, but otherwise it's pretty good.
For more maps, go to www.MapsOfWar.com
Via VirusHead: Major Religious Memes in 90 seconds

Crustaceans eroding an island into the sea

An island off the coast of Hiroshima is being eaten away by crustaceans. The photo on the left is what the island looked like back in 1955. As you can see, the island had two peaks. One with a few trees growing on it. The photo on the right, shows the island as it is now.
It seems that the crustaceans burrow into the rock that makes up the island to lay their eggs. The small holes that they burrow then cause the island to be much more susceptible to natural tidal erosion and typhoons.

Via MSN-Mainichi Daily News: Crustaceans eating away island off Hiroshima

Jaw arthritis could keep US in lead

Earlier this month I posted about how the US had reclaimed the hot dog eating world record from Japan. Thanks to Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, we were able to reclaim the title from Takeru Kobayashi. At the time, Takeru said he was training hard for the upcoming 4th of July hot dog eating contest on Coney Island, Brooklyn. Now it seems that he has developed arthritis of the jaw. He claims he can only open his jaws a small way, hampering his hot dog eating abilities. At this time, he is receiving treatment and is still hopeful that he will be able to compete in the 4th of July contest.

BBC News story here: Japan speed-eater's jaw arthritis
Check out his Blog post: Takeru-Kobayashi Blog: Vocational disease

Homemade guns from Chechnya

Found this very interesting photo blog with a bunch of weapons that have been confiscated from rebels in Chechnya. Most of the weapons are hand made from materials not originally meant to be weapons. Chechnya rebelled against the Russian Federation shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. While the rebellion was ultimately a failure, there is still a great deal of unrest.
Check it out: Chechen Self-Made Weapons
For a little history on the fighting in Chechnya, read this Wikipedia Article: Chechnya

Giant Penguins in Peru

It seems that penguins haven't always been as small as they are currently. Most modern penguin species top out at around 2 feet, but scientists in Peru have found penguin fossils that were much larger. 4.5 feet tall to be exact. That makes them almost human sized. Pretty amazing, considering that up until this find, scientists had never considered that they could get that big. Imagine some "happy feet" that are nearly as big as you!

Via national Geographic: Giant Penguins Once Roamed Peru Desert, Fossils Show

Gaining weight while staying healthy

For most people, gaining weight isn't a problem. The problem they have is losing weight. But for some of us who have abnormally high metabolisms, gaining weight is a real challenge. I've always been skinny, no matter what I do. You would think, based on my lifestyle, that I wouldn't have a problem gaining weight. I work a desk job, where I sit in front of a computer for 8 to 10 hours a day. I eat fast food for lunch most days, and snack on candy throughout the day. Dinner, if at home, usually consists of high fat TV dinners. Which of course, I eat in front of the TV. LOL If I eat out for dinner, it won't be a salad or something healthy. It will be steak or chicken, with the loaded baked potatoes on the side. So I should have no problem gaining weight. But unfortunately I am still as skinny as I was in high school. In fact, I believe I weigh less now than I did through high school and college.
So that is why I was excited to find a fitness Blog with an entire post on how to gain weight. It has a whole list of things you can do and eat to gain weight in a healthy way.

Fitness Caution: How to gain healthy Weight
Via Lifehacker: How to gain weight and stay healthy

Square Watermelons for sale in Japan

If you live in Japan, you can now buy square watermelons instead of the traditional rounded oval shaped melons. These melons are grown in a square shaped glass jar. Pretty cool looking, but I don't think I would like the price. They are going to set you back a little over a hundred dollars. So they aren't cheap.

Via JapanProbe: Square Watermelons Go On Sale!

Passive Aggressive Notes Blog moving

The passive aggressive notes blog that I posted about here and here, has moved to a new location. This is my favorite blog lately. If you haven't checked it out yet, you really should.

