Category: Useless knowledge

Information you have no need for. Ever. Usually about me, but possibly about other trivial crap in the world.

How a Fireworks Magician Tames Dynamite

Here’s a pretty cool old article at Modern Mechanix. I just hate that I didn’t see it in time to post for the July 4th holiday. It’s a Modern Mechanix magazine 1934 article about how fireworks speciailists deal with dynamite in a safe manner.

Flaming dynamite and exploding mortars are the chief tools of the fireworks expert. In this vivid, intimate story one of the aces of the fireworks army takes you behind the scenes to reveal, for the first time, the thrills and dangers of his roaring trade.

MILLIONS of Americans thrill yearly to the glittering wheels, flaming rockets and spectacular bombs of the giant fireworks displays; but the men who fire them are the men nobody knows—the world’s most mysterious showmen. . . .“One of the important things to keep in mind about fireworks,” said Briese, “is the difference between display work and the over-the-counter business—that is, the sale of firecrackers, pin wheels, rockets and the – like to the consumer. Accidents are far less frequent in display work because trained men do the firing.

“The noise-makers are the most dangerous pieces. In fact, a stick of dynamite is about the most hazardous unit we employ.

. . .

“The worst accidents in the fireworks business occur at the factories but they are rare now. Only small quantities of material are Handled at a time and most of the work is done in isolated sheds, spotted over a . wide area. These sheds are of flimsy construction. If an explosion does occur, the walls and roof give way, reducing the shock to any persons inside. The big display sets with all their sparks and fire may look hazardous but they are not as dangerous as the simple sticks of dynamite and the bombs. A big display may contain a ton of material but only 300 or 400 pounds of this may be explosive powder. Chemicals make up the balance of the material; and whereas they’ll burn, of course, they won’t explode violently.

. . .

How Displays Are Fired

“Shooters wear no special safety equipment, not even goggles.. The firing is done with a ‘port fire’ a five-foot flare made of two rocket sticks spliced together. It burns about five minutes and gives plenty of brilliant light so the operator can see the ‘match,’ or fuse, where the piece is set off. Sometimes part of the set doesn’t go off because of a broken connection. We keep watch for this and reach up with a port fire and start it going.

Fascinating. A very good, if somewhat lengthy, read on how fireworks shows are (or were in 1934 at least) put together.

[tags]Fireworks, Modern Mechanix, Dynamite[/tags]

Radical new technology: “Carryphone”

(via Modern Mechanix)

I’m not too sure I buy into the idea of a phone which you can carry with you. But the folks at Popular Science thought in 1947 that this was a good idea – at least good enough to get an article about it.

Engineers med_carryphone.jpgand trainmen can keep in constant touch with their own crews or talk with the crews of other trains with the “Carry -phone,” a portable telephone announced by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The device uses railroad tracks or wires as its communication channels, but transmits and receives messages through the air by induction, using a large metal loop.

So, what do you think?  Could people ever decide to carry around phones to help them keep in touch?

[tags]Carry-Phone, Modern Mechanix[/tags]

On Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

A recent post at Tingilinde pointed this one out.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia is the fear that originates in the Biblical verse Revelation 13:18 which indicates that the number 666 is the Number of the Beast, linked to Satan or the Anti-Christ. Outside the Christian faith, the phobia has been further popularized as a leitmotif in various horror films.

[tags]Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, Phobias[/tags]

Joystiq’s top 10 gaming top 10 lists

Mocking all the recent top 10 gaming lists, Joystiq has posted its top 10 list of top 10 lists.  Here are a few of the list items that I liked.

So, check out the top 10 list of top 10 gaming lists, and then check out the lists themselves (if that makes sense to you).

[tags]Joystiq, Top 10 lists, Gaming[/tags]

Cat bathing as a martial art

I wish I could remember where I first saw this link. If whoever initially posted it sees it here, please understand I’d attribute it if I could recall where I got it. That said, please go read the hilarious (to me) guide to bathing a cat.

Some people say cats never have to be bathed. They say cats lick themselves clean. They say cats have a special enzyme of some sort in their saliva that works like new, improved Wisk – dislodging the dirt where it hides and whisking it away.

I’ve spent most of my life believing this folklore. Like most blind believers, I’ve been able to discount all the facts to the contrary – the kitty odors that lurk in the corners of the garage and dirt smudges that cling to the throw rug by the fireplace.

