Peter Shortland

Kaufmann's wonderful Posographe

2011-12-31T12:34:00.001Z

Kaufmann's wonderful Posographe

Kaufmann’s Posographe is nothing less than an analog
mechanical computer for calculating six-variable functions.
Specifically, it computes the exposure time (Temps de Pose) for
taking photographs indoors or out (depending on which side you use).

The input variables are set up on the six small pointers; the large
pointer then gives you the correct time. The variables are very
detailed, yet endearingly colloquial. For outdoors, they include the

setting -- with values like “Snowy scene”, “Greenery with expanse of

water”, or “Very narrow old street”; the state of the sky --
including “Cloudy and somber”, “Blue with white clouds”, or “Purest
blue”; The month of the year and hour of the day; the illumination
of the subject; and of course the aperture (f-number).
MORE

Travel mug with built in temp gauge

2011-12-25T19:45:00.001Z

What a good idea, a Travel mug with built in temp gauge

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

2011-12-11T16:13:00.001Z

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.

Online Color Challenge

2011-09-13T20:25:00.001+01:00

Online Color Challenge: How well do you see colour?

The Studley tool chest

2011-09-10T16:41:00.001+01:00

Born in 1838 in Massachusetts, Henry O. Studley is best known for
creating the so-called Studley Tool Chest, a wall hanging tool chest
which cunningly holds some 300 tools in a space that takes up about 40
inches by 20 inches of wall space when closed.

Fully Working 4×5 Camera Made Of LEGO Bricks

2011-08-21T12:13:00.001+01:00

Fully Working 4×5 Camera Made Of LEGO Bricks

The camera, named Legotron, uses a 4x5 film back and took over a year (with lapses) to build. Images are quite impressive.

Its equipped with a $40 127mm ƒ4.7 "ebay lens", and can focus by sliding the two boxes that make the camera back and forward.

LEGO 3D Milling Machine

2011-08-19T18:03:00.001+01:00

Lego milling machine

LEGO 3D Milling Machine - "3D Printer"

Chess board made from lenses

2011-07-24T17:21:00.001+01:00

Chess board made from lenses
more

Canadian photographer Todd McLellan's latest series "Disassembly"

2011-05-10T21:19:00.001+01:00

HUH. Magazine - Todd McLellan

Canadian photographer Todd McLellan's
latest series "Disassembly" captures relics of our past in a unique,
dismantled and exposed form. Disassembled items include a typewriter, a
push lawn mower and a rotary phon; each have had every part meticulously
re-arranged - by type, size and function - on a beige surface in an
almost OCD-like manner, resulting in a portrait of an era now left
behind.

It's back... and better than ever! The new Commodore 64

2011-04-10T18:17:00.002+01:00

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

It's back... and better than ever! The new Commodore 64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest nVidia ION2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow.

Books2Barcodes

2011-04-01T20:56:00.001+01:00

http://wonder-tonic.com/books2barcodes/index.php

Books2Barcodes is an ongoing effort to convert all the world's great books to QR codes (2D barcodes). Each work featured here is the entire text of a piece of classic literature translated into several thousand barcodes. With a mobile device equipped with a camera and a barcode-scanning app, you can experience the joy of a great book as read through 800-character fragments on your cellphone.

End Of An Era: Sony Stops Manufacturing Cassette Walkmans

2010-10-23T19:12:00.001+01:00

The company today announced it will stop manufacturing and selling these
devices in Japan – after 30 years. Sony says the final lot was shipped
to retailers in April this year, and once the last units are sold, there
will be no cassette Walkmans from big S anymore.

MORE...

rare wooden books collection

2010-10-11T18:58:00.001+01:00

This rare wooden books collection, at the beginning, was composed by a hundred pieces handmade maybe in the nineteenth century or, considering the style, maybe before.

Most of them were lost or destroyed, so that today collection consists of 56 boxes, modelled like a book, with dimensions of 19 x 12.5 x 3.4 cm, everyone made with the wood of different trees species.

MORE...

Douglas Adam fans take note!

2010-10-10T20:53:00.001+01:00

101010=42 in Binary. Douglas Adam fans take note!

