gribbly

This is my braindump

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Amazing Knockout

http://www.break.com/green-zone/crazy-capoeira-knockout.html

Why isn't Wikipedia WYSIWYG Editing?

I find it discouraging that I have to fool about with logging in, and then decipher/remember the markup.

Mashup Idea

Fatboy Slim Shady

=]

Luscious Garage - Hybrid Specialists

San Francisco area auto shop specializing in hybrids ("Auto Repair For The Future"):

http://lusciousgarage.com/

Saturday, March 13, 2010

PB Penetrating Catalyst

Might try this as an alternative to WD-40:

http://www.pbblaster.com/PB_Blaster.html

  • A true penetrant
  • Formulated in 1957
  • Rust inhibitor
  • Breaks loose surface tension of rust/frozen parts

  • Wednesday, March 10, 2010

    AAA Inspection Mechanic in Santa Monica

    More Joy Automotive, Inc.
    1325 Pico Blvd Santa Monica , CA 90405

    310-450-1712

    Hours Open:

    (M-F)  8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
    (Sat)  8:00 AM - 1:00 PM

    --
    [kwatz!]

    Highly Recommended Mechanic in Van Nuys

    California Automotive and Mobile Mechanics

    14254 Oxnard St
    Unit B

    Van Nuys, CA 91401
    (818) 780-4369
    Jaek Automotive (Cali Automotive and Mobile Mechanics) is on Oxnard Street at the corner of Tyrone Ave, about 3 blocks east of Van Nuys Blvd. They open at 7:30 AM on weekdays and Saturdays. To schedule repair work, you should call Rebecca (or stop in to see her) after 7:45 AM.

    Another nice point is that Jaek's is just a 10 minute walk  from the Van Nuys Blvd. station of the MTA Orange bus line. So it's a breeze for me to ride the bus home to Woodland Hills after leaving my car with Jaek, and then to ride back to pick it up a few hours later.

    http://www.yelp.com/biz/california-automotive-and-mobile-mechanics-van-nuys-2#hrid:83P8VOWHPpMMo2rduIOjwQ/src:search/query:mobile%20mechanic

    --
    [kwatz!]

    Sunday, March 07, 2010

    KCRW on Sunday

    ~12:35 three songs ending on Peter Gabriel covering Paul Simon

    Friday, March 05, 2010

    Sun Catalytix

    Daniel Nocera's solar start up. I would invest in this if I could figure out how =]

    http://www.suncatalytix.com/

    Cam.
    --
    [kwatz!]

    Post-mortem on Tron light-cycle AI (Google AI Challenge)

    This is cool!

    http://a1k0n.net/blah/archives/2010/03/index.html#e2010-03-04T14_00_21.txt

    Proverbs from a car ad on Craigslist...

    When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly. - Michel de Montaigne

    One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well. - Amos Bronson Alcott

    The maxims of men disclose their hearts. - French Proverb

    To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones. - Nicholas Charles Trublet

    I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own. - Michel de Montaigne

    Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind. - William R. Alger

    What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and the thinking. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

    Stealing someone else's words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own. - Peter Anderson

    A short saying oft contains much wisdom. - Sophocles

    [link]

    --
    [kwatz!]

    Tuesday, March 02, 2010

    Sunday, February 28, 2010

    Thursday, February 18, 2010

    Stupid Ideas Involving Roller Coasters

    Build a roller-coaster that:

    * Is based on the ups and downs, twists and turns of major stories
    (e.g., the Wizard of Oz or Lord of the Rings)

    * Is based on the DOW. Late 2009 would be fun, I bet =]

    Huffington Post: The Financial Blogosphere's Pearls Of Wisdom

    Wednesday, February 17, 2010

    Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp (1964)

    "Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas."

    http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html

    Clipart ETC

    This is the best clip art site I've ever found! Lots of public domain images of really cool stuff like:

    http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/galleries/science/electricity_fields.php

    DeGreave.com Online Tools

    Cool business card generator, and other things:

    http://www.degraeve.com/

    Tuesday, February 16, 2010

    Friday, February 12, 2010

    Self-powered ARM chip

    From the article: "Our system can run nearly perpetually if periodically exposed to reasonable lighting conditions, even indoors," said David Blaauw, an electrical and computer engineering professor. "Its only limiting factor is battery wear-out, but the battery would last many years."

    http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7520

    That's cool! The Arm Cortex-M3 is a very standard microcontroller - it supports USB! Article doesn't say what the battery chemistry is... shame the device is limited to the lifespan of a battery (I don't imagine the battery is replaceable) but that's hard to avoid! This is really cool idea and achievement.

    Some relevant links:

    Chart: Microsoft Revenue by Division

    http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2

    Poop!

    The Facts About Poop
    Via: Online Schools

    Cool Electric Car Concepts

    Entries for the 2010 Michelin Challenge Design, which invited artists at all levels to create concept cars around the theme "Electrifying! Beautiful, Innovative and Radiant:"

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/10/concept-cars-from-the-mic_n_456417.html

    Saturday, February 06, 2010

    Peter Hamilton

    Robin says I must read "Reality Dysfunction"

    Wednesday, February 03, 2010

    Milky Way Transit Authority: A Tube Map For Our Galaxy

    http://arbesman.net/milkyway/

    Die Antwoord

    Thanks for Mr. Contreras for putting me on to:

    http://www.dieantwoord.com/

    Eight different kinds of crazy, but crazy- AWESOME =]

    Tuesday, February 02, 2010

    Bobby McFerrin - Pentatonic Scale is Innate

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJ7mBxi8LM

    I wonder if there's "attractors" in the crowd - persons who sing the notes more confidently, causing those nearby to align their pitch?

