Month: October 2010

Giant Insects For Science, Honest!

DragonflyI’ve waited a long time for someone to run this experiment!

The giant dragonflies of ancient Earth with wingspans of up to 70 centimeters (28 inches) are generally attributed to higher oxygen atmospheric levels in the atmosphere in the past. New experiments in raising modern insects in various oxygen-enriched atmospheres have confirmed that dragonflies grow bigger with more oxygen, or hyperoxia.

I can hardly wait for more work to be done in this field. I expect that after many generations of insects being raised in a hyperoxic environment there might be some substantial differences between them and their low O2 brothers. Maybe they should try this on fruit flies due to they rapid reproductive rate. The stated goal should be a humming bird sized fruit fly within 20 years. Quite safe outside the lab due to the extra oxygen needed unless someone invents a tiny SCUBA system for them to wear… Please don’t tell DARPA about this one!
Raising giant insects to unravel ancient oxygen

The Mechanical Mustache

“A mustache party? By Jove I’ll be there!” I exclaimed as I dashed forth from my lab!

I few weeks ago I got wind of a party that the local hackerspace here in the greater Phoenix area was having. They decided to celebrate their one year anniversary by holding a mustache party. So I decided to live the hacker dream and build my own mustache (yes, I have a natural one but that was easy to make).
Take a look at the process that I went through to build my creation. I give you the  Mechanical Mustache Project!

Torrents In Space!


Yarr… The idea of placing a file server in orbit around Earth sounds cool but the practicality of it verges on the crazy insane. Anyway, a server that is on orbit my be exempt from international law but the ground stations that serve it are not. I suppose you could put a satellite up/down link on someplace like Sealand and worry about feeding data to and from that. It’s still not going to solve the problem of hosting data that countries don’t want being hosted.

This week, Pirate Parties worldwide started brainstorming about a similarly ambitious plan. Instead of founding their own nation, they want to shoot a torrent site into orbit.

Pirate Parties Plan to Shoot Torrent Site Into Orbit.

Hand Made SLR Camera

I see this and I feel that I’ve been seriously slacking off! ‘Denis MO’ have been thinking of building his own camera for many many years and finally decided to act on his dreams. His original camera design is loosely based on Russian cameras (Zenit, Zorki, etc) and can use common Russian lenses (Industar, Helios, Mir) and has a variable shutter that can be set to 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, and bulb. After about 500 hours of planning and machining he now has a fine camera that takes a pretty good picture.

[via Hack-a-Day]

Homemade SLR Camera by Denis MO in English!.