Check out the new location: www.PassiveAggressiveNotes.com

Shift Happens Video

Found this very interesting video presenting a bunch of facts about how fast our world is changing. Can you even really conceive of where we will be or what we will be doing in the future.
Some of the stats from the video below:

• The top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004
  
• 1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online
  
• There are 106 million registered users of MySpace. If MySpace were a country it would be number 11th largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)
  
• It is estimated that 1.5 exabytes of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. That’s estimated to be more than in the last 5,000 years…
  
• There are 2.7 Billion searches performed on Google every month. To whom were these questions addressed before Google?
  
• The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.
  

Via Where is the Puck? and Global Nerdy

Firstborn Children have a higher IQ

A recently released study of 240,000 men, showed that firstborn children on average have a higher IQ than their siblings. Their IQ is 2 to 4 points higher than their siblings. The study showed that being born first was not necessary. The only criteria needed was to hold the oldest position in the family. So a middle child who's older brother had died, would consistently have an IQ comparable to that of an oldest child. So the phenomenon clearly has a social, rather than a genetic cause. But being an oldest myself, it is still pretty cool. I can't wait to tell my brothers that it has been scientifically proven that I, being an oldest, am smarter than they are. LOL

Via Scientific American: Intelligence Fostered by Firstborn Treatment

Word popularity list

WordCount is a ranking of the 86,800 most used words in English language. It lists them in a sliding scale from 1, being most popular, to 86,800 being the least popular. It seems that "the" is the most commonly used word in the English language. And "conquistador" is the least used. The interface lets you use a slider bar to cycle through the words, or you can do searches on specific words. The entire project was designed and developed by Jonathan Harris of Number27

Check it out: WordCount

US State GDPs compared to Countries

Found this interesting map of US states labeled with the country whose GDP most closly matches. Kind of an interesting way to show how rich the US is in comparison to most of the world. We often forget how lucky we, as Americans, are to live here. But when you see that we live in a place where the GDPs of individual states rival those of large industrialized countries like Canada and France, it becomes a lot more obvious.

Strange maps: US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs Via Boing Boing

French government bans Blackberrys

It seems that the French government has decided that Blackberrys are a security risk, and has banned their use by government officials. The reason is that all of Blackberry's servers reside in the US and the UK. The French government claims that having the servers on foreign soil is a security risk because sensitive government data is passing through them. Unfortunately the ban hasn't been working very well so far. Reports are coming in that many French officials are still using their Blackberrys in secret. The claim is that the French government has not given them a usable alternative.

BBC News: Blackberry ban for French elite via Engadget

Crazy Freeway interchanges

Found a blog with a picture collection of crazy and bizarre freeway interchanges. You know, those interchanges that loop all over themselves and somehow pop you out at the end. Apparently there is a whole wikipedia article on "Malfunction Junctions," as they have been termed.

Daily Cognition: Pictures of Insanely Complex Intersections

[edit] Link above got picked up by Digg. It's overloaded. So it may be a few days before you can access it again.

Skin your laptop with a GelaSkin

I just bought the design above for my laptop from Gelaskins. They have some of the best looking skins and protective covers for laptops and MP3 players. They are a little more expensive than some of the other "skin" companies, but their designs are all works of art. So you aren't getting an old fractal or public domain image that everyone has already seen. Even cooler is if you see a design on the site you like, they provide a link back to the artists homepage. So you can check out all of his other artwork.

www.gelaskins.com

Color WW1 Photographs

Found this site that has a bunch of color photos taken during WW1. Until I saw the pictures on the site, I had no idea that there were any color photos of WW1.
The American and British forces did not use color photography in the first world war. Only the French army used color photography. It seems that the French were using a color photo system called the Autochrome Lumière process, developed in 1903. That system remained the most common method of color photography until the 1930s when color film was introduced.

