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Saturday, July 20, 2002Can't Openers@ 12 pm | PermaLinkI was looking at a can opener in the grocery store yesterday and there's a fundemental flaw with most of them. There's three pieces that are at issue: the circular blade, the geared, gripping advancer, and the hinge. The blade and the advancer only work well when they remain aligned, right next to each other. The cutting of the top of the can only works smoothly if the force from each side are focused closely together. The mechanism that keeps them aligned is the hinge of the two arms of the can opener. This hinge is made to swing open *very* easily for no particuar reason. It is also very loose and it wobbles so that the alignment between the blades and the advancer slips more and more. It seems to me that a spring assisted mechanism should be used to hold the two pieces together. I think we should look to a scissor based tool where the hinge is stronger, more like a cutting shear, or a pair of pliers. Previously, that same day...Nukes Ahoy@ 11 am | PermaLinkAmy sent me a great link: http://www.mapscience.org/ (nw) which has some great maps to check out. The site shows proposed routes that nuclear waste will take in its travel to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. (Privacy tip: just put in your zip code.) Their use of the Baltimore train tunnel fire is more than a little over the top, but it does point out the fact that there are a number of different scenarios that could play out with this incredibly toxic waste. It's hard to imagine that humans could produce such a deadly toxin and think that the small amount of electricity that it generates would be worth it. The electricity is gone the instant the power plant shuts down. But the toxin will remain for geologic *eras*. It's too bad we haven't found a way to switch that around...
Friday, July 19, 2002Links in e-mail@ 01 pm | PermaLinkOne of my pet projects has been to collect some info on the best way to format links in e-mails so that they are clickable in the widest number of e-mail clients. One of the missing pieces has been AOL's mail client, since I don't have a way to test it. So I was glad to stumble across this article. It goes into detail about how they see most of the AOL mail clients handle the situation. It would be nice if they ahd a chart showing supported methods in each version, but I'll have to wait for that, or figure out some way of doing it for myself...
Tuesday, July 9, 2002Thoughts while staying up too late@ 12 am | PermaLinkGoogle has released a Google Box, a stand alone server that you can basically plug and play into your network and have your own Google inside. That's all lead up to idea number one: The E-Bay box. Have a box that will have the various pieces of crap that your employees are normally selling *outside* of your company's network. Idea number 2? The latest name for my band: "Oss Rolson and His Friends from the Morgue." My Goth band is finally on its way.
Monday, July 8, 2002The Ten Files@ 12 am | PermaLinkI have been working on my iBook (600 MHz, 128 MB ram, 15GB HD, AirPort) with slow progress being made towards feeling comfortable with it. I've been working in OS X, nearly non-stop. The only time I've booted OS 9 was simply to check to see if I could boot OS 9. It's been a bit awkward, to say the least. It's one thing to move to a completely new Operating System. You have the benefit of having everything be differnt, you don't bring much bagage along. But *my* switch to X comes as a studder step, a shift in different directions at different levels. I've brought along a few necessary tools, DragThing chief among them with it's keystroke commands for launching apps. Just today I got Fetch installed (Though 4.0's only a preview release, I'll have to register if I want to keep it) The Dock is a little difficult for me to control yet. I've thrown it up agains thte left side of the screen mostly because I like having the access on the side of the screen, not the bottom, but if it's on the right side it covers up the scroll bars of windows. Beyond that, this is the first time I've had a laptop of my own. Sure i've had this Compaq from work, but I've never done much more than use it as a glorified typewriter for reports with a little bit of HTML development. Now I'm faced with truely bringing the concept of a portable computer into my computing environment. Since my desk is still covered by my B&W G3, I don't sit there unless I'm accessing older files directly, so I've ended up mostly using the laptop from bed, having my mail and web access siting on my make shift night table. I'm reading web sites constantly. History, technology, discussions, opinions, all manner of matter has prevaded my mental environment. I'm not sure if it's a good thing. Ergonomically, I need to figure out some things. My back is still unhappy with most of my positions, and my right wrist remains in a brace for the tendenitus that I've developed over the course of the last few months. Portland is getting some real rain tonight. It sounds wonderful coming down outside our bedroom window. Perhaps I should set down this digital tool and listen for a bit...
Thursday, July 4, 2002BattleBots ho!@ 12 pm | PermaLinkI just came across a great pair of reads in the form of two articles written by a BattleBots builder. His team's bot is quite innovative and it's great reading his workup of the control system. http://www.madoverlord.com/Projects/BATTLEBOT.t http://www.madoverlord.com/projects/tournament.t The second article isn't finished because he's not allowed to announce if he won or not until the show airs later this year. I wish him post-competition luck!
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July 2002
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