The time comes, however, when a man must face reality; when he must look squarely in the face of massive public sentiment to the contrary and announce: “This cat smells like a port-a-potty on a hot day in Juarez.”

. . .

Know that a cat has claws and will not hesitate to remove all the skin from your body. Your advantage here is that you are smart and know how to dress to protect yourself. I recommend canvas overalls tucked into high-top construction boots, a pair of steel-mesh gloves, an army helmet, a hockey face mask and a long-sleeve flak jacket.

Use the element of surprise. Pick up your cat nonchalantly, as if to simply carry him to his supper dish. (Cats will not usually notice your strange attire. They have little or no interest in fashion as a rule. If he does notice your garb, calmly explain that you are taking part in a product-testing experiment for J.C. Penney.)

More at the site linked. Well worth the couple of minutes it takes to read, I think.

[tags]Pet Rescue, Cat bathing[/tags]

Whoa! Dust art

This link comes via Bill Harris (at Dubious Quality), who got it from Brian Pilnick.  Head over the Statesman.com and view the awesome dust art done by Scott Wade on the rear window of his Mini Cooper (a car, by the way, which I would love to have for myself).  The images are also available to purchase, but I haven’t followed the link to see exactly what/how you get these.

I have no sample images, because they are all contained in a Flash viewer, and I don’t have a Mozilla extension installed to let me capture Flash output.

[tags]Dust Art[/tags]

10 manliest games of all time

(via 4ColorRebellion)

In a recent required reading post, the folks at 4 Color Rebellion linked readers up to a listing of the 10 manliest games of all time.  While what 10 games are manliest really isn’t worth knowing, the reasons behind the games making the list is sometimes worth checking out.  Here are a couple that caught my eye.

#3: Custer’s Revenge
System: Atari 2600
Developer: Mystique
Year of Release: 1982

Had Custer’s Revenge come out in the robot-heavy early 1990’s it probably would have been called “Rape Simulator 2000”. That’s right, this is the only game in the history of the interactive entertainment (to my knowledge) where the goal is to rape a helpless woman! While we don’t condone rape here at Arthur’s Hall, it suddenly becomes pretty damn harmless (not to mention hilarious) once you put it in the context of a Atari 2600 video game that was released over 20 years ago.

The gameplay is simple… you are a naked and horny General Custer with a big fat 4-bit boner. On the far right of the screen is a naked Indian maiden tied to a stake. The goal is to have sex with her as much as possible without getting hit by the arrows falling from the sky. The action button is the “rape button” and can be pressed once you work your way over to the maiden to ravage her. If you rape her for two long, you will no doubt be hit by the falling arrows. It’s best to move away and wait for an opening to rape her some more. You are awarded points for every thrust of course.

Yes, this is sick and depraved, and whoever programmed this game should probably be sent to prison. Still, who else would have had the balls to make a game like this? The whole concept is just insane. Custer’s Revenge just might be the most politically incorrect thing I’ve ever witnessed, and that makes it manly as hell.

Yup.  Sick and depraved.  I’ve never even played the game, but the description sure makes it sound tasteless.  Fortunately, the video quality of the 2600 wasn’t enough to really show this disturbing game in its full, um, glory.

#6: Ikaruga
System: Multi System (Arcade, Dreamcast, Gamecube)
Developer: Treasure
Year of Release: 2000, 2002, 2003

There is something really primeval and manly about those old-school space shooters. I’m talking about great games like R-Type, Gradius, and Sidearms. They were simple, impossibly difficult, and quite demanding when it came to old-fashioned pattern memorization… a very manly trait indeed.

Ikaruga is quite likely the greatest space shooter ever designed. It is impossibly hard, dense, and one of the greatest and most meticulously designed video games ever created. Ikaruga takes the ideas of decades of vertical and horizontally scrolling space shooters, improves on them, and then turns them on their head.

There is more to this game’s description.  Just in case you aren’t familiar with Ikaruga, know that it is considered one of the hardest old-style scrolling shooters ever made.  I’ve looked for this game, but never found it at a price I could afford.  Sadly, it wasn’t highly available in the US.

One final note about the article – Contra is listed as the #1 manliest game ever.  I won’t argue yes or no on this, but I will mention that the latest Official XBox Magazine includes the news that Contra will be available for the XBox360 in the near future.  I don’t have the magazine in front of me now to check the details (and I skipped reading it initially except for the headline), but I’m guessing it’s an XBox Live title, and probably available in classic (i.e., original) mode and some enhanced graphics mode.  So if you missed it first time around, you should have a chance soon to play this great game.

