The Armchair Ninja Part 1

The Armchair Ninja

One of my prouder moments of working in video was this production. The Armchair Ninja started out as something a lot bigger. Our ninja teacher would be defeating hoards of evil ninjas left and right without breaking a sweat all without ever leaving the comfort of his green Barcalounger. But, as we never had the budget for these epics, we made do with having the master host a short series of instructional videos on how to be and armchair ninja. This originally aired on the cable access program Fusion Patrol in 2002.

The Armchair Ninja on YouTube

PongSats

PongSats

Now you can send you own scientific experiment into near space. As long as it fits into the space of a ping-pong ball:

A PongSat is an experiment that fits inside of a ping pong ball.
These ping pong ball ‘satellites’ are flown to the edge of space by balloon or launched in sounding rockets. The PongSats are then returned to the student. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to get students excited about science and engineering. There are endless possibilities for experiments that can fit inside a ping pong ball. PongSat’s can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Experiments can be as simple as comparing how high a ball bounces before and after being exposed to vacuum. The PongSat can carry seeds to see if exposure to cosmic rays effect their growth. Several small inexpensive computers and other electronic can fit inside a PongSat. These can be used to create a wide range of experiments. Whether carrying a marshmallow to see if it puffs up in the vacuum of near space or an entire sophisticated satellite in miniature, PongSat can create motivation, drive and passion in the classroom.
PongSats are flown at no cost to the student or school.

How cool is that? Some flights have reached over 100,000 feet, that’s definitely high enough to measure the UV index or even gamma rays if your detector is small enough.

[via neatorama] 

PongSats

Glass Blowing for Vacuum Devices

Thermonic Diode 

What a perfect companion to my light bulb DIY! This has some amazingly valuable information on how to cut, bend, and blow glass for scientific devices. It also has information on how you can use this new found knowledge to make your own photo cells, vacuum diodes,and even a cathode ray tube. For the amateur scientist this is a gold mine of information.

[via MAKE] 

Teralab – Glass Blowing for Vacuum Devices

MacGuyver Skills Needed In Space

 

The next crop of astronauts should be tested on their improvisational skills when they are going through the whole NASA testing and stuff. We need some spacemen with major MacGuyver skills while on orbit to be sure. back on Mir, if you didn’t have the ability to make due with what you had on had to solve a problem you were SOL. I’m sure with impending budget cuts to the space program things might prompt some astronauts to get creative to carry out their duties.

[via neat-o-rama and Popular Science Blog]

You can’t go to Home Depot 

A little Site Maintenance

Wordpress Feedburner Plugin

I’ve been making quite a few changes to the ‘ol site lately. If your a new reader you might not notice, if not let me know what you think. Mmm-kay? I had to re-do the RSS feeds that are going through Feedburner because my .htaccess file had become snorked up. I fixed it so if your feeds haven’t been coming through you will know why. Every thing is normal here now. OK, should be normal. If not let me know.

I ended up opting for a plugin solution to my RSS redirection as hand editing the .htaccess file is becoming a right pain in the arse. I went with the plugin offered by Steve Smith. A very cool and slick interface for setting all of it up. Just on note, if you choose to use the plugin yourself, you might have to do edit a couple of things. If your WordPress isn’t in the root you will have to change the feed that you give Feedburner. Remove the ‘/wordpres/’ bit. You will know it when you see it. Also, in the .php file for the plugin you should change ‘get_settings(’home’)’ to ‘get_settings(’siteurl’)’. You do that (and provided your .htaccess file is set to 666) and your in like Flint.

WordPress FeedBurner Plugin // Ordered List by Steve Smith