MORE....

Cleaning Pennies with taco sauce

2010-10-06T19:27:00.001+01:00

Taco Bell hot sauce is made from the following ingredients:

Water, Tomato Paste, Jalapeno Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, Spices,

Dehydrated Onions, Xanthum Gum, Sodium Benzoate, and Natural Flavor.

Now I think we can rule out water, but somehow, the other ingredients
clean pennies.

Looking at the tiny amounts of Xanthum Gum, Sodium Benzoate, and Natural
Flavor,

I'm going to rule those out too.

That leaves the following things to create the copper cleaning action:

Tomato Paste, Jalapeno Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, Spices, and Dehydrated
Onions

MORE...

USLHE Traveling Library

2010-10-05T20:59:00.001+01:00

Lighthouses were often time located in remote areas and as such had no access to city services such as libraries, opera houses, entertainment, etc. that most people enjoyed who lived in a town or city. As light keeping was a lonely profession in most cases supplies were brought to them by lighthouse tender ships. One of the items the tender supplied was a library box on each visit as pictured to the left. Library boxes were filled with books and switched from station to station to supply different reading materials to the families.
MORE...

Tech Support Cheat Sheet

2010-09-05T14:27:00.001+01:00

http://xkcd.com/627/

Circuit Diagram

2010-09-05T13:13:00.001+01:00

http://xkcd.com/730/

This Was Done With a Slide Rule

2010-09-05T12:57:00.001+01:00

Digitizing Books One Word at a Time

2010-08-31T21:03:00.001+01:00

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Check out our paper in Science about it (or read more below).

A CAPTCHA is a program that can
tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen
them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web
registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse
from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No
computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots
cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every
day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent.
Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little
puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we
could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly
that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into
"reading" books

more...

Steamroller Print Festival

2010-08-04T19:36:00.001+01:00

The Camera Lens Mug

2010-07-31T20:37:00.001+01:00

A cup of joe that’ll keep you sharp, in-focus, and happy all day long…and those side effects aren’t from the caffeine.

Behold, the Camera Lens Mug, a mug that looks JUST LIKE a Canon 24-105mm lens!

It's equipped with a lens-cap lid, rubber-grip focus and zoom rings, and an auto-focus switch that actually switches

More HERE

a perfect cup of joe

2010-07-23T20:34:00.001+01:00

the team at plaid created this coffee chart that maps out everything from the cafe latte to the miami vice

Make Glow Sticks - The Science

2010-07-22T19:28:00.001+01:00

From NurdRage
We show how to make glow sticks and go through all the chemicals needed as well as how to make different colors. We also talk about the chemistry and scientifically research a proposed mechanism.

To make the glow stick mix together the following:

10mL Diethyl Phthalate (solvent)
3mg of fluorescent dye (see below)
50mg TCPO (see below)
100mg sodium acetate
3mL 30% hydrogen peroxide (add last to start reaction)

The fluorescent dye can be 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene for green, Rubrene for yellow, 9,10-diphenylanthracene for blue, and rhodamine B for red.

TCPO is expensive to buy but can be made for much cheaper by following the directions in our previous video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViJknv...

The chemicals, including the ones to make TCPO were purchased from alfa aesar: http://www.alfa.com

The Rhodamine B and Rubrene dyes were instead purchased from sigma Aldrich: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/

The dyes and TCPO are carcinogenic and gloves should be worn when handling them.

The TCPO and sodium acetate amounts can be varied considerably and still obtain good light. Smaller quantities tend to be dimmer and decay faster, while larger quantities last longer.

For those of you higher level individuals that actually do want to know the mechanism for this process, please refer to this article: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/j...

Your Loc8 Code

2010-07-13T21:07:00.001+01:00

Your Loc8 Code

Loc8 Codes are the first and only All-Ireland Digital Address Code which is a smarter form of postcode. You can now easily find an exact location anywhere on the island of Ireland.

Loc8 Codes can be for your business, your house, your caravan site or even the location of your boot sale or rugby pitch.

Liquid armour 'can stop bullets'

2010-07-12T20:28:00.001+01:00

Liquid armour 'can stop bullets'

A liquid armour has been shown to stop bullets in tests carried out by UK scientists at BAE systems in Bristol.

