Memorial Day

See Clay Bennett @ Chattanooga Times Free Press

Where Sunscreen?

Baz Luhrmann once wrote a song titled Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen). (It actually has a good back channel story to it.) But apparently, that advice is maybe not so good.


SFGate has a story where a Green group compares sunscreen to snake oil. Some of the things they point out is:


"...EWG was so un-impressed with the results of its survey that the group's Vice President Jane Houlihan compared sunscreens to "modern-day snake oil, plying customers with claims of broad-spectrum protection but not providing it, while exposing people to potentially hazardous chemicals that can penetrate the skin into the body."

Ingredients to avoid are retinyl palmitate (Vitamin A) and oxybenzone. The best suncreens, according to the survey, are:

• Badger Unscented, SPF 30
• California Baby Sunblock Stick, No Scent, SPF 30
• Loving Naturals, SPF 30
• Soleo Organics All Natural, SPF 30
• thinkbaby/thinksport, SPF 30
• UV Natural Baby Sunscreen and Sunscreen Sport, SPF 30
• Purple Prarie Botanicals, SunStuff or Sun Stick, SPF 30"

Floating lighthouse seeks harbor to call home

Okok...

So I'm not really interested in having a light house boat. But for free, it could be a cool thing to tool around the bay in. (maybe?) ...128 feet long, probably a lot of berths. Never have to worry about folks bumping into you where ever your park it...

...Or maybe I'm just totaly obsessed with the idea of having a horn that is "so powerful they caused the ship to shiver with the sound", or described as "so loud it was "an instrument of the devil, a device designed in hell for the specific purpose of torture," wrote James Gill, founder of the U.S. Lighthouse Society."

hmmmm... yep. gotta have it...

An Oops Moment

An older (April 12, 2010) Znet article notes: "Here’s a small safety tip. When you’re telling a 361-foot long, billion dollar submarine where to go, turn off your iPod. That’s what a Navy JAG investigation determined last week when it announced its analysis of the collision of the USS Hartford fast attack submarine, when the sub bashed into the USS New Orleans a year ago."

mad-scientist coffee machine

Make has a neat article on how to build a "Florence Siphon Arabica Brewing & Extraction Apparatus".

It's a cool way to work. Put the coffee grounds in the left beaker with a filtered tube, and the water in the airtight container on the right. Boil the water and send it to the coffee grounds. When the boiler cools, the vacuum will pull the coffee back through, and voila!

The nector of the gods is fattening....

As I have aged, I have noticed that, I have started to be more like my french counterpart Obelix. As in, it's not that I'm fat, just my chest slipped.

Quite randomly, I've come to notice that this has some parallels to the 6-10 20oz. Mt. Dew bottles I used to drink a week.

Seems that one bottle of this wonderful green holy water comes with 275 calories, and 77.5 grams of sugar. (13.7 cal, 3.9g sugar per 1oz.)

To compare, a sweet dunkin donuts coffee has no sugar, and 10 calories for a big 14oz cup. (.7 cal, 0g sugar per 1oz.) ...okok, spice it up with 3 spoons of sugar and you still only add 18g or sugar, and 75 cal. total.

Breaking this out we get:

	MtDew	DD Coffee
cal./oz	13.75	0.7
g sugar/oz	3.9	0
serving	20oz bottle	14 oz med.cup (3sp sugar)
cal	275	85
g sugar	77.5	18

This basically means that for every med cup of coffee I drink instead of a Mt. Dew, it's 1.6 miles ~less~ I need to run per *day*.

So drinking coffee can be considered a fairly good diet?!?!

Post Note:
Now to make matters worse, it would seem that Coffee's Jolt Just an Illusion?!?!

Also, on the "it's frigging fattening" topic, in Aug '09 NYC's Health Department started posting signs around the city reminding folks that soda is really not the choice beverage if you have any interest in *not* getting that "American Silhouette" look. It's an affective add.... (ick!)

Free Claris CAD

Back in the early 90's was a fantastic CAD product for Mac's called Claris CAD. It was a really great 2D drafting product that was simple and easy to use.

As per wikipedia, it was officially canned back in '91. Now even Claris, the company, has changed to Filemaker Inc and only develops DB apps.

This was a wonderful app, and it worked very well on old/slow 68000 processors. My question is this: What would it take to a) get the code released to the open source community, and b) to get it ported to x86 linux OS?

I noticed the site ClarisLink that seems to have the application freely down loadable and they say that it would work on a Mac emulator called MinivMac. It's a start, but only when it's opensource, and runs on linux do I think this really great app will again be used heavily.

I have seen some other open source cad apps out there, and have played with QCAD which is not bad, but a bit clunky, and not very good for large DXF floor plan files.

NEWS FLASH: (Aug 2011)

I've found a open source product called CADEMIA which I think so far is the best option. Have a look. If you see something else out there, post to the comments section.

Lunkenheimer steam train whistle doorbell

Perfect.
Just simply perfect.
http://petemills.blogspot.com/2010/05/train-whistle-doorbell.html

Cell Phone News Round up

Lots of chatter today about Cellphones.

First off there's the IP litigation. I think that all the phone makers general council's are all old college roommates, and over beers decided to sue each other as a means of job security.

• Investigation: Apple vs Nokia vs Google vs HTC vs RIM

Then there's a note of some churn in the business:

• Head of Nokia’s Mobile Phone Unit Is Leaving
  and Nokia Tries to Recharge Cellphone Maker Shuffles Executives, Carves Out Smartphones to Counter Rivals
• Google abandons smart phone Web store

And finally, there's the topic of OS's :

• Nokia’s Biggest Problem? Symbian.
  