Check out the site, there are some amazing pictures of soldiers and war damage.
World War I Color Photos

Gecko tape

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Akron have created a new form of tape based on nanotubes. The entire design is inspired by the way that the gecko's feet stick to sheer surfaces. Allowing the gecko to climb up completely vertical walls. On a gecko, thousands of tiny cilia like hairs are located on the pads of its feet. Allowing it to grip with great force surfaces that would seem to be completely flat.
The researchers have mimicked this using thousands of carbon nanotubes. They claim that the tape they have developed, has four times the gripping power of a gecko's foot pad.

With technology like this, how long can it be before we can put on a pair of shoes and walk up walls. LOL

Via PhysOrg: Nanotube adhesive sticks better than a gecko's foot

Very Interesting Scam Video

Found this video of a scam run by confidence artists in the UK. The scariest thing is that when this scam is over, you don't even realize you were cheated. You just feel a little disappointed that you didn't get the "good" stuff.

Via Geeks Are Sexy: The Jam Auction Scam

Flexible Light strips

This is pretty cool. A company called ELShine, has come up with a custom light fixture that is thin and flexible in a tape form. So you can stick it pretty much anywhere. I can really see putting lighting like this in crawl spaces and small corners, where a full size light fixture wouldn't fit.

Via TheCoolHunter: Light Tape

Amazing Ping Pong ball tricks

Watch the video above for some really amazing trick with a ping pong ball. Some of these tricks are just unreal.

Most expensive cities in the world

Mercer, a human resources consulting company, just released it's annual list of most expensive cities in the world. The list is used by companies and governments around the world to calculate compensation for employees living away from the home office. Moscow tops the list for the second year in a row, but most US cities dropped down the list due to a weaker dollar. Only two US cities made the top 50.
US cities don't even make it into the top 10.
1. Moscow
2. London
3. Seoul
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong
6. Copenhagen
7. Geneva
8. Osaka
9. Zurich
10. Oslo

Check out the whole list:
Moscow tops Mercer's cost of living list; London is close behind

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea offices?

Continuing the sea theme that my last post started, comes the Nautilus themed offices. Wired has a photo set of a game design company in San Francisco, that had their offices made up to look like the inside of Jules Verne's Nautilus. The company, Three Rings Design, makes online puzzle games. I really recommend checking out the pictures. The detail they put into the office is amazing.

Wired News: Finding Nemo at a Game Studio's Steampunk Office Suite

Fish and sea life Origami

I was browsing del.icio.us last night, and found this collection. A lot like the starcraft origami, someone had way too much time on their hands. The above picture is one of a collection of incredibly detailed sea life themed origami. Check them out.

Bits and Pieces of the Net: Sea-Life Origami
Check out the artists site for a lot of other animals and items. Robert J. Lang - Origami

Mechanical fingers

The above is a completely mechanical finger replacement that was designed by Dan Didrick. It has no electronic parts, and is as low tech as you can get. The amazing thing is that it works well enough that users of the devices can regain the ability to do things like playing golf or holding a glass. The guy who designed it has no background in the medical field. His background is in creating silicone masks and props for movie sets. Pretty cool.


Read the whole story at Naples News: The gift of grip

Bunny Suicide comics

Check out this comic strip about bunnies killing themselves. It's pretty funny.

Bunny suicides!

Hurricane satellite failing

This news story hit me way to close to home. It seems that a major weather satellite that is used extensively to predict hurricanes is failing. Living on the gulf coast were Ivan, Denis, and Katrina hit this worries me quite a bit.
The satellite is called QuikScat and is one of several satellites used in conjunction to predict weather patterns. Specifically tropical storm patterns. Last year the main transmitter failed. A backup transmitter did come online, but experts claim it could fail at any time. The replacement satellite is not scheduled to be launched until 2012.

