Category: Interesting Reads

Cell phone gun

This is not the first time I’ve seen something like this, but I suspect folks who don’t work in a security field (my previous life’s work, kinda) might not have. You can check out a video and more details on cellular.co.za.

At first sight it looks like a regular cell phone — same size, same shape, same overall appearance.

But beneath the digital face lies a .22-caliber pistol, a phone gun capable of firing four rounds in quick succession with a touch of the otherwise standard keypad.

(via boingboing)

cellgun.jpg

[tags]Cell phone gun[/tags]

Cory Doctorow podcasts “Return to Pleasure Island”

I’ve mentioned a few times before how much I like Cory Doctorow’s stuff. Here’s Cory podcasting his short story “Return to Pleasure Island” for download under a Creative Commons license.

This is the story of the ogres who run the concession stands on Pleasure Island, where Pinnocchio’s friend Lampwick turned into a donkey. Like much of my stuff, this has a tie-in with Walt Disney World; the idea came to me on the Pinnocchio ride in the Magic Kingdom, in 1993.

[tags]Cory Doctorow, podcast[tags]

Australian copyright office as greedy as American big business

A nice little show of greed, as ripped from boingboing.

Australian schools may have to pay a copyright fee every time a student is told to look at the web, if a plan from the national collecting society is successful. The Copyright Agency pays Australian authors for the photocopying that takes place on schools by randomly sampling the schools annually, collecting $31 million in fees and dispersing them to authors.

Now they say that they deserve to collect for the use of the Web. Despite the fact that there’s an implied license to read Web pages that goes along with publishing them (who puts up a web-page without expecting it to be read?) and despite the fact that the vast majority of pages online weren’t created by Australians, and despite the fact that the vast majority of pages created by Australians weren’t created by professional authors, the agency proposes that it should be able to collect a tax on behalf of all those authors in the world in order to line the pockets of its few lucky members.

And the unfortunate but realistic response from a school representative.

“If it turned out we’d have to pay them, we’d turn the internet off in schools,” the council’s national copyright director Delia Browne said.

[tags]Australian copyright, greed[/tags]

Cat abuse is entertainment?

A cat piano designed in the 17th century makes “music” by poking trapped cats in the rear.  And why would one create such a device (aside from the desire to be cruel to cats, of course)?

In order to raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy.

For more on the inventor, Athanasius Kircher, check out this article.  (via boingboing)

[tags]Cat piano,  Athanasius Kircher, cat abuse[/tags]

The biggest carnivore

We’ll probably continue to get these kinds of updates for a few more decades until we get to the really hard to find giant dinosaurs, I suppose:

Take the report last month that Spinosaurus is now officially the biggest carnivorous dinosaur known to science. This two-legged beast actually strode onto the fossil scene in 1915 when a specimen was described by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer. He figured this theropod (defined as a two-legged carnivore) was bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex, but the original Spinosaurus bones were destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944. So the T. rex reigned as the king size, carnivorous land beast for decades.

[tags]Dinosaurs, paleontology[/tags]

How to read color coded resistors

My father was an electrical engineer.  This is the kind of stuff he knew.  I remember once learning this, but it was probably 20 years ago, so I’ve forgotten how.  Guess I should use the information to bone up on my knowledge I don’t actually use for anything. (via MAKE blog)

Resistors are coded with colored bands in its shell, usually four colors but sometimes you can find five. Each color represent numbers which you can decode to get the exact value. The first three colors are the resistance values and the fourth color represents the tolerance.

[tags]MAKE, resistors, DIY electronics[/tags]

The TCP/IP guide

Sure, 1648 pages is a heck of a lot of reading, but I suspect “The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference” will be considered the new must have networking book.  Not that I’d give away my Douglas E. Comer or W. Richard Stevens networking books (The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 is still great), but I’d like to have this alongside those.  And O’Reilly books are always great.
[tags]TCP/IP, O’Reilly books[/tags]

MAKE blog link dump

So many interesting projects that I can’t write up an article for all of them. Check these out for some pretty neat projects.

Now that’s a lot of reading for you to catch up on.  And me, too.  I’m so far behind on my techie/geek reading.

[tags]MAKEzine, MAKEblog, MAKE, link dump[/tags]

Depression Patch Approved

Well, the folks covered in the following article won’t need this, but I’ll probably find a use for it, personally.