The researchers have combined this "shear-thickening" liquid with Kevlar to create a new bullet-proof material.

The company is keeping the chemical formula of the liquid a secret, but it works by absorbing the force of the bullet strike and responding to it by becoming much thicker and more sticky.

The BAE scientists describe it as "bullet-proof custard".

eCube® is an Energy-Saving Device for Commercial Refrigerators.

2010-07-09T20:30:00.001+01:00

How eCube® works

eCube® consists of a food simulant contained in a double-skinned enclosure that mimics food temperature at approximately 15mm beneath the surface. With eCube®, the thermostat regulates the refrigeration temperature based upon food temperature rather than air temperature, thereby maintaining food at the proper temperature. When fitted to the thermostat sensor, which controls the compressor, eCube® significantly reduces the frequency of the refrigeration cycles which are now based on food temperature rather than fluctuating air temperature. By using eCube® as a cycle control mechanism, refrigeration cycles last longer but can be reduced by as much as 85%. For example, a Dairy Case cycles 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off = 12 cycles per hour. With eCube®, the cycles change to 8 minutes on, 7 minutes off = 4 cycles per hour; a 66.7% reduction in starts. As the start-up of a refrigerator compressor uses 3 times more power (i.e. start-up 12 amps, run 4 amps) considerable energy savings are achieved. In addition, the more efficient refrigeration cycle leads to a more efficient unit, which then leads to a colder storage area. Consequently, by re-adjusting the thermostat back to its normal temperature settings, there are further substantial energy savings, without compromising food safety and quality.

Accomplishment measured in Decibels

2010-07-01T22:08:00.001+01:00

Accomplishment measured in Decibels

Giant USB Spaghetti Cable Monster Invades Australia

2010-06-20T18:10:00.001+01:00

Giant USB Spaghetti Cable Monster Invades Australia
from GIZMODO
It’s the Waubra Wind Farm, owned by Spanish power company Acciona. The cables are the tracks:

How Scientists See the World

2010-06-12T19:46:00.001+01:00

http://abstrusegoose.com/275

How Scientists See the World

The first picture of a person

2010-06-11T21:56:00.001+01:00

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, IIIe arrondissement, Daguerreotype. The first picture of a person. The image shows a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show. Note that the image is a mirror image.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre.jpg

Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station

2010-06-01T11:57:00.001+01:00

Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station

From gypsyguide.com
Muggles and wizards alike will recognize Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station as the departure point for students on the Hogwarts Express. Whether you are headed off to school for the first time, or just want to stop by for a quick photo op, a little schooling (but no magic) is required to find the fabled platform.

Why do I have visions of kids running into the wall?

Work starts in £15m plan to get Concorde flying

2010-05-31T15:24:00.001+01:00

The engines on a French Concorde are to be examined as the first move in a £15m project aiming to get the supersonic passenger jet back in the air. MORE...

Most Mad Scientists Are Just Mad Engineers

2010-05-28T19:57:00.001+01:00

The Third Bit

Chair out of letters

2010-05-18T19:27:00.001+01:00

So designer Eric Ku made this chair out of the letters in the word chair, so you can sit while you spell.
MORE...

The status quo of electric cars: better batteries, same range

2010-05-03T12:06:00.000+01:00

The status quo of electric cars: better batteries, same range
Electric motors and batteries have improved substantially over the past one hundred years, but today's much hyped electric cars have a range that is - at best - comparable to that of their predecessors at the beginning of the 20th century. Weight, comfort, speed and performance have eaten up any real progress. We don't need better batteries, we need better cars.

MORE...

Which mode

2010-04-21T21:00:00.000+01:00

Tooltime Flatware

2010-03-31T20:50:00.000+01:00

Tooltime Flatware

dippold pinhole camera tutorial

2010-03-21T19:54:00.000Z

dippold pinhole camera tutorial

Designing a radio with a single type of transistor

2010-02-27T11:29:00.000Z

What do you do once you are already a skilled radio designer and restorer? Well, if you are Greg Charvot, you decide to build a shortwave radio using a single type of transistor as an active element. Normally, one would use number of different transistors, each designed to handle different amounts of power and amplifying bandwidth. Limiting yourself to a single type may seem like a mental exercise today (pun intended), but was apparently much more common back when transistors weren't easy to come by, so Greg isn't completely off his rocker. Also, by only using one kind of part, it should make repairs much easier.

