Into the Void

Neowin Giveaway >> 31 Days of the Dragon

If you haven’t heard about the HP 31 Days of the Dragon, hear about it. They’re giving away a kick-@55 computer every day for 31 days. Neowin wanted to get folks to participate so I generated an mp3 about what I’d do if I had a dragon. Which I don’t.

The first thing I thought of was Puff the Magic Dragon. Most of the folks who were around for that whiny little gem now pretend that they never puffed, or if they did, they didn’t inhale. Trust me, guys, your mom and dad - or grandma and grandpa - burned enough rope to reach Colombia and back. They already [b]had[/b] their dragon and they traded it in for an Escalade.

So then I thought of the Dragonriders of Pern. It had its moments, but all-in-all I want a dragon, not a horse with wings. If I wanted a horse with wings I’d get a Unicorn - or is that a Pegasus? Well, it would have to be the one that doesn’t need for me to be pure of heart.

How about the dragon in The Hobbit? Smog was it? No, Smaug! Jewel-encrusted underbelly and all. If I had that sucker and his treasure I could buy a laptop the size of New Jersey. Too late, that little bugger Frottage or Frodo or whatever his name was killed Smaug, took the loot, and wasted it all on half-pints. And beer. Not a bad deal, actually.

I briefly considered that Robo-dragon in Dr. No, but even as a kid it didn’t frighten me. I need something really scary.

And then I thought of it! Here’s my dragon and what I would do with it. Kneel before me!
the_lesliator.mp3

– The Lesliator

How to Make a Cat Bed from an Old Sweater - wikiHow

I have streamlined the process in the above WikiHow article. It saves a half hour and $5 per cat bed, and the cat likes it just as much.

1. Throw an old sweater on the floor.

Sharp Deutschland: 108 Zoll: Sharp präsentiert den größten LCD-TV der Welt

Say no More.

National Geographic Self-powered Emergency Radio

Every summer, Mr. X does what he calls “The Gathering of the Flashlights.” A leftover habit from our Philadelphia Folk Festival and camping days, The Gathering is Mr. X’s ritual of collecting all the flashlights in the house and replacing batteries and bulbs.

Well, National Geographic emailed me an ad for the gem pictured above - the National Geographic Self-powered Emergency Radio. What self-respecting engineer wouldn’t want a flashlight with a hand-crank? Let’s face it, folks, Green is more than a bumper sticker. 90-seconds of cranking gives an hour worth of battery for the radio. No fumbling in drawers in the dark trying to find the right size battery.

Ok, so National Geographic is more impressed with the radio aspect. And it’s a cell phone battery charger. It even gets international shortwave radio bands.

Oh, get this - it also has a red flashing beacon and a siren.

I think I’ll get the National Geographic Self-powered Emergency Radio for Mr. X’s birthday.

Fortunately he has no interest in anything other than flashlights so he’s not likely to read this.

Create your very own Semacode tag.

What is Semafox? Semafox is an easy way to create a smart 2D barcode (aka a semacode) using your web browser. There’s nothing to install or uninstall. Bonus… the QRCode reader from KAYWA can decode it.

As always, my search for this item resulted in something totally unexpected, in this case a Ruby on Rails book called BLiXy’s PREDOMINATELY IMPROMPTU big book of cryable, injectible ruby. Oddly enough, it is a Ruby tutorial in comic book format. This is a sample entitled When You Wish Upon a Beard.

MYTAGO - do magic with your phone

Yes, it’s Yet Another Meatspace Tag. This one requires a free membership to get the tags. Seems like a bit of a privacy hassle.

MYTAGO is a little different from QRCode or Shotcode. There’s no phone app. Instead, take a picture of the tag and use one of these methods to get the tag data -a bookmark and description:

• Take a picture of the tag image. Next time you sync your phone to your PC, upload the jpeg image to the MYTAGO site to get the tag data.
• Enter the URL of an online tag image and get the tag data.
• Type the 12 digit code from a tag image into the MYTAGO site to get the tag data.
• Install an Uploader Tool on your PC.
• Email the tag image or the 12-digit tag code to yourusername@mytago.com with your PIN as the email subject line. The tag data will be available next time you log into MYTAGO.

http://www.laptop.org/

It’s here, the ideal gift for early adopters.

We’ve been hearing about the $100 Laptop for months now. It seemed like a pipe dream. A laptop for children in third world countries? It would have to be an engineering marvel. The kids often live in houses with dirt floors. They often don’t have electricity. Internet infrastructure - or even telephone service - is non-existent in rural towns. They’ve probably never seen a computer before. They’ll have to learn the OS and the software without the a priori assumptions of a Westerner. Getting computer teachers trained has to be a logistical nightmare! How can this possibly work?

