Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Another fine episode of Tiki Bar TV is out, this time they face the Red Menace! Will the good doctor save Lala from the Ambassador? Will Johnny Johnny fill the doctors prescription? Tune in and find out!
TikiBar TV [ Subscribe to the podcast here or here ]
You don’t have to shell out the big bucks if you want a micro sized R/C plane. You can do like these guys and build your own. I think that if anyone likes to tinker and build things at least once in their lives they should conquer flight. I can’t think of a better way of doing this than to build a tiny plane that you can fly in your own home. Think of the benefits, the only thermal it can catch is over the coffee maker and if it does catch it your not going to be running for miles after it. It it smacks into a door frame and turns into art rather than a working plane your the only one that sees it happen and thus are spared the embarrassment.
Make sure you read the twin motor steering section!
This Japanese tea serving robot showed up on a few places on the ‘net today. I have long wondered if anyone would ever offer one of these in kit form and now I have my answer.
You can get one from the Robotstore for $90US ($170US if your a wimp and can’t build it from the kit).
The driving force of the original tea-carrying doll came from a spring made of whale whiskers (actually whale teeth). All the other components, such as its gears, body and escapement for speed adjustments, were made of wood. How does it work? When a tea cup is placed on the tray, the stopper is released by the whale spring attached to the doll’s arms; the spring forces the stopper to engage again when the cup is lifted from the tray.
[via Engadget and MAKEzine]
Karakuri kit
This is darn cool, Star Wars reduced to an animated GIF. However, i can do one better. With no loss of story, plot, or acting ability, I have reduced the movie ‘Battlefield Earth’ into the space of this “.” dot. Enjoy!
A trifle gory, but good news never the less. Researchers are now looking at freezing cancer cells within a lung and simply letting it be absorbed into the body. The surgery is less destructive than chemo or other techniques. Sounds good.
Direct Freezing Technique Brings Hope to Lung Cancer Patients
Tonight I saw an outstanding episode of Mythbusters. The myth was ‘did the Confederate army create a two stage liquid fueled rocket that was fired 200 miles’. Sounds cool but if you know anything about the history of rockets this is way on the incredible side. Anyway, the result of the build session was a hybrid rocket made from a paraffin and carbon tube that had nitrous oxide shot through it. All using technology that would have been available during the civil war. Well maybe the TIG welders were in short supply back then, but the N2O was made the traditional way at M5. They did however censor the ingredients so you can’t go out and get high from it. Oddly, they in trying to make liquid oxygen Grant heated up mercury oxide. I guess that’s safe to show because you can’t find mercury oxide at the local hardware store. Not that you should do that, you do get O2 but you also get mercury metal. Fun stuff by the way but real bad to have around the house if your not careful. BTW, I had about 1/8 cup of it decades ago. And yes, I did make a tiny bit of it from the decomposition of mercury oxide.
Anyway, it was a great episode to watch and makes me want to know what they used to make the N2O. The actual rocket used a commercially bought cylinder of N2O just to save time but if they had wanted to they could have done it on their own.
They also made gun cotton ( nitrocellulose ) in a kid safe way but that you can’t make a rocket out of, just things that go boom. And we don’t want that. Not that it’s hard to make, its actually pretty easy. You just take… Oh wait, I don’t want to tell you that do I. 😛