MORE

The Terminalscope is a full, bidirectional serial terminal

2010-02-26T21:30:00.000Z

The Terminalscope is a full, bidirectional serial terminal that uses a PS/2 keyboard for input and displays 54x24-character output on an oscilloscope or XY display. It can be connected to a PC via USB-to-TTL adapter or directly to another microcontroller.

Features include:

7-bit ASCII character set plus box-drawing characters
Flicker-free 60Hz picture
Most ANSI/VT100 escape sequences interpreted
Reverse video attribute supported
All your favorite ncurses terminal programs (vi, nano, top, links, mc, irssi, etc.) display fine
Graphical configuration menu
Selectable baud rate (2400-38400), data bits, parity, and stop bits
Two configuration profiles (stored in EEPROM) quickly selectable with an external switch

Big Scary Laser

2010-02-18T20:25:00.000Z

Big Scary Laser
Do not look into beam with remaining eye
From

Mike's Electric Stuff

Sticky Moments

2010-02-11T20:48:00.000Z

Sticky Moments

No Parking

2010-02-03T20:32:00.000Z

No Parking

This sign is brilliant. I love the last line "No Pah King hee U hi ka. Tenksa lot". I also love that the message is different for each language.

fractal-like Lichtenberg figures frozen in acrylic blocks by Bert Hickman

2010-01-26T20:40:00.000Z

fractal-like Lichtenberg figures frozen in acrylic blocks by Bert Hickman

A Piece of My Heart

2010-01-21T18:44:00.004Z

I cannot even start to tell you how proud I am of this. This is the new book by my wife Kemberlee. All I can say is, go and buy here or here

Light fantastic: World's oldest lightbulb still burning bright after 109 years

2010-01-19T20:46:00.000Z

The world's oldest light bulb has been burning for 109 years - so little wonder it has a fan club with thousands of members and its own website.

As EU rules deny householders the right to use traditional filament bulbs, the so-called 'Centennial Light' has been on almost constantly since 1901.

It holds pride of place in Fire Station 6, in Livermore, northern California.

100 games cupcake game

2010-01-09T21:20:00.000Z

100 cupcakes. Each one depicts a game.

Frozen Grand Canal

2010-01-09T18:15:00.004Z

Pictures of the Grand Canal at Bell Harbour, Monasterevin, Kildare, Ireland taken on 9 January 2010 during the big freeze up. I particularly like the footprints across the snow (water). Some brave (or very drunk) person decided to cross the canal while it was covered in snow. There is no way they could have known the condition of the ice under the snow!

Light Touch interactive projector turns any flat surface into a touchscreen

2010-01-07T19:59:00.002Z

Light Touch interactive projector turns any flat surface into a touchscreen

Light Touch™ is an interactive projector that instantly transforms any flat surface into a touch screen. It frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, allowing users to interact with that content just as they do on their hand held devices – using multi-touch technology.

Light Touch™ has Holographic Laser Projection (HLP™) technology inside which creates bright, high-quality video images in WVGA resolution. Integrated infrared sensors detect motion and turn the projected image into a 10.1″ virtual touch screen, so the user can control the projector and interact with applications simply by touching the image.

A CES Innovations Honoree in both the Media Player and Personal Electronics categories, the “Light Touch” from the house of Light Blue Optics is an interactive projector that featuring multi-touch technology turns any flat surface into a touchscreen. Liberating the multimedia content from the small screen, thanks to Holographic Laser Projection (HLP) technology, the Light Touch produces bright, high-quality video images in WVGA resolution, so you could access the content as you do on other portable devices. Moreover, you can control the projector and interact with applications by touching the image with your finger, as it comes integrated with infrared sensors which transform the projected image into a 10.1″ virtual touch-sensitive display. Be it retail, living or workplace, you can interact with multimedia content and create your own environment with minimum fuss.