WASHINGTON (AP)—Federal regulators approved the first antidepressant skin patch on Tuesday, providing a different way to administer a drug already used by Parkinson’s disease patients.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the selegiline transdermal patch, agency spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said. The drug belongs to a class of medicines that is rarely a first or even second choice to treat depression.

Shoot. Not a first or second choice? Guess that leaves me out of the likely market. My problems are easily handled by the most mild anti-depressants out there.

The FDA will require the drug to bear a so-called “black-box” warning of the risks of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children and adolescents treated with antidepressants. The drug is meant for use only by adults.

Honestly, I’ve always been surprised that anyone is surprised to hear people who are very depressed have suicidal thoughts when on the strongest anti-depressants. Really, if these people are depressed enough to need the stronger medicines, don’t they already fall in to the group of people likely to have suicidal thoughts? I don’t mean to make light of this, and I certainly don’t know enough about the statistics of various groups to know if there is any real meaning, but it doesn’t come as a shock to me that very depressed people sometimes have suicidal thoughts, even when medicated.

[tags]Anti-depressant, Depression patch[/tags]

The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don’t Use Them

Yeah, I take anti-depressants.  According to this article, I shouldn’t need them.

“Research shows that people who are grateful, optimistic and forgiving have better experiences with their lives, more happiness, fewer strokes, and higher incomes,” according to Easterbrook. “If it makes world a better place at same time, this is a real bonus.”

Hmmmmm.  Have you ever seen Groundhog day?  The scene where Andy McDowell’s character is listing her traits of a perfect man and Bill Murray’s character says “Me. Me. Also me.” comes to mind here.  Only for me, I’d think of the above characteristics and say “Not me.  Not me.  Not me.”

“If you are looking for something to complain about, you are absolutely certain to find it,” Easterbrook told LiveScience. “It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don’t make it. Most people take the path of least resistance. Far too many people today don’t make the steps to make their life more fulfilling one.”

Hey!  Now that’s starting to sound like me.    🙂

One route to more happiness is called “flow,” an engrossing state that comes during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling. It comes less from what you’re doing than from how you do it.

Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California at Riverside has discovered that the road toward a more satisfying and meaningful life involves a recipe repeated in schools, churches and synagogues. Make lists of things for which you’re grateful in your life, practice random acts of kindness, forgive your enemies, notice life’s small pleasures, take care of your health, practice positive thinking, and invest time and energy into friendships and family.

The happiest people have strong friendships, says Ed Diener, a psychologist University of Illinois. Interestingly his research finds that most people are slightly to moderately happy, not unhappy.

Well, I have strong friendships.  It’s just that mine are with the same people I was friends with 20+ years ago or with people I only know online.  But that counts for something, I’m sure.  And look – I’m up there in the list of people who know the feeling of the “flow.”  See, I’m a gamer.  My wife will be happy to know that I know how to be happy.Oh, and according to the article, happy people “…on average have stronger immune systems, are better citizens at work, earn more income, have better marriages, are more sociable, and cope better with difficulties. “  Sounds just like me.  See, this article has already improved my life, my wife’s life, and my marriage.

[tags]Happiness, How to be happy[/tags]

Bird Flu Jumps to Cat in Germany

Well, this can’t be good news. I haven’t kept careful track of the bird flu lately, but I suppose jumping species is never considered a positive thing.

BERLIN (AP)—The deadly strain of bird flu was confirmed Tuesday in a cat in northern Germany, the first time the virus has been identified in a mammal in the 25 nations of the European Union.

[tags]Bird flu[/tags]

Black hole flight simulator

This is so unrelated to anything of interest to most people, I’m not sure I should even post it.  But hey, this is my bandwidth, and I get to put what I want.  So, up goes the story of the black hole flight simulator (New York times web site – registration required).

The “Black Hole Flight Simulator” was created by Andrew Hamilton, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The 23-minute show contains segments that required 90 hours of supercomputer calculation for each on-screen second. You can see the trailer here (and look out for the guy in the canoe).

Wow!  A 23 minute show that required 90 hours of computation for each second displayed?  Let’s see, that’s 23 minutes times 60 second per minute times 90 hours per second showed.  Work that out, and you get something like, ummmm, a whole buncha-lotta-wowza time required to build that (actually, I think it comes to about 16.5 years of computing time required to build the video).

I’m going to have to watch that video when I get some time to sit and watch it all.  Sounds fascinating.  Now, when will they make a game out of this?

[tags]Black hole, Flight simulator, event horizon[/tags]