The answer is one that wouldn’t occur to most of us… Cooperation on a global scale!

It’s the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. This program attempted to design, build and distribute laptops for under $100 to children in third world countries.

In December OLPC had a promotion where if you donated a laptop you could buy a second laptop. PLUS you get a year of free Sprint wifi access at places like Barnes & Noble, St*rbucks, etc. that you can also use with any other wifi devices you may own - laptops and PDAs. The Sprint access alone is worth the price of the laptop.

The XO has totally new hardware with VERY low power consumption. The XO has a very cool GUI called “Sugar” that’s usuable even by kids who can’t read yet, much less read English. Sugar is based on a trimmed down Linux OS with programs written just for it. Programs like a music synthesizer, Turtle Graphics, word processing, a web browser and that’s just the START of it!

Since The XO is intended for third world countries, it has wifi - no ethernet infrastructure is necessary. They’ll automatically connect at power up to other XOs that they find. This enables the kids to work on collaborative projects. Not just chatrooms, but writing music together in the music workspace! Collaboration is the key to the future.

The XO has two antennas and uses them to triangulate and display a 2D map of surrounding XOs and wireless access points. It took a while and I had to change some of my router settings, but I was able to connect to the Internet with my XO.

There is an available hand crank to charge the XO if you don’t have electricity in your village. I think they said there’s a solar battery charger available too. They also have wireless teacher access points that enable the kids to get on the Internet and see what’s going on in the rest of the world. This is a really ambitious project. I did what I could.

I’ll post an update if the Give One - Get One program runs again. Your donation is partly tax deductible. And you’re doing something good for less fortunate kids. It’s a win-win game.

Popular Science: Nano-Pollution: No Tiny Issue?

I’m an electrical engineer and a born skeptic, but through the years the medical profession has shown a particularly unscientific streak when it comes to identifying and treating new illnesses.

I have been worried about the environmental and medical effects of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a catch-all phrase that describes microscopic man-made objects. These come in many shapes and sizes - soccer-ball-shaped cages made of 20 carbon atoms, nanotubes the thickness of a hair. These objects persist in the environment after they’ve been used and disposed of. There has been little, if any, investigation into the effect of exposure to environmental nanotechnology.

Please consider the possibility that some, if not all, cases of Morgellons are the result of exposure to tiny man-made objects. These objects can lodge almost invisibly in the skin, causing unexplained lesions. Larger nanotubes or groups of smaller ones may appear to be fibers. Many of these objects are so small that when inhaled they are carried directly into the brain using the same pathways as smells do.

Nanotechnological pollution is on the horizon. I think Morgellons is the earliest indication of what we can all expect from this technology.

It took many years for the Powers That Be to recognize the danger of asbestos. Nanotechnology is still in its infancy and not much investigation has been done into effects on the environment or on the human body. So far the environment isn’t filled with these things. The particles are molecular in size, much smaller than asbestos. In my professional opinion, this research must start *now* rather than after the technology is entrenched.

I also wanted to point out something. Everywhere I read about Morgellons online, sufferers of this mysterious illness were slathering themselves with lotions and creams to try to calm the itching. Well, nanotechnology is being used as a carrier for emollients and other cosmetic ingredients. Anywhere you see words like “microencapsulated” there is some kind of nanotechnology. Please consider creating a list of safe lotions (if there can be such a thing).

I’m not affiliated with any skin cream manufacturers either. There is a list of products containing nanotechnology online somewhere, probably on the CRN. I leave it to you folks to look into it.

I do, of course, consider that Morgellons may not be due to nanotechnology at all, but to histological incompatibility.

BTW, talc is similar to asbestos in many ways. Talc is one of the hardest substances known to man. I’m a bit suspicious of talc too. I’ve long since switched to corn starch.

Technorati: ology Morgellons asbestos microencapsulated

I signed up with a site called Outside.in a few months ago and they turned me down because I don’t have enough geotag info in my blog, i.e. I write about ideas rather than local coverage. I guess they figured out that nobody interesting is going to geotag every post.

Now Outside.in has changed things so that they can read a feed and include only items with geographical information in them.

Testing Hatboro, PA.

Despair.com: Parody Heart Generator

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Valentines Day.

Ok, I know that there are some valentines nasties going around. I even blogged it. This looks like them. It’s not. Despair.com is one of my favorite web sites.

It’s a candy heart slogan generator that creates a candy heart picture for you to send to your friends. Enjoy!