2010 Bubble Calendar...

2010-01-05T23:47:00.000Z

2010 Bubble Calendar...

"Invisible" semi-trailer

2009-12-28T11:07:00.000Z

Invisible" semi-trailer

Geektastic wall clock

2009-12-27T12:28:00.001Z

Geektastic wall clock

Square Gears.

2009-12-24T16:59:00.001Z

Non circular gears are strange.
More

Brain on the Sistine Chapel?

2009-12-19T22:12:00.000Z

Brain on the Sistine Chapel?

Wooden Binary marble adding machine

2009-11-21T13:54:00.001Z

Woooden Binary marble adding machine

Professor pioneers DIY adjustable glasses that do not need an optician

2009-11-16T20:25:00.001Z

It was a chance conversation on March 23 1985 ("in the afternoon, as I recall") that first started Josh Silver on his quest to make the world's poor see. A professor of physics at Oxford University, Silver was idly discussing optical lenses with a colleague, wondering whether they might be adjusted without the need for expensive specialist equipment, when the lightbulb of inspiration first flickered above his head.

What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be "tuned" by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them? MORE

3D Mandelbulb

2009-11-12T19:54:00.001Z

It's found by following a relatively simple math formula. But in the end, it's still only 2D and flat - there's no depth, shadows, perspective, or light sourcing. What we have featured in this article is a potential 3D version of the same fractal. For the impatient, you can skip to the nice pics, but the below makes an interesting read (with a little math as well for the curious). MORE

A children’s toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips

2009-11-10T20:21:00.001Z

A children’s toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips
In 2006, Michelle Khine arrived at the University of California's brand-new Merced campus eager to establish her first lab. She was experimenting with tiny liquid-filled channels in hopes of devising chip-based diagnostic tests, a discipline called microfluidics. The trouble was, the specialized equipment that she previously used to make microfluidic chips cost more than $100,000--money that wasn't immediately available. "I'm a very impatient person," says Khine, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine. "I wanted to figure out how I could set things up really quickly." MORE

Australian town bans bottled water

2009-09-27T23:14:00.001+01:00

BUILDINGS were evacuated, a street was cordoned off and a bomb disposal team called in after workmen spotted a suspicious object.

But the dangerous-looking weapon turned out to be the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, made famous in the 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Celebrate Pi Day!

2009-03-13T20:44:00.000Z

Celebrate Pi Day!

Pi, Greek letter (), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535... Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th.

The mystery of Ireland's worst driver

2009-02-21T14:46:00.001Z

Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country's most reckless driver have emerged, the Irish Times reports.

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

Would you prefer to live in a place with more McDonald's or more Starbucks?"

2009-02-21T12:30:00.001Z

Would you prefer to live in a place with more McDonald's or more Starbucks?

McDonald's and Starbucks are the yin and yang of franchise food and drink. While both are iconic American brands, each appeals to different lifestyles, budgets and, yes, even political ideologies.

How different? A Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey on where Americans would like to live included the following question: "Just for fun: Would you prefer to live in a place with more McDonald's or more Starbucks?"

Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary

2009-02-20T21:43:00.001Z

Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary

1881 Edition

A DESCRIPTION OF TOOLS, INSTRUMENTS, MACHINES, PROCESSES.
AND ENGINEERING; HISTORY OF INVENTIONS;
GENERAL TECHNOLOGICAL VOCABULARY;
AND
DIGEST OF MECHANICAL APPLIANCES IN SCIENCE AND THE ARTS.

BY EDWARD H. KNIGHT,
CIVIL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER, ETC. - 1872, 1876, 1881

Truckloads of hard disks

2009-02-14T17:02:00.001Z

Truckloads of hard disks

Which is the fastest way to send 500 gigabytes of data? The performance of internet connections compared with a parcel service, a hiker, a car and a carrier pigeon.

The Great British Sandwich

2009-01-06T18:23:00.001Z

The Great British Sandwich

Help build the world's tallest sandwich

Dylan Thomas - Random poem generator

2009-01-01T15:07:00.001Z

From BBC Website

Dylan Thomas - Random poem generator

It's
said that if an infinite number of monkeys were each given typewriters
for an infinite number of years, they'd come up with the complete works
of William Shakespeare. We wondered if the same would apply to the
works of Dylan Thomas.

