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Ice cream the geek-fashioned way
My lab had this huge tank of liquid nitrogen left over from an experiment, with a little bit left in it, just kind of waiting for it to all boil off so we could return the tank (or so I presume). So instead I rounded up a posse and we used it to make ice…
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Abracadavra
My office is at the front of the building, with a large picture window overlooking a stunning view (okay, overlooking the Fire Lane and 2-story parking lot). So the building’s comings and goings occasionally catch my attention. In a span of 3 days, I’ve seen two ambulances quietly show up (no flashing lights, no sirens,…
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Yep, it’s finally come to pass…
It’s official, I peddle adult toys on the internet. My folks would be so proud. (*Yes, I still have a day job. Hopefully I’ll still have it if this ever gets around the office ;-)
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Wicked Smaht(tm) idea of the week
My dishwasher is running. There are knives in it. With wooden handles. Back home, this would have been a good way to get howled at. Or possibly get one’s hide tanned. Apparently dishwashers are bad for wooden silverware. Now, being an old-fartass adult, I have a better solution to this quandary. Put the wood-handled knives,…
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Skiing at Smuggler’s Notch in VT!
Pictures here Three days of skiing, 2 nights of our own lodge, Real Fire, marshmallows and roastin’ sticks, hot chocolate with Bailey’s, pool and jacuzzi across the street, kickass food, and zero Ski Patrol involvement this time ;-) Oh, and we found GJM’s long-lost babymaker.
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Asshole Mirror (drivers piss me off)
A road-doofus encountered on the way back from skiing reminded me of this old newsgroup post I made somewhere, so I dug it up: I want an automatically-actuated “asshole mirror”. I keep one in the center console for those special occasions, but it just isn’t the same. It’s for that asshole, you know the one,…
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Reason #32768 why Myspace sucks: Paranoid session validation gone wild!
Ok, so I figured out (one of the reasons) for my long-held assertion that “MySpace.com doesn’t work in any browser”. Short story: On first visit, the site records your browser version and other information. If any of this information changes while you’re surfing, they kick your ass out! Naturally, due to some fun toys on…
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TranceVibe Take Two: So, what are they doing that I’m not doing?
After getting busy with all kinds of other stuff for…heh, a year…, I started thinking back on the Drmn’ TranceVibe project. My grandmaster plan was to “mass” (qty: 20 or so) produce them and see if they’d sell. Anyway, since the original design, a few small cost and manufacturability enhancements have been made: smaller SMD…
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My_beloved__do_you_know.doc.prn.ps.prn.ps.pdf
My dearest MS Word, Thank you again for a wonderful day. You know I’ve always loved your little quirks, like having to ADelete all but the first character of a paragraph I’m replacing, then when I’m finished go back and delete the first character, because as punishment for deviating from this sequence you will change…
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Only in New England…
me: “What idiot puts a PetCo and a PetSmart right next to each other?” JR: “Maybe they’re across the street from each other.” me: “Touche.” (The directions to get to a particular restaurant on it include a “drive past the restaurant, go three miles, pull a U-turn and backtrack three miles” step because there is…
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Identification and Significance
Okay folks, so that day is coming up next week. Normally, I’d assault your eyes with one of my customary valentine’s day rants (or miscellaneous cheese), but instead… This next week I am accepting applications* for a coffee date. For those who do not like coffee… too damn bad! I like coffee. Er, I mean,…
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It’s Comcrapstic!
Yesterday I was going over to GJM’s house to play with some DS networking stuff, so I said “Let me just email you the latest libraries and stuff and I’ll come over.” As I sat waiting, and waiting for only a few megs’ worth of files to send, I realized it would have actually been…
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In the year 64AH…
If I were president, I’d add a regular expression filter to the mass media that replaced every occurence of “In a post-9/11 world…” with “In a post-Hitler world…” as a simple demonstration of ridiculosity. Example: In this post-9/11 world… becomes: In a post-Hitler world, should we allow just any idiot with a radical idea to…
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The Electric Slide: Considered Harmful
So, today I make myself some lunch after some mildly off-pissing car stuff, and figure I’ll read some Slashdot while I eat. Anyway, just idly following links, next thing you know I’m buried deep in PDFs of legal filings. Lawyers nuking security sites by going after their domain registrars with DMCA threats (they can’t lawyer…
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Modern Bombs Don’t Tick
“The sky is falling!” – City of Boston If you haven’t heard the news, today the City of Boston ground to a halt as streets were blockaded, the subway’s Red Line was shut down and bridges were closed for hours. The cause? Turner Broadcasting, as part of an advertising stunt, placed magnetic light-up displays in…
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It’s Not You, It’s Me (or my flapjack of a customer)
So, I pop up from the lab and this horny sales rep has left me a voicemail. “Er, a while back I sampled you an LCD for a project you were working on, ah, just wanted to know, um, how that’s working out you, what the status of your project is, ok, I guess just…
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Using a Peltier cooler to refrigerate a terrarium
Executive summary: Didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Lowered the temp in my tank by about 4 degrees F – and it’s a pretty small tank. As a long-overdue followup to my climate-controlled terrarium, i.e. the actual climate control part, I bonded heat sinks to both sides of a Peltier device (thermoelectric “heat…
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Methinks somebody wants grandkids…
www.sciconnect.com This is for picking up geek chicks, compliments of discover magazine! Give it a try. Dad
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Whither TrashAmp?
The TrashAmp, a project I started while living in Chicago (to give you some idea how long ago that was – late 2003), was to serve as a subtle testament to a disposable society by building a high-power car audio amp entirely out of trash (specifically, electronics waste scavenged from the curb). Things started out…
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Geek Christmas carols – answered
Noels[0]; “The First Noel” for k=[1:3]; it=snow; end; “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…” 0 0 12 25 * cd ~ “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” (Unix crontab entry) tree -i O ./xmess “O Xmess Tree” (okay, that was a bit of a stretch) nice@town# adduser -e 12/26/06 Santa “Santa Claus Is…
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- Das Blinkenlichten – wearable lighting
- Goldmine Electronics LCD pinout (mini-teardown)
- Mosquino: an Arduino-based energy harvesting development board
- Pick and Place Project
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