• Android Comes of Age at Google Developer Conference
  

And then... In your health:

• Workers Plan to Sue iPhone Contractor Over Poisoning
• 10-Year Cell Phone / Cancer Study Is Inconclusive

Lego Coolness

(err... I don't actually play legos... I just know about this because my 5 year old son plays with them, and .... I'm looking out for him!! ... Yea.. .. that's the ticket!)

Lego Digital Designer: (aka: Lego CAD)
A application from Lego that lets you build on your PC, and then produce a bill of materials, a printout on how to build what you just designed, and to order the parts in a custom box (with a picture of the final product) from them over the web.


BrickLink:
A non-official Lego site that I've seen described as Craigs list for Lego's. It's got lots of cool stuff from designs to download to ways to buy stuff to way more.

Transistor fabrication: so simple a child can do it

Check out Hack a Day's page on do it yourself Transistor fabrication. True NMOS transistor. (closest I've ever done this was with magic, though the resulting output was a -bit- smaller.

Includes videos explaining the process, and what to do. Very good presentation!!! Hats off to Mike Szczys and Jeri Ellsworth for putting this together!

Ok, so as mentioned in the comments: "Hydrofluoric acid… 1000 degree oven… a child can do it…". Maybe not "any" child.... But none the less, very cool.

Best Illusion of the Year honors

SciAm posts this great short article on "the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year contest"

In the article they hightlight the winner, Kokichi Sugihara, and his entry: Impossible motion: magnet-like slopes

Orion Pad Abort test

"Last week the Orion Pad Abort test was successfully completed at White Sands Missile Range. The Orion management (at NASA) provided the footage to a company who compiled a highlight reel of the test. This link came from NASA.

The video is 4'25" long and includes clips at real time and in slow motion using the high speed cameras at WSMR.

Thought you might like to see some of the stuff we're doing to get back to the Moon & Mars." - Anonymous

Orion Pad Abort 1 Video Highlights from Space City Films on Vimeo.

Facebook will end badly.

(ok, really? what the hell do I know..)

But, I will note Business Insiders' May 3rd article on "10 reasons to delete your Facebook account". I'll give away the goods pointing out the hightlights:
10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided.
9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch.
6. Facebook is a bully
5. Even your private data is shared with applications.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account
2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web
1. The Facebook application itself sucks.



Also a funny note on "Why Facebook is the GREATEST Invention since Mountain Dew" by Pale Gurl, with some funny choice quotes like:

"If you are overweight, you can just post pictures of skinny people and tag them as yourself."

"Facebook is also great if you don't have a lot of friends in real life because you can make up for it with virtual friendships. All you have to do is send out nonstop friend requests to acquaintances and strangers alike to create an allusion of popularity and love."

Free Music: Europe vs. the US.

Here in the states, I hear often about this thing called Spotify (or CWM), and how cool it is.But if I go to their websites, I get the "sorry, you don't live in Europe, so no service for you". My obvious question has always been what gives? Why is Europe so "special"? (the closest thing we have to it is Pandora, which is not as cool.)

On the Media, an NPR distributed radio show, has a fairly good description of the US music distribution problems, why they are, and if they might change. See Facing the (free) Music. (note: medium is both in text and audio)

[In the US] "If you want to develop a new business model, you need the record companies to okay their rights. You need the music publishers who represent songwriters, who also own a right within each song that you hear. Often you need artists who have perhaps in their contracts the ability to okay or not okay a new business model. So there are lots of different players within the industry."

[then talking about this cool service called Spotify]... "It's free, in Europe. They'll play you an audio ad and the audio ad synchs up with a video ad that they display at the same time. And then the hope is that you will pay to upgrade for 10 Euros a month.

This is the genius part of it. They hook you with this unlimited free music service, and there's sharing, and it's great. Now you want to plug something in with headphones and walk out the door and listen to it on your mobile device, like an iPhone, you have to be a premium subscriber."

... "There's different rights organizations in Europe that apparently have taken a different stance towards how much they should charge for somebody that streams a song. I've heard estimates that they pay a tenth what they would pay to do the same in the States.

And so, we see all kinds of strange differences where our friends in Europe are able to share playlists, email each other URLs to listen to a song. You can even take it a step further and set the playlist to be collaborative, so that you and your friends can edit the playlist, they can delete the whole thing, do all this stuff that we can't do."

The greatness of politicians

There are days when we can be very proud of our politician. These last couple of days are great examples of this.

First off Florida's Republican Sen. Mike Bennett, a real "family values" kind of guy, was caught surfing porn on the senate floor. (lets hear it for the "sunshine state"!)

Naturally, not to be outdone by the US, Mother Russia throws their hat in the ring when "A Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate claims by a regional president that he has met aliens on board a spaceship."

Choice quotes: "MP Andre Lebedev is not just asking whether Mr Ilyumzhinov is fit to govern. He is also concerned that, if he was abducted, he may have revealed details about his job and state secrets." Also, "He also asks if there are official guidelines for what government officials should do if contacted by aliens, especially if those officials have access to state secrets"

Large Scale dot matrix printer via paintballs!

"facade-printer" = Much coolness!

HackaDay has a demonstration of a "printer" using a paintball gun, a camera, and some motors hooked up to a pc. It shows how this device is used to print on very large areas.

Build a Custom-Printed Circuit Board

IEEE Spectrum notes a low cost method for getting professional PCB's created.

"This time I discovered BatchPCB.

BatchPCB consolidates a bunch of individual projects onto a single large board and then cuts them apart when they come back from the factory. Small boards can be fabricated for under $20 this way. There’s a three-week turnaround, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I dove into designing my LED dimmer board. ... At BatchPCB, a two-layer board costs $2.50 per square inch (about $0.40 per square centimeter), while a four-layer board costs $8 for the same area (about $1.24/cm2)."