However, being sceptical about the idea
of monkey literature, we looked instead for a more efficient way to
amuse ourselves. And so the Dylan Thomas random poem generator was born.

Simply
hit the link to make a new poem, which will appear below. We can't
guarantee it'll make sense, but the results can certainly be
interesting!

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

2008-12-31T15:08:00.001Z

The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

This is the world's largest extant collection of anatomically correct
fabric brain art. Inspired by research from neuroscience, dissection
and neuroeconomics, our current exhibition features three quilts with
functional images from PET and fMRI scanning and a knitted brain. The
artists are Marjorie Taylor and Karen Norberg. Techniques used include
quilting, applique, embroidery, beadwork, knitting, and crocheting.
Materials include fabric, yarn, metallic threads, electronic components
such as magnetic core memory, and wire, zippers, and beads.

Unscrambling an army of colours

2008-12-14T15:19:00.001Z

An episode of Dad's Army is the first beneficiary of software to recapture colour from archive black and white film

Sunbathing in the living room: oven stoves and heat walls

2008-12-07T17:23:00.001Z

Sunbathing in the living room: oven stoves and heat walls

Oven
stoves are greener, more efficient, healthier, safer and cosier than
all modern heating systems. Why are they gone and how do we get them
back?

An oven stove is a very efficient and robust oven
that radiates heat all day. In the US it was introduced only 20 years
ago, but in Europe the technology is almost one thousand years old.
Especially in Russia, Scandinavia and Central Europe the oven stove has
a long and rich tradition.

Obsolete Skills

2008-02-20T21:00:00.001Z

Scooby came up with the idea to make a list of 'obsolete skills.' He describes these skills as things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us, and provided few examples including

More at: Obsolete Skills

An artist or an ape?

2008-02-09T18:58:00.001Z

Some of the images displayed in the below link are masterpieces of
abstract art, created by great artists. The rest were painted by an
ape. Can you tell which is which?

An artist or an ape?

How to Slow Down Now (Please Read Slowly)

2008-01-13T22:59:00.001Z

How to Slow Down Now (Please Read Slowly)
zenhabits.net

In our rush-aholic world slowing down seems subversive. In the workplace we have to be seen to be working. Even though doing a task more slowly can often produce a result faster, many of us get caught up in unnecessary meetings and tasks. You may be suffering from too much speed. After all, you are reading this. We humans are not always-on, efficient machines that can run seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Burning the candle at both ends results in, well, burnout.

Humans need rests, relaxation, and recreation. We need time to think about things, to clear the mind, and to have fun. But to a person overburdened with claims on her time, fun seems only a distant remembered state of mind.

Slowing down is a way to incubate, conserve, and harvest our energy, not about relief from boredom by just watching more TV or going shopping. You may have to confront boredom at first. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.
More

2007 Darwin Awards

2008-01-13T12:28:00.001Z

2007 Darwin Awards

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

Public Domain Books Reprints Service - PublicDomainReprints.org

2008-01-11T19:46:00.001Z

PublicDomainReprints.org
An experimental non-commercial project to re-print public domain books

This is an experiment to see what the demand for reprints of public domain books would be. This free service can take a book from any of the supported sites such as the the Internet Archive, Google Books or Universal Library (books in public domain ONLY) and reprint it using Lulu.com. Books like 'David Crockett: his life and adventures' and 'The true Benjamin Franklin' can be yours at a click of a mouse.

4 New 'Blimp' Designs Bring Return of the Airship

2008-01-06T19:45:00.001Z

Popular Mechanics

Always on the verge of a seeming comeback, airships are back in the spotlight, touting new technologies. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency recently announced funding for an innovative, ballast-free airship technology created by Aeros Aeronautical Systems, based outside Los Angeles. The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings, Aeros says. It hopes to end the program with a test flight demonstrating the system. Other companies are planning their own first flights within the next few years. Each has a design that it promises will launch a new era of lighter-than-air transportation.

