Archive for the ‘Cool Technology’ Category

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This Message Will Self-Destruct In 10 Seconds

Monday, July 30th, 2007

willselfdestruct.jpg

Here’s a service I’ve wished for on a number of occasions; WillSelfDestruct.com, where you can send an anonymous email that can only be viewed a specified number of times or for a specified amount of time. You just enter the recipient’s email address, a subject, your message, and how you’d like to have it viewed. You can also enter your name, or an alias if you like.

When you hit Send Message, it goes to the recipient, who gets a link to a web page containing your message, along with a counter telling them how long it will be available. Through some kind of trickery, the text can’t be copied or printed. Pretty slick. Might even make them wonder about their sanity.

Not that I’d ever use such a service or anything. Nope. Not me. Maybe my evil twin Skippy, but not me. Nuh-uh.

Posted in Cool Technology, Links | Comments Closed

The RoadBoat

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

Here’s an interesting human-powered vehicle. Christened the RoadBoat — a cute play on names, since it’s powered by four “rowers”, but travels on the road — it was designed and built to set a record for a trans-Canada ride back in 2001.

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We intend to establish a Guinness World Record for traveling from Halifax to Vancouver using only the human power found in a rowing stroke (plus the mechanical advantage of gearing, of course … )

Apparently things went awry early on, and the team decided to bag it. One of the rowers, Kevin Thompson, had this to say about the attempt:

After traveling through the province of Nova Scotia it was determined that the record would not be broken due to lack of averaging an adequate speed to complete in record time. Subsequent to the first day mishap which resulted in a minor accident, the RoadBoat was unable to achieve the necessary average speed, safely, to complete the crossing and it was therefore decided to end the journey early.

Funny they don’t mention anything about that first-day accident on the RoadBoat 2001 rowingacrosscanada.com website. The failure probably stings a little still. The current site, www.rowingacrosscanada.com, is still active, and it looks like a second attempt may be in the works, but there are no details at all. Makes me curious what kind of monstrosity they’ll build for that!

I stumbled across this looking for info on vehicles that are propelled by a rowing motion. While a bit extreme, this thing is kinda cool. There are also a few photos of the building process here. Not much detail, but it looks to be built from all aluminum tubing. And to support four rowers and a stoker/steerer, it’d have to be pretty beefy.

Posted in Cars!, Cool Technology | Comments Closed

The Digital Movie Experience

Saturday, July 21st, 2007

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A couple of weeks ago Caleb and I went to see Ratatouille (great, great movie, by the way), and much to my surprise the theater (the Carmike 7)had installed Christie digital projectors. Wow! What a difference that made! The colors so bright, the details so crisp… Everything was just so… clear. Add to that the elimination of the little signal blip (or whatever they call it) that tells the operators when to switch reels, and the elimination of the annoying little dirt specks you see on the screen.

I realize the digital theater projectors aren’t all that new, but I don’t get out to movies very often, and that was my first exposure to it. When I first heard about them I thought, “oh, no big deal”. But after seeing it for myself, all I can say is, “Wow!” It’s like the difference between an old CRT monitor on a scuzzy old PC and a snazzy new 24 inch iMac. There’s just no comparison.

Tonight, Ian & I went to the Century theater to see Transformers (should’ve waited ’til it hit the cheap theater). I was hoping the Century had also updated their projectors, but they’re still using film. They still charge more than the Carmike though; go figure. The difference was was a real letdown after Ratatouille from a digital projector. I am forever spoiled.

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Cluster Ballooning

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

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When I first saw a post about this over at Neatorama, my first thought was a scene in the ancient movie “The Red Balloon”, where the kid floats away at the end hanging from a bunch of balloons. I may have only seen it once in primary school, but because the images from the movie are so persistent in my mind, it must’ve been shown multiple times.

John Ninomiya, who runs the www.clusterballoon.org website, says that same scene was what inspired a lifetime of ballooning for him, and his pioneering work in the field of cluster ballooning. According to Ninomiya, he’s one of six people in the world doing this, and the only guy in North America. And it looks like he’ll be flying at the Great Plains Balloon Race, right here in Sioux Falls, SD, next weekend! (June 8-10) That would be worth getting up at Oh-dark-thirty in the morning to go watch!

From a quick perusal of his site, it looks like the technology of the sport hasn’t advanced much since Larry Walters’ dramatic attempt in 1982. (was it that long ago? Man, I feel old!) Ninomiya uses standard — but very large — vinyl balloons for this, along with a harness designed for paragliders & other off-the-rack gear. Guess a pioneer has to make do with what’s available and custom fabricate the rest. It does look like Ninomiya takes a bit more of a scientific approach to it than Walters did; he carries ballast up with him to help control ascent & descent, and has a better method of loosing balloons (and reducing lift) than Walters and his pellet gun.

