Archive for September, 2008
The Interstate Screen Saver
September 25, 2008RAMbox, a cheap computer speed-up trick
September 24, 2008When your computer’s RAM is maxed out, then what? How about some RAM in an external box that the computer swaps to over USB/Firewire?
Further, maybe it’s worthwhile to recycle old RAM SIMMs and DIMMs that are taking up space in coffee cans and shoe boxes accross America. Doing a buy-back “amnesty” for old RAM could be a cheap way to get a whole bunch of gigabytes in a hurry.
MultiLane, a multi-redundant internet thingie+service
September 23, 2008Surely this exists already, but I can’t figure out how to even search for it. Eric was right about my Google-fu being weak.
It’s just a thingie+service that lets me pretend that my internet connection is in a data center somewhere. The trick is that it can use (“load-share”) multiple internet connections (DSL, cable and wireless, for example) while doing this, and is ready for any one or two of them to break and still do its thing.
(As for what’s going on between the thingie and the data center along the colored lines in the video, I have no idea. Maybe it’s iptables wizardry, or maybe it’s something else entirely that’s IP-based but weird and proprietary.)
So really, this is my naive best guess at how an ideal load-sharing redundant interent connection scheme would work for small-timers such as myself. ‘Sure seems obvious enough from here.
Wuzzat.com, a picture-based translation service
September 22, 2008
This could be a neat thing for people learning a foreign language or traveling in a foreign country.
It’s a service that lets you take pictures of things with your iPhone and then get back a “subtitled” version of the picture a minute or so later. It could be for things (like cats, salt shakers, etc) or words (like on signs or menus). Hmm.
LapHead: using a laptop as a mouse+monitor+keyboard
September 20, 2008
Here’s a USB device that lets your laptop (or more specifically, a special computer program running on your laptop) to serve as the monitor, mouse and keyboard of another normally-headless computer.
I’ve needed one of these on at least twenty separate occasions, like when a computer crashes and I need to see what it’s trying to display on its monitor. Further, being able to take screenshots (of even screencasts) of what a failing computer is doing as it fails, without special/crappy software needing to run on said failing computer, would be the bomb on many occasions.
I could sure use one, I’ll you that right now, and my desire for it will scale with how many computers we’re sitting on and trying to keep working all at once.
Frankly, I’m still a little baffled by this thing’s continuing non-existence.
(Extracurricular) Sexiest 45 record jacket ever
September 18, 2008
(Viva Italiana... lordy.)
Sandwich camouflage to make it unattractive to lunch thieves.
September 16, 2008
Let’s hear it for standards again. I wish it were my idea, but nope. Give it up.
A solar-charged travel light that screws onto your Nalgene bottle.
September 15, 2008
A solar-powered light that uses your Nalgene bottle as a sort of diffuser.
Standards standards standards! Let’s hear it for standards!
This is a solar-powered LED doohickey that you hang from your backpack or whereever to recharge during the day. At night, you screw it onto your Nalgene bottle and it uses the bottle as a sort of diffuser/desk lamp.
What a trick. I just had to pass this one on.
Cat5Crazy.com, a business idea about cables
September 15, 2008
(BTW, Sorry about the annoying noise at 3:23. It only lasts ~20 seconds. It’s my cellphone RF-interfering with the microphone, sheesh. –Craig, aka Mr. Production Values)
PS (Sept 16): I forgot to mention how the snap-in connectors at the ends of Cat5 cables are pretty small, and not wide like DB connectors. Ergo, Cat5 cables are easier to push/route/yank around/through holes and constrictions. (In fact, there’s a new class of Cat5 end connectors that are specifically designed to be yankable without getting caught on things.) Once the ends are in the right places, the fat and clunky adapters are clicked on at the last minute. The bigger/nastier your cabling situation, the more convenient this is.
737 bodies on rail cars
September 9, 2008737 bodies are made in Kansas and rolled on special rail cars to Everett Washingon, where the tails, wings and engines are added. One of my well-worn Seattle bike routes goes through a railyard where I had observed these strange “Do Not Hump” rail cars sitting unloaded before and wondered what the heck they were for.
Well. Last night all was revealed when I witnessed four, count ‘em one-two-three-four, 737 bodies, just sitting there, hovering above the rail cars by their cradle brackets. Each of the bodies must have been worth at least twenty million dollars. I could have walked up and touched them, or peeled off the tape around the orifice plugs and climbed inside.
An eccentric fellow who hangs around there explained to me how the Boeing people have to carefully inspect the bodies for bullet holes upon arrival, one square inch at a time, because rednecks along the way like to shoot for the windows.
Here's one of the 737 cradle cars sitting unloaded. I took this picture (yay iPhone!) two days later, and thus the better light. There are two brackets. A first one grips the landing gear in front, and a bigger one halfway back bolts onto the fuselage as if it were the wings. The steel "fence" in front whacks away bushes and stuff, and the big box in the back must be for... uh... for carrying other bits that go along with it.
Four 737 bodies, assembled in Kansas, at the Magnolia railyard awaiting final transport to Everett Washington, where they'll be joined with their wings and tailfins.
Closer up on one of the 737 bodies sitting on its its special rail car. Notice the special-purpose black plastic plugs used to block various orifices over which other elements like tailfins or wings will later be bolted. Otherwise, critters will move into it along the way.
Another angle on the same. Note the steel fence in front for whacking away what bushes and weeds grow into the rail car's path and prevent their whacking the 737 instead.