[tags]Manly, Gaming[/tags]

Worlds first instant camera

Well, I don’t think this idea of nearly instant viewing of your photos will ever catch on, but the folks at Modern Mechanix have a scan from an old article trumpeting this new-fangled camera from Polaroid that gives finished, dried photos in 60 seconds. Why, in my day, we had to wait days – sometimes weeks – to get our photos. All you crazy kids and your instant-this and instant-that.

cropped-polaroid.JPG

YOUR present camera performs only one of many steps—developing, fixing, printing, and so on—involved in making a photograph. Edwin H. Land, 38-year-old president of the Polaroid Corporation, has invented a one-step process in which the camera does everything. With his camera, you snap the shutter and turn a knob; 60 seconds later you have a finished, dry print. The Land camera takes its pictures in the conventional way, but inside it, in addition to the film roll, there is a roll of positive paper with a pod of developing chemicals at the top of each frame. Turning the knob forces the exposed negative and the paper together through rollers, breaking the pod and spreading the reagents evenly between the two layers as they emerge from the rear of the camera. Clipped off, they can be peeled apart a minute later.

Ordinary chemicals are used, but the negative is not transparent and light is not required for printing. The unexposed portions of silver halide are transferred from the negative to form the positive image.

Land says that ordinary transparent film can be adapted to one-step photography, but he sees no need for it. If additional prints are desired, the easiest way is to make additional exposures. If necessary, the original print can be rephotographed.

[tags]Polaroid, Instant camera, Modern Mechanix[/tags]

US updates Iraq “Most-Wanted” list – no playing cards this time

CNN has a story about the US making a new Iraq’s most wanted list.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraq unveiled a list of the country’s most-wanted fugitives Sunday, including Saddam Hussein’s wife and daughter.

Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri tops the list, which Iraqi officials said contains 41 names.

Al-Duri was deputy commander of Iraq’s armed forces under Hussein and was No. 6 on the U.S. military’s list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials that was released in 2003. He is the highest- ranking figure from that U.S. list not to have been captured or killed.

At only 41 people now, this isn’t enough to make a new deck-of-cards. But now we get Hussein’s wife and daughter in the list.

Hussein’s daughter and first wife — Raghad Saddam Hussein and Sajidah Khairallah Tilfah Hussein — are Nos. 16 and 17, respectively.

Raghad Hussein lives in Jordan, where she and her sister were granted asylum. She has been helping orchestrate her father’s defense as he faces war crimes charges in an Iraqi court.

I don’t see an easy way around that Jordanian asylum thing, though. That lady might be tough to get.

[tags]Iraq, Most Wanted, Hussein[/tags]

Good God, Microsoft image “viewer” is retarded

While looking over some of my pictures from Ireland, I rotated a couple of them in the Windows image and fax viewer program (a system on which I cannot load new, better software for this task, so I was using the default).  There was a warning about the image possibly losing visual quality as a result of the rotation.  I said that was OK, looked at the re-oriented image, and moved on.  When I closed the image viewer, I found my thumbnail images were actually updated/changed by changes I made in the viewer program!  Upon opening the images again, I see that they are indeed changed from the originals.
I never said that I wanted to save the images after roatating them, as far as I know, but they were saved any way.  Fortunately, this is a copy of the directory containing the original images, so I haven’t lost anything.  Still, even with all the stupid things I suffer through while using Microsoft software, I never expected an image viewer to overwrite an image after I changed the displayed image so I could see it better.

[tags]Microsoft, Image viewer[/tags]

Virtual LEGOs on your Mac

Well, until the company that controls the name comes in and forces a change to the description, Bricksmith is described simply as “virtual Lego modeling for your Macintosh.” And checking out the pictures, you can see that the description pretty well covers it. It’s a legally free application for developing LEGO look-alike buildings on recent model Macs.  After you get done building your virtual world LEGO-style, be sure to download and use L3P to convert the model into a POVray description file.  This will give you some extra-pretty images (after running them through POVray) that look more realistic than non-L3P converted images.
Shovelworld.jpg

[tags]LEGO, Virtual LEGOs, POVray, L3P[/tags]