I don’t usually toot my own horn but this time I’m going to. I was recently asked if MAKE magazine could use a few of my photos of a Halloween display that I had made a few years ago. I agreed to it of course, I mean who wouldn’t want to see their photos in a national magazine? So I signed some paperwork and waited for the issue to hit the stands. All my waiting paid off when I saw the issue on Saturday and saw my photos printed up in glorious color. My photos of glow sticks, black light, and electric arcs fit right in with the other amazing projects that are being showcased in the Halloween issue. If your looking for a way to add a little something to your garage turned haunted house or even if your just wanting to scare the crap out of a coworkers with some automated nasty in the cube farm this is the magazine to buy!
Category: Cool
Ecolong MP3 Player, 85 Hours of Music
This music player sports an impressive 85 hours worth of play from 3 AAA batteries. Now, only having 1 GB of storage is going to mean that you better like your music. You know, even if you did have to use something like iTunesAgent to get iTunes to play nice with the alien (read: non Apple) hardware it would be worth it if you were going backpacking. Oh yeah, it weighs 34 grams and measures 36.6×18.5x78mm so it would fit in your bag quite nicely. I wonder if I can find one of these in my neighborhood.
So You Wanna Build A Rocket?
If I’m asked what kind of book I like to read my answer is science fiction. And the style that I prefer is usually called ‘hard scifi‘. That would be stories that deal with the technological details and loads of information about far fetched star drives, energy beams, and what not. Needless to say I love reading about all the made up details that are in these stories. No wonder my top three favorite authors are Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, and William Gibson. I happened across the ‘Atomic Rocket’ page today and just had to post about it.
"Another annoying fact is that realistic spacecraft propulsion systems are incredibly weak. They will take forever to push the ship to anywhere farther than, say, Luna. So SF authors try to jazz things up by postulating more powerful propulsion systems. Alas, they then run full tilt into Jon’s Law for SF authors.
Jon’s Law for SF authors is closely related to Niven’s Kzinti Lesson. It states: "Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage." It goes on to say: "Interesting is equal to ‘whatever keeps the readers from getting bored’".
As an example, a spacecraft with an ion drive capable of doing a meager 0.0001g of acceleration may be scientifically realistic and the exhaust is relatively harmless. However, to most of the audience it will not be interesting. "Nine months just to travel to Mars? How boring!"
The author, not wanting his book sales to go flat, hastily re-fits the hero’s spacecraft with a fusion drive. The good news is that the ship can make it to Mars in twelve days flat. The bad news is that the ship’s exhaust is putting out enough terawatts of energy to cut another ship in two, or make the spaceport look like it was hit by a tactical nuclear weapon."
How cool is that? The page is for ‘science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy’ but the heck with that, I’m going to read this from ‘cover to cover’.
[via retro thing, boingboing]
Atomic Rocketships of the Space Patrol
If you want to read a few book by my favorite masters of scifi, go on over to Amazon and flex the credit chip.
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Production Line Built From Legos Builds Lego Cars
This is a wholly amazing example of what can be done with LEGOs and their line of microcontrollers. It’s a production line that creates little LEGO cars, you can even choose the colors of the bricks.
But can someone make a LEGO machine that builds production lines and in turn builds more production lines?
Constructigasm: Production Line Built From Legos Builds Lego Cars – Jalopnik
Japanese Vending Machines Now Sell Noodles!
What a great idea. I know from personal experience that there is nothing like getting a delicious can of hot chocolate from a machine next to a train station on a cold winter night. Being able to buy noodles the same way would be like heaven…
Kyoto-based vending machine manufacturer Fujitaka was the first company to come out with canned ramen. In May this year it began selling Sapporo-style noodles, which gained huge popularity, mainly in the Akihabara district. In June, the company added hiyashi-men (chilled noodles) to its lineup of canned products.
The noodles are made from konnyaku to prevent them from going soggy when they soak up the noodle soup. Since no hot water is needed they can be eaten straight away.
Now the company’s canned products are sold in vending machines across Japan. They are reportedly so popular that the firm is having trouble keeping up with demand.
‘Le Magnetique’ Magnetic Fingernail Polish
This is a rather unusual application of magnetic principals. The nail polish is applied in a normal way but before you let it dry you hold the magnet (included with the bottle) over the wet polish and let the magnetic particles that are suspended in the pigment arrange themselves. When the lacquer dries the metallic particles are frozen in place and you get some clever patterns. I’m not a user of nail polish myself but I bet I could think of some science projects that this stuff would be good for.
All Lacquered Up: Lancome Le Magnetique