Mount Sutro - Linkage

Vinyl record groove under electron microscope, at 1000x

2010-03-17T02:32:34Z

Here's a wonderful gallery at Reckon of high-magnification images of the grooves on a vinyl record, captured with an electron microscope. (via Farai Chideya)

Rubik's Cube for the blind

2010-03-17T16:54:53Z

via Yanko Design

Edible QR Code cupcakes

2010-03-18T22:49:29Z

These edible QR Code cupcakes from Montreal's clevercupcakes are actually scannable, and will direct you to the Montreal Science Centre website.

Kuriositas: QR Code Cupcakes That Work (Thanks, RJ!)

(Image: QR Code Cupcakes, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from clevercupcakes' photostream)

Previously:

New Cranes Arrive at the Port of Oakland

2010-03-16T19:37:51Z

Earlier this morning the Zhen Hua 15 ship carrying 253-foot tall cranes passed under both the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge. The bridges reportedly only had 10 feet to spare and were part of a coordinated effort that involved Cal Trans, the ship and both bridges. The three new cranes were headed to the Port of Oakland from Shanghai China.

Refueling Over Iraq

2010-03-16T23:48:05Z

With the cargo door open, a photojournalist captures the scene as a C130 refuels an F-18 in flight.

The 65 Sketchiest Easter Bunnies

2010-03-04T19:48:18Z

This is the ultimate collection of creepy Easter Bunny pictures. It's a furry fest!

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Walmart fires employee with inoperable brain tumor for legally using marijuana outside of work

2010-03-15T19:24:19Z

Joseph Casias has sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor and takes medical marijuana, which is legal in Michigan. He was fired from the Michigan Walmart where he had been working for the last five years after he failed a drug screening test there.

At his doctor's recommendation, Casias says he legally uses medical marijuana to ease his pain.
"It helps tremendously," he says. "I only use it to stop the pain. To make me feel more comfortable and active as a person."
During his five years at WalMart, Casias says he went to work every day, determined to be the best.
"I gave them everything," he says. "110 percent every day. Anything they asked me to do I did. More than they asked me to do. 12 to 14 hours a day."
But last November, Casias sprained his knee at work. Marijuana was detected in his system during the routine drug screening that follows all workplace injuries. Casias showed WalMart managers his state medical marijuana card, but he was fired anyway.

Walmart fires medical marijuana patient for using medical marijuana (Thanks, Jason!)

Two Tallahassee residents killed when tree falls on their car on U.S. Highway 98

2010-03-14T01:11:00Z

Two Tallahassee residents were killed Friday afternoon when a tree fell on their vehicle as they were driving on U.S. Highway 98 in Franklin County.

Daylight Saving Time

2010-03-14T13:00:40Z

In this map from Wikimedia Commons (reproduced here under its Creative Commons Licence), blue areas use daylight saving time, orange areas no longer use it, red areas never have.

Miniature cities on household objects

2010-03-12T06:35:11Z

These beautiful, fanciful miniature cities built into household objects like power-strips and desk-fans are part of the graduate show at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. The artist is uncredited, but it's very lovely work.

Student Work | Kyoto University of Art and Design (via Cribcandy)

Previously:

GeoIP

2010-03-12T05:00:00Z

Wigwam Village: 1940

2010-03-11T19:02:31Z

July 1940. "Cabins imitating the Indian teepee for tourists along highway south of Bardstown, Kentucky. (Wigwam Village #2, Cave City)." Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.

City seeks nod from Google for broadband

2010-03-11T07:41:00Z

City commissioners decided unanimously Wednesday to put Tallahassee in the running for Google's move to create high-speed broadband internet access in one or more cities.

Camera on nose gear of a B747 (HD VIDEO)

2010-03-12T02:30:26Z

Captured on a Contour HD helmet cam, secured to the the nose gear. The flight was JNB-MPM including a visual approach.

Christoph Niemann: My Way

2010-03-11T14:02:27Z

Don’t miss illustrator Christoph Niemann’s collection of whimsical map art, using the lines and symbols from a certain familiar online mapping service. Some illustrate the difficulty from getting from certain points A to certain points B, others create an image from map elements. Via All Points Blog; thanks also to Tucker Hood.

Court nixes individual track downloads of Pink Floyd albums

2010-03-11T17:10:00Z

Individual Pink Floyd songs will soon disappear from online music stores. The British High Court has ruled against EMI, the band's record label, saying that the band's contract requires EMI to "preserve the artistic integrity of the albums." In this case, that means keeping all the tracks together and in the order they were meant to be in, leading some to worry whether Pink Floyd's music will disappear from popular online music stores altogether.

When Pink Floyd signed with EMI back in the late '60s, its members probably did not imagine an age when we would be ditching physical media en masse in favor of cherry-picked songs on a series of Internet tubes. It's unsurprising then that the contract stipulated for the label to maintain the artistic integrity of the album itself—back then (and today as well, but perhaps to a lesser degree), musicians spent painstaking amounts of time crafting the entire album as a whole artwork. Those who only listened to select tracks were totally missing out.