Via PhysOrg: Hurricane Satellite Could Fail Anytime

Gashlycrumb Tinies reading

Table of Malcontents pointed me to this YouTube video of a reading of the The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey. Definitely worth watching. And if you missed it, check out my previous post about this very morbid little alphabet book. An alphabet of death

Sterilize your water while on the go

If you do a lot of traveling in third world countries, you know that the water is often not safe for outsiders to drink. It may be fine for the natives who have immune systems that are used to dealing with bacteria and viruses that are naturally occurring in there city or region. But for us westerners with our coddled and babied immune systems that have never been exposed to anything stronger than a flu, the water can be deadly. Or at least make you nice and sick. And being sick on vacation kind of ruins the whole thing.
You can do what I always did when traveling in Mexico, just drink sodas and bottled drinks. But that can get old pretty quick. You can also end up more than a little dehydrated. Enter the SteriPEN. It's a small pocket sized device that can sterilize water using UV light in less than a minute. The great thing about it is that it doesn't give you that chemical taste that most water purifiers give you. You can even get a solar charger for it, if you are traveling off the grid.

Official Site: SteriPEN Products
Via Cool Hunting: SteriPEN Adventurer

Create your own poll

Found an interesting site that lets you create polls or online surveys that you can embed into your Blog, homepage, or MySpace page. The company is called BuzzDash. You get to create the question, number of answers and the text for all of it. Then your users can vote in your own special poll. The entire service is free. So if you have a webpage or are interested in creating your own poll for a blog or MySpace page. Check out the poll I made below.


BuzzDash: www.BuzzDash.com

Swiss Army greeting cards: A card that works for all occasions

Here is a card that you can really stock up on. No matter what the occasion, you have the right card. Just check off the appropriate "reason", and sign your name. The card even folds up to become its own envelope. Anniversary, marriage, birthday, you name it and this card will work for you. No need to spend time picking out a card for that special occasion. Just keep a stack of these on hand and you will always be prepared. LOL

Check it out: SWISS ARMY™ Greeting Card
Via OhGizmo: When You Care Enough To At Least Send Something

Searching based on your location is patented?

It seems that a company called Geomas is the proud holder of a patent on location based web searching. Here is a link to the patent: Internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information
Why is this patentable? It seems pretty obvious that in any search system people would want to be able to search based on location. But it apparently wasn't to the patent office. So now the company has raised 20 million and is suing Verizon for putting its phone books online in a searchable format. I'm sure that if they win, there will be plenty of lawsuits against pretty much any search engine out there that lets you search using location as a criteria.

Via Wired: Patent Holder Sues Verizon, Claims to Own Location-Based Search

Lions, buffaloes, and crocodiles in an all out brawl

Found this amazing safari video of a brawl between group lions, a herd of buffaloes, and a crocodile. Watch for the spot where the lion gets tossed into the air over a buffaloes head. The fight between the lions and the crocodile for the Buffalo calf is no joke either. The video is a bit long, but it is definitely worth watching.

Via Popular Science: When Lions, Buffaloes and Crocodiles Attack—At the Same Time

The Polar Clock

Found this link to a Polar clock. The clock is unique in that it is made up of individual rings. Each ring is a measurement of time. The inside ring is seconds, followed by minutes, hours, days of the month, months, and then finally days of the week. As time passes, each ring gets closer to making a complete circle. You can download the clock and install it on your own PC. Both mac and Windows versions are available.

Check out the official site: PixelBreaker
Check out an online version: The Polar Clock

Vietnamese fishermen accidentally cut fiber optic cables

It seems that with the price of copper rising so high these days, Vietnam decided to allow fishermen to harvest old copper cabling from the ocean around the country. The copper cables are left over from the war, and are no longer used. So there really is no reason why they couldn't be harvested for their copper. The problem came in when the fishermen couldn't tell the difference between the old copper cable and newer fiber optic cable. 27 miles of fiber optic cable has been lost, which is going to cost the government of Vietnam about $5 million to replace. Meanwhile all communications in the country are running down a single fiber optic cable. Not a good thing when you are trying to increase the high tech industry in your country.

