Restaurant Powers Its Vehicles With Waste Vegetable Oil
Tuesday, August 30th, 2005
This is just another step forward in the biodiesel trend that, with the rising price of gasoline, should become more prevalent over time.
Archive for August, 2005
Revenge of the Sith on DVD Only
Monday, August 29th, 2005
George Lucas’ latest effort to push new technology into the mainstream.
New and Improved: Now With Comments!
Sunday, August 28th, 2005Due to popular demand, I have enabled comments. Should you wish to expound on one of the topics, feel free to do so. I’ll receive an email whenever a comment is posted, so you can be sure it’ll get noticed.
Currently anyone in the world can comment anonymously. If you’d like your name to be associated with the comment, then register at blogger.com. If you decide to register, let me know and I’ll officially add you as a member of the blog. (Currently membership has no privileges, but that could change in the future.) Note also that blogger.com is owned and operated by Google—and that other accounts you have with Google may transfer into blogger.com (it did for me).
Take care, and enjoy the site!
Strange Police Photos
Thursday, August 25th, 2005The stormtrooper photo I posted earlier came from StrangePolice.com, which is part of a family of “strange” web sites carrying interesting, funny, or unusual pictures.
Here are a few good ones:
Note that these sites are not for children and that my internet filter kicked in on a few of them.
UPDATE: Tony had some insightful comments about the pictures:
“Thanks to your post on how to detect doctored images, I think I’ve detected two fakes. The kid on the bicycle seems to have a slight shadow displacement from the car accident. I may be wrong here. The F14 appears way too big. It appears to be as big as the cargo plane in the foreground. IIRC, F14s are big, but not that big! I know these images are just for fun, but its also fun to detect fakes.”
Laser Sighted Slingshot
Thursday, August 25th, 2005This is neat—definitely a boy toy! Be warned, however, that the product page is a good example of how NOT to design a web site.
Link: http://www.gizmodo.com/…
Laser Weapons for Fighter Planes
Thursday, August 25th, 2005
This is definitely the stuff of science fiction:
Link: http://www.newscientist.com/…
***** Begin Obligatory Star Wars Rant *****
The article mentions the comparison to Star Wars, but it’s completely obvious that the weapons in Star Wars are not lasers—most likely they’re some sort of plasma. First, they’re visible, which lasers are not unless there’s dust in the air. Second you can see them move, which is definitely not the 186,000 miles/second speed of light. Third, they combine and change direction (think Death Star #1), while real light beams simply pass through each other and continue moving in the same direction as before.
***** End Obligatory Star Wars Rant *****
Billboards Send Advertising Directly To Your Phone
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005
Remember in the movie Minority Report when the billboards scanned your retina and tailored their advertising to you? Well here’s the first step in that direction.
Link: http://www.newscientist.com/…
Update (08/24/2005): This type of advertising is known as BlueCasting.
Police Arrest Stormtrooper
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005
Okay, so they didn’t actually arrest him, but they were called. The picture is priceless:
Detecting Photo Fakery
Sunday, August 21st, 2005
A somewhat lengthy article on how to detect alterations to a picture. Note that the PDF version of the article is different from the HTML version (go figure…).
Link: http://oemagazine.com/…
Super-Fast Insect Photography
Sunday, August 21st, 2005
This guy designed and built a photo rig to take pictures of insects in flight. Some of the pictures are amazing (this one is my favorite). When viewing the photos, the first page or so isn’t that good, but the later ones are unbelievable.
Is Your Boss a Psychopath?
Saturday, August 20th, 2005
This may sound funny at first, but it’s a serious article about the type of people who run large corporations. It’s a long read, but you get the gist of it from the first few paragraphs.