Indeed, as EMI has discovered, that still appears to be the case, at least when it comes to Pink Floyd. The High Court ordered EMI to pay £40,000 in court costs with the possibility of future damages and EMI may have to pull Pink Floyd's individual offerings from places like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3. (As of this writing, the albums with per-track purchases were still available. Get 'em while they're hot.) In addition, EMI must pay Pink Floyd an undisclosed amount in royalty payments.

This doesn't mean they wouldn't become available again as full-album purchases, though—iTunes, for example, regularly offers albums that have one or two tracks that only come with a full album purchase. We wouldn't be surprised to see Dark Side of the Moon come back to iTunes with every track marked "Album only."

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Faking it: seven-segment displays

2010-03-03T12:54:36Z

A sordid tale, starting in the bedroom, involving batteries, deceit, cheap tricks, LEDs, and a pot.

It started innocently enough. A family member hinted that a good way to keep warm on cold winter nights was with a heated mattress pad-- more sensible than heating the whole house.

Winter came, it got cold, and we got our mattress pad.

The heated pad has a simple digital controller, where you rotate the dial to set the temperature, on a scale of 1-10, or really, L-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-H. So far, so good. (And it's comfy warm, too.)

But, then we took a closer look at that LED display:

What seems to be a digital seven-segment LED display is actually a rear-lit cutout in the shape of a seven-segment display, with one cutout in the shape of each number. The rotating dial just masks the other shapes so that you only see one at a time.

In other words, it's about as digital as blip.

The whole bezel is rear lit by an LED driven directly off of the AC-- you can tell from the blinking. (Driving LEDs from line voltage is common in consumer electronics; it works reasonably well if you have a big series resistor.)

Somewhere around this point we went from saying "WTF?" to "What the heck!" -- because it's a clever cheap trick, and if they can do it, so can we.

Sure, we can imagine a few cases where something like this could be genuinely useful, either as a front panel indicator or perhaps as a stage prop. But mainly we just wanted to make our own it because it's hilarious.

We'll scale our dial to turn a standard 5 k pot, so that our fake digital display can do something useful.

Next, to design the bezel:

We laser cut the parts-- black and clear plastic for the number plate and plywood for the dial/knob. The black plate fits over the threads of the pot, and the big wooden knob press fits onto the shaft of the pot; the pot turns when you turn this dial, revealing a single number beneath.

You can download our pattern here (8 kB PDF document). It's pretty simple, but if you want to play with the mechanism, you can print out both parts, grab a pair of scissors and a brass brad, and assemble it like we did in this project.

Next, we need the LEDs. For maximum fancy (without using actual seven segments!) we got out the fat LEDs:

Two LEDs each, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, to backlight the positions between L and H. We powered it from a 3xAAA battery box, and hooked it up on a breadboard to figure out the right resistor values to drive the LEDs efficiently. (Also, looks neat in the dark.) The four blue and green LEDs are independently driven off of the 4.5 V with their own series resistors. The two red LEDs are driven in series with a resistor, and that setup is used for the yellow and orange LEDs as well.

Then, we wire up the LEDs in a circle, using the same circuit:

And then we can install the black and clear number plate:

And there you have it: A five-color LED-lit fake-seven-segment pseudo-digital pot, based on advanced mattress pad technology.

The international war over exit signs

2010-03-10T15:44:51Z

The sign on the left is familiar to Americans, but other countries think it is a horrible design, preferring the green running man on the right or a variation of it. Julia Turner of Slate has an in-depth article on the 25-year international fight over exit signs. It's one of a terrific six-part series about sign history and design.

Fans of Ota's running man point to two key advantages: It's a pictogram, and it's green. The sign's wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don't speak the local language. And the green color, they argue, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over. Red, on the other hand, most often means danger, alert, halt, please don't touch. Why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? International designers tend to think our system is illogical and consider our rejection of the running man to be as dumb as our refusal to adopt that other sensible international norm, the metric system.
Are the running-man advocates right? This battle over the exit sign has been brewing for 25 years now, and the little green guy is slowly making inroads in the States. But to understand whether he should triumph, we must first understand America's skepticism toward pictograms and symbols, which have long been more popular in the rest of the world than they are here.

The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man: The international war over exit signs

Little Billy's Letters to famous and infamous people

2010-03-10T19:14:10Z

In the 1990s Bill Geerhart was an unemployed, not-so aspiring screenwriter in his 30s. To pass the time, he channeled his inner child, 10-year-old Billy, and started writing letters to famous and infamous people and institutions. These letters, written in pencil on elementary school ruled paper, asked funny but relevant questions to politicians, serial killers, movie stars, lobbyists, CEOs, and celebrity lawyers.

Geerhart saved copies of his letters and the replies he got back. This week, Harper Collins published them in a book called Little Billy's Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child's Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered. The publisher gave us permission to run some of our favorites. Enjoy!

Buy Little Billy's Letters on Amazon | Visit Harper Collins site for Little Billy's Letters

The National Hobo Association believes that "unlike tramps or bums, the hoboes are usually very resourceful, self reliant and appreciative people."

Susan Atkins is a convicted murderer former member of the Manson Family. When she died in prison in 2009, she was the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system, having been denied parole 18 times.

Robert Shapiro was a member of O.J. Simpson's "dream team" of defense lawyers.

The Catholic Church is the world's largest Christian church, with more than a billion members.

Caesars Palace is a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Agricultural Festival

2010-03-10T03:38:00Z