Posted in Cool Technology, Fun! | Comments Closed

Beginner’s Guide To Quicksilver

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Quicksilver

Quicksilver is one of those OS X apps that I could do without, but would rather not. It speeds up many of the things that need to be done on my Macs and makes it so very much easier to get around in the OS. But, as is the case with many great applications, there is so much to Quicksilver that it’s hard to explain, and harder to get the most out of it.

The guys over at Lifehacker have put together a beginner’s guide to using Quicksilver. Even though I’ve been using Quicksilver for a long time, just browsing through the guide tells me that I’ve got a thing or two to learn as well.

Posted in Computers, Cool Technology, Mac Stuff | Comments Closed

The Christian Warrior

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

I’m a Christian. Not just one who happens to be part of a church that happens to ascribe to Christian traditions, but I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ.

A couple of weeks ago at a Bible study, the discussion turned to the persecution of Christians, and that is something that makes me squirm a bit. I think it’s ok to say that I hope I’m never subjected to any real persecution — because I hope that I am not. What Christians experience here in the US in 2007 can’t really be called persecution, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never happen. But if it does happen, I wonder how I might react to it. My fear is that if real persecution ever comes my way, I might fight back. And I wonder if that would be an acceptable reaction, both to the Christian community and to God.

I recall reading not long ago about islands in the South Pacific where Christians experience a great deal of persecution at the hands of Muslims. Often the Muslims would drive away entire villages of Christians, commandeering their property and even killing some. Searching news articles can almost always yield stories of how Christians are persecuted in many parts of the world today. But is it ever appropriate for those Christians to strike back?

Jesus’ example to us was to go like a lamb to the slaughter, to turn the other cheek, to forgive countless times. But if my family is in danger, can I just stand by and not do anything to protect them? Is it God’s intention that we should just allow the bad things to happen?

Then there’s also the issue of living in a place like the US… Today we enjoy a peace that is currently being subsidized in a way by armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. If fighting & killing those who openly attack us — persecute us — is a sin, then is it also a sin to condone and enjoy a peace that is bought with such a price?

I need to think on this a while.

Posted in Cool Technology, Personal Growth | Comments Closed

The Go-Hub

Monday, February 26th, 2007

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I love bikes, and love to ride them. But the trouble with bicycling as a means of everyday transportation is that it takes serious work to get somewhere in a decent amount of time. That serious work makes one sweat, and while I don’t have a problem with sweating per se, there are times when sweating is just not… nice. I don’t know about you but I don’t like smelling myself all day after biking to work, and I’m sure others don’t appreciate it either.

So, I’d really like to get one of these; a Go-Hub electric motor. It’s a motorized assist to make the ride easier… To flatten the hills and make the ride to work (or wherever) much less strenuous (and make me easier to be around throughout the day.) And for the ride home, I’d be free to use it or not; get some exercise or get there fast. While I’m not a treehugger by any stretch of the imagination, I still have a difficult time with the concept of driving 2,000-plus pounds of metal just to get my sorry butt to where I need to go. Most of my trips around town are just me in the car, and if I could do it without having to pay for the gas, all the better.

The Go-Hub is essentially an electric motor built into the hub of a front wheel. It sells for about $550, and comes with the battery pack, throttle, etc… The price sounds a bit steep, but considering that I’d be able to get by without buying gas for weeks in a stretch, I think it’d be worthwhile. The batteries give it a range of 25-30 miles, and recharge via 110V AC in a matter of a few hours.

Now to convince the Chief Financial Officer that this would be a good idea…

Posted in Cool Technology, Fun! | Comments Closed

The Apple PowerCD

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

P1010024

Posted in Computers, Cool Technology | Comments Closed

The Aqueon Fireplace

Sunday, August 7th, 2005


This is pretty incredible; the Aqueon fireplace provides a homey flame using nothing but electricity and water. That’s right, water. No magic involved; the unit uses an electrolysis process to pull hydrogen out of the water, and burns the hydrogen.

I wrote a post on Gadgetopia about this, not knowing a lot about the electrolysis process, and conjectured that it may be possible in the future for the processes efficiencies to be refined to the point that the hydrogen produced could be used to drive the electrolysis process and perhaps produce a surplus of energy. Some bozos responded to my post, thinking I was suggesting some sort of perpetual motion machine. What the???

Am I really misunderstanding the potential of this technology that much?

I did a little digging around on the ‘net tonight & found that the only ones who think that it’s possible to use water to power anything but a pop bottle rocket are the guys hawking conversion kits so you can run your car on water. Great.

I guess it might be possible someday to use hydrogen extracted from water to supply our energy needs, but not real soon.

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