More...

the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci

2008-01-01T21:40:00.001Z

the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci

Wordsmiths, avoid these words..

2008-01-01T18:26:00.001Z

Wordsmiths, avoid these words..

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A "surge" of overused words and phrases formed a "perfect storm" of "post-9/11" cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university's annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.

Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics.

The contributors gave first prize to the phrase "a perfect storm," saying it was numbingly applied to virtually any notable coincidence.

"Webinar" made the list as a tiresome non-word combining Web and seminar that a contributor said "belongs in the same school of non-thought that brought us e-anything and i-anything."

Similarly, the list-makers complained about the absurd comparisons commonly phrased "x is the new y," as in "(age) 70 is the new 50" or "chocolate is the new sex." "Fallacy is the new truth," commented one contributor.

Some words and phrases sagged under the weight of overuse, contributors said, citing the application of "organic" to everything from computer software to dog food.

In the same vein, decorators offering to add "pop" with a touch of color need new words, the list-makers said.

Such phrases as "post 9/11" and "surge" have also outlived their usefulness, they said. Surge emerged in reference to adding U.S. troops in Iraq but has come to explain the expansion of anything.

Annals of Improbable Research

2007-12-30T20:25:00.001Z

The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) is a magazine printed on genuine paper, and also in digital form on the web. It's packed with genuine, improbable research culled from more than 20,000 science, medical, and technical, and academic journals.

Heat your house with car tyres and earth

2007-12-30T20:18:00.001Z

Low-tech Magazine

A dirt
cheap and 100 percent ecological house that has all the comforts of an ordinary
home, without being connected to the electricity grid, waterworks, sewer system
or the natural gas network. It does exist, but in most countries, building one
is not allowed.

An Earthship
is a completely self-sufficient house that has a natural temperature regulation,
without the use of a heating system. The building also generates its own
electricity, collects and filters its own drinking water and cleans its own
effluent water. The house is partly buried into the earth and is constructed mainly
with waste materials; car tyres, aluminium cans and glass bottles. This
low-tech building approach is ecologically as well as economically
advantageous.

This
autumn, the British coastal city of Brighton approved the construction of 16 Earthships.
It’s the first time that a European city council has given builders the green
light to mass construct this radical ecological housing form. In the United States nearly one thousand Earthships have
been built, most of them in the desert of New Mexico.

Email In the 18th Century

2007-12-24T14:01:00.001Z

Email In the 18th Century

Slashdot Article

Low-tech Magazine

More than
200 years ago it was already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the speed of an aeroplane – wireless
and without need for electricity.

Cooking With Booze

2007-12-11T21:06:00.001Z

Cooking With Booze, the book, was published in the UK in October 2007, in a very traditional form. But it’s a book that couldn’t have happened without the web, so here it is: the complete text of CWB, online for all.

The Power of Love

2007-12-08T16:05:00.001Z

The Power of Love

Written by the love of my life! Go buy this book.

Computer Stupidities By Topic

2007-11-24T18:05:00.001Z

The following is a large collection of stories and anecdotes about clueless
computer users.

http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

Very Short Introductions

2007-11-24T17:33:00.001Z

http://www.oup.co.uk/general/vsi/

Ideal for train journeys, holidays, and as a quick catch-up for busy people who want something intellectually stimulating, Very Short Introductions combine authoritative analysis, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make often challenging topics highly readable.

25 Photographs Taken at the Exact Right Time

2007-11-03T15:36:00.001Z

25 Photographs Taken at the Exact Right Time

You've got the whole Internet on this page

2007-10-30T20:17:00.001Z

It's a map of the entire Internet. At the moment it displaying the
owner of each IP address (grey boxes), and which IP addresses are
listed on the Spamhaus XBL blacklist (red dots).

what happens if you assign a colored pixel to each decimal of pi?

2006-10-27T22:00:00.000+01:00

what happens if you assign a colored pixel to each decimal of pi?

Making a Watch by Hand

2006-09-04T23:02:00.000+01:00

In these days of “fast” and “convenient” He decided to commence a work of “painstaking” and “craftsmanship”, making His own wristwatch.