Via EnGadget: Vietnamese fishermen mistakenly swipe miles of fiber-optic wire

Harbin Ice Festival

Found this site with some amazing pictures of the ice and snow sculptures in the Harbin Ice festival. Teams come from all over the wold to compete in both snow and ice sculptures. Whole buildings are built using ice cut from the local river, Songhua Jiang.

Check out the site: Harbin Snow and Ice Festival
Wikipedia article on the festival: Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival

3D chalk drawings

I discovered this amazing artist, Julian Beever, who does 3d sidewalk paintings in chalk. His pictures look so real that you almost believe they are real. The coolest thing is that since the images are meant to appear in 3d, they are actually painted in a distorted way. So when looking at them from the side or the back they are completely distorted a strange looking, but when looking at them from the front they come out in full 3d. The picture above is just one of many on his site. Check it out to see some truly amazing images.

The artists site: Julian Beever's pavement drawings

The Age project

Found a very interesting site called the age project. basically, you can cycle through photos of people and try to guess their ages. Once you make a guess, the site tells you the persons real age, and the average guesses of visitors. It also shows you a one line quote from the person who's photo you are looking at. Sounds pretty simple and not all that much fun, but in actuality it is pretty interesting. And if you want, you can even upload a photo of yourself for people to guess at.

The Age Project

Power without wires or batteries

A team of scientists led by Prof. Marin Soljacic, from MIT, have demonstrated a working method of transmitting power wirelessly using a system known as electromagnetic resonance. Transmitting power wirelessly is not new, but using electromagnetic resonance to do so is. All previous methods of power transmission involved using radiation in some form. Most commonly radio waves. But since radiation tends to go all directions, it isn't very efficient and tends to waste a lot of power. Other methods such as magnetic induction required very close, almost touching, proximity. This method is unique, in that the distance can be quite a ways away. say, across the room.
Soljacic says he envisions a day when wires and batteries are unnecessary. Maybe one day you and I will be able to power your whole house without wires.

Physorg article: Goodbye wires... MIT experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer

An alphabet of death

I found this extremely morbid but strangely charming little booklet, called "The Gashlycrumb Tinies."
It goes from A to Z with names and illustrations of children and their deaths.

Check it out: The Gashlycrumb Tinies
And if for some reason you want to buy the book afterwards.
Amazon: The Gashlycrumb Tinies - by Edward Gorey

More Passive aggressive note fun

I really love the whole passive-aggressive notes theme and website that I posted about a few weeks ago. I recently found a Flickr photo stream that has all of the notes from the Passive-Aggressive blog and more. Really funny.

Flickr photo stream: Passive-aggressive notes
Original Passive-Aggressive notes Blog: passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers

Digitizing the Iliad using Robots and Cameras

Wired has an interesting story about work that is being done on creating high quality scans and digital images of the oldest known copy of Homer's Iliad. The book is stored in the Public Library of St. Mark in Venice. Almost all modern copies of the Iliad are based on this manuscript. A team of scholars organized by the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies is carefully photographing each page in an attempt to digitize the book. They are also scanning a 3D image of each page, with all its wrinkles and blemishes, using a laser scanner attached to a robotic arm. Eventually they plan to make the entire book available online.

Check out the story here at Wired: Robot Scans Ancient Manuscript in 3-D
A wired photo gallery of the team in action: Scanning the Iliad With a 39-Megapixel Camera

Weird conversions and cockroaches

Have you ever wondered how many cockroaches would equal the great wall of china? How about the golden gate bridge? Really? You have? Well that's good news. Because now you can find out using the weird converter. You can compare all sorts of things on the site. You can even suggest new things to add to the site for future conversions. Pretty funny.

