Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Having a bad day? Just want to reach out and put the ‘touch’ on someone but don’t want to end up on the evening news? Take your stress out on this Flash game where your a giant who just go a monster sized magnifying glass. I think you can see where this is going… Just a hint, save the tanker truck for last!
You don’t know what DXing is? Shame on you! Turn in your shortwave radio this instant! Ok, you might know what it is but not what it’s called. ‘DX‘ means ‘Long Distatnce’ or now days ‘Distant Station’, its an amateur radio term for hearing a station that is too far away to be listened to normally. The ionosphere and all sorts of other atmospheric conditions go into creating this sort of phenomenon, even the trails leftover from meteor showers. You might hear people talking about ‘skip’ as well, it’s the same thing. Radio waves skipping and reflecting from very long distances, like being in Phoenix and hearing a station in in Montana as loudly as a local station. The beauty of this is that you don’t need a real expensive radio to hear this, the one in your car is perfect. Go scan the AM bands late at night around the top and bottom of the hour and see if you can catch any out of state radio names.
Now, you might think, ‘big deal, it’s just radio… Yawn’. Well laddy, I bet you didn’t know that you can do the same thing with a TV, eh? Thats right, your TV set is pretty much a souped up radio receiver, a darn fine one at that! Now to do this you will need to unhook your cable (righty tighty, lefty loosy – don’t worry, its not illegal … yet) and attach an old fashioned UHF/VHF antenna to it. ‘Rabbit ears’ will do just fine. Get the antenna up as high as you can to optimize it’s reception, and tune to ch 2. If the conditions are right you may see a picture that’s not form a local station. The first link has loads more info on how to get the best results. It’s definitely an art form, timing is everything with this sport.
TV FM DXing
Wikipedia has a good write up on TV-FM DXing as well.
A few weeks ago I was at a going away party for dome dear friends of mine and during the course of the evening the MP3 player fit a few tunes from an old band I used to listen to.
Wire was an experimental punk band from England back in the late 80’s early 90’s. I first found out about them from a friends mix tape (remember those?) and was lucky enough to find a copy of ‘The Ideal Copy’ at my local Tower Records. Pretty good stuff, energetic and smart, the kind of stuff that you can humm all day and not think your going crazy. Turns out that they had a big influence on other groups as well. The Wikipedia entry has more info on that one.
What Wikipedia has to say about Wire
If you want to buy your own (and not try to find songs via P2P) here and here
(This post is dedicated to Pam and Donovan, may you enjoy your exile in Minnesota. Think of us when it snows and keep a spare bedroom for your friends when we come to visit.)
When your thinking of pinhole photographs you probably see in your mind an oatmeal box with some fill in it at the hands of a ten year old child during his first photo class and thats about it, the idea of a camera without a digital display, a compact flash card, or even a real lens sounds so absurd these days that no one in their right mind would ever dream, of using one. If you thought any of that your way off base. Pinhole photography is alive and well these days with lots of people producing some nice pieces of work. I personally enjoy it so much that I’ve built my own camera. (I’ve put a bunch of photos from it up on my Flickr account if you want to see them)
Go take a look at pinhole world and see what is going on in the world of basic photography.
Maybe if I get good enough at shooting the pinhole way my work will end up here…
Pinhole world highlights the great variety of artistic activity using Pinhole and Zonne Plate photography. The images are from the Pinhole group on Flickr.com
I discovered this while poking around MAKE, if your lucky enough to own one of the Sony Librie eBook readers and Japanese is not your native language then you might want to have a go at messing with whats under the hood and make it speak English.
I’m a big fan of ebooks, eventually we’ll all be reading them in some way. The Sony e-ink Librie is the best device at the moment I think, hence my current obsession. But, that means there will be lots of how-tos and more here. This one is on English-izing the device since it’s in Japanse. The previous and latest version(s) of the Librie English GUI Firmware Patch includes a HOWTO TXT file, a few folks asked me for some help- so here’s the original how-to with my screenshots and comments…
I think that Special Agent Greg might be on to something here.
This article is interesting from a purely scientific perspective for what it demonstrates about perception and the brain. And then there is the “use for evil” angle…
They gloss over the transcranial magnetic stimulation, but it is a technology that uses intense magnetic fields to temporarily shut off areas of the brain. They can make versions small enough to be hand held and portable.
Researchers are using the devices to more or less hack the brain. The only practical application of which I am aware is for treating depression.
I can envision other uses if you could construct one in such a way that you could use it on people without their knowledge. For instance stimulating the brain region described in the article would seem to give you the ability described in the old Shadow radio series as “the ability to cloud men’s minds.”
I will begin construction immediately. The first version will probably be large, so I will design it to be concealed in a conference room. I will be starting my own business and selling…something. I don’t think the product will really matter.
Now You See It, Now You Don’t: ‘Change Blindness’ Isn’t Magic
I think I’ll see what happens if you try this with a super magnet. The effect is more than likely due to a pulsed magnetic field so it will need a nice big solenoid to get the desired “ability to cloud men’s minds”.
Greg, I’ll get the wire and soft iron, you go find an expendable lab assistant.