Weird Converter

Hormone helps mice lose weight

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a hormone in mice that can cause their bodies to start burning stored fat. Scientists have long known that when mice(or humans) are starving, their bodies will switch from producing energy using carbohydrates to using stored fat. Now scientists have discovered a specific hormone in mice that actually causes the switch. The researchers think that this could lead to new drugs and treatments to combat obesity in humans. They discovered this by starving mice and isolating the hormone, known as FGF21. They then tested the hormone by injecting it into healthy(non starved) mice to verify their findings.
The article is pretty interesting, so you should check it out. I especially liked the quote by one of the scientists, Dr. Steven Kliewer. He said, "We want to see if we can get some benefits of eating less without actually eating less.” That just cracked me up.
Via Eurekalert: Hormone helps mice 'hibernate,' survive starvation

For a previous mouse torture/testing article: Nanotech Injection helps paralyzed mice walk

How hard can it be to NOT drop your phone in the toilet?

Cellular news bring us an interesting bunch of statistics about how many phones are lost or damaged in the UK every year. It seems that the biggest cause of phone damage, was being dropped in the toilet. 850,000 phones a year are lost to toilets in the UK. The second highest number was 315,000 phones left in taxis. Followed by 225,000 left on buses. So that means that UK residents are more likely to drop their phones into the toilet, than they are to leave them in buses or taxis!

Cellular News: Brits Drop 850,000 Phones Down the Toilet - Each Year
Via Gizmodo: 855,000 Phones Dropped in UK Toilets Yearly

US reclaims hot dog eating record from Japan

Joey Chestnut from San Jose beat Takeru Kobayashi's record for eating the most hot dogs. Previously Takeru Kobayashi had set the record for most hot dogs eaten with 53 3/4 hot dogs eaten. The new record set on Saturday by joey, is 59 1/2 hot dogs.
So the US has once more triumphed and proved that Americans are the best at the dubious skill of eating hot dogs.
We'll have to see if we can hold onto the record when Kobayashi next competes in July.

From Japan Probe: Takeru Kobayashi: No Longer The World Record Holder For Hot Dog Eating

Secret Nuclear plans from 1940 revealed

It seems that James Chadwick, the discoverer of the neutron, sent detailed plans for building a nuclear reactor to the royal archives for safekeeping in 1940. Those plans were lost, and have remained sealed until recently when they were opened to mark the 75th anniversary of the discovery of the neutron. James sent them to royal archives because he felt that it would be irresponsible to publish them during WW2. There they remained until their rediscovery during a cataloging effort currently underway.
The most interesting thing about this news, is that the first nuclear reactor was built in 1951. A full 11 years after the work done by James in the UK. Makes you wonder what might have happened if his work hadn't been lost.

Check out the story at BBC News: Nuclear reactor secrets revealed

What happened to the future?

From the same company that brought you the Movie Spoiler T-shirt, comes this shirt. Which brings up the question of what did happen to the rosy future we read all about in the (well my parents)70s and the (me)80s? Why don't we have personal aircars, jetpacks, and robot slaves? Somebody lied! Personally I'm thinking it was the scientists, and I'm mad about it. If you are mad as well, you can buy this t-shirt and show the world.

Threadless T-Shirts: This ws supposed to be the future

Hackers attempt to steal $450,000 from City treasury

It seems that a group of hackers attempted to steal $450,000 from the city treasury of Carson California. Hackers were able to install a key logger onto the computer of the city treasurer. Every time she logged into her laptop, all her keystrokes were logged and sent to the thieves. The thieves then attempted to have money wired from the treasury accounts to accounts in North Carolina and Michigan. The treasurer happened to notice the wire transfers and froze the money before it could be stolen. The scary thing is that she admits that if the money transfers had been smaller, she never would have caught them.
I can understand why she wouldn't notice the theft if the amounts were small. But it seems like the key logger at least should have been caught much earlier. Does the city of Carson not install antivirus and spyware protection on their computers? Who do they have on staff for IT work? Obviously, he or she is not doing their job.

Story in LA Times: Computer hackers steal Carson funds
Via Slashdot: City Almost Loses 450K to Keylogger