    Monday, February 01, 2010

    Hark, a Vagrant!

    Is it love or is it toxic radiation?
    It's both, but baby who cares?

    http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=220

    Saturday, January 30, 2010

    Extreme Efficiency: Beverly Clock

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Clock

    Western Australian Mad Scientist

    http://tesladownunder.com/

    Some amazing projects, really like the ionic lifters!

    I Love This Picture

    Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields 138, 2009:

    http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/pl_arts_sugimoto/7/

    it's beautiful... it looks like a caterpillar and and a dandelion, but it's made with electricity. Amazing.

    Defense Reutilization & Marketing Webpage

    Stumbled across the website where the US DoD handles the "reuse, transfer, donation, sale or disposal of excess/surplus property":

    http://www.drms.dla.mil/

    Here's the actual search form.

    No pics, and lots of confusing text. But who knows what crazy stuff they might have =]

    Friday, January 29, 2010

    Thursday, January 28, 2010

    Power Brick Service


    Tonight I replaced the batteries in the power brick. The old ones were over two years old, and I hadn't really tended them properly. I'm going to try and recondition them for use, but inside the brick (Xantrex xPower 1500) went three new 18Ah SLA batteries.

    The Xantrex opened up really easy - lots of screws, so I wanted to use the drill - but the screws are hard up against the case wall. I could have gotten them with a regular screwdriver, but with 20+ screws to do I decided to drop $7 on an extension from OSH. This is basically a rigid spring that gives the drill the reach of a normal screwdriver.

    Inside was three 17Ah SLA batteries robustly wired in parallel, the inverter, and some foam to stop the batteries moving too much. Also two panels - the main one with AC outlets and switches and the "battery test" LEDs, and another with just a car-style DC jack.

    At first the bank didn't want to take a charge, the AC charger went straight to green light (which I guess is triggered by bank voltage?). Voltage was below 13 so I'm not sure what was going on... can't believe they were fully charged coming off the shelf. It was pretty cold outside which maybe changes things. Ah, I don't know. Load tester was unavailable (long story), so I ran a lamp for an hour to discharge the bank a little. After that the bank started taking a charge.

    The other weird thing is that the "battery test" meter has stopped working. It's just a rocker switch and a bank of LEDs, but now the LEDs don't light up. Not helping. I'll have to check it out... in theory I should be able to fix it, in practice I tend to screw these things up =]


    Corporations

    Premise: "Corporations can cause harm" Premise: "Corporations shouldn't cause harm" + Milton Friedman + Deregulation Advocacy = DOES NOT COMPUTE.

    Right?

    If we agree that corporations can harm, but shouldn't, then it follows that a corporation's actions must be regulated somehow. The primary options are self-regulation (to avoid doing harm, a corporation voluntarily forgoes a profitable activity) and external regulation (there are rules, enforced by the state, that limit or prohibit some kinds of profitable activity). If, as Friedman argues, CEOs should abstain from self-regulation, then external regulation is required if harm is to be avoided.

    I suppose in reality, we have both - there is some self-control from even the worst CEO (there are no too many massacres), and there is plenty of regulation. I suppose those that advocate simultaneously for deregulation and market freedom would agree with the principle here, but take issue with the amount and nature of the external regulations.

    Hmmm.

    Wednesday, January 27, 2010

    Upcoming battery technologies

    Nice slashdot comment on battery tech:

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/01/27/2318247/Lithium-Air-Batteries-Get-Boost-From-IBM-and-DOE?art_pos=3

    by Rei (128717) on Wednesday January 27, @07:14PM (#30927766) Homepage


    Lithium-air is, IMHO, one of the least promising upcoming battery techs. It's really more like a fuel cell, and to be blunt, fuel cells suck. By that, I mean:

      * Expensive per watt
      * Short lifespans
      * Inefficient

    There are many, many promising next-gen battery techs other than li-air. Here's just a couple of my favorites.

    Lithium-sulfur: This has long been worked on, but only just recently one of its big problems has been worked around. It offers great energy density, but some of the intermediary reaction products -- various lithium polysulfides -- are rather soluble. They'd migrate across the membrane and precipitate out on the other side, being rendered permanently useless to the reaction and thus aging the cells very quickly. Older solutions to try to prevent this caused dramatically lower energy density. The latest technique involves wicking the sulfur into the pores of mesoporous carbon and then functionalizing the outside of the carbon with polyethylene glycol to keep the hydrophobic polysulfides inside when they form. The longevity improvements were amazing, without sacrificing energy density. We're talking that when they deliberately chose a worst-case solvent, one that's really good at dissolving polysulfides, the traditional Li-S cell lost 96% of its sulfur in 30 cycles while theirs only lost 25%.

    Nickel-lithium: It is, quite literally, a hybrid NiMH/li-ion battery -- a traditional NiMH cathode that can hold a tremendous amount of lithium, and a lithium metal anode (almost obscene anode energy density). That's normally impossible, since you want to run a NiMH battery with an aqueous electrolyte and your various lithium-based cells with an organic electrolyte. They do both -- they use a new tech called a LISICON membrane to keep the two different electrolytes apart but allow lithium ions across. An additional problem with li metal anodes is that dendrites tend to form that rupture the membrane -- but LISICON membranes are a rigid ceramic that resists dendrite damage.

    Digital quantum battery: This is my favorite, because it comes straight out of left field. It's really a type of capacitor. Now, capacitors normally hold a lot less energy than batteries; if the voltage gets too high, you get dielectric breakdown, it arcs across, and your energy is lost. But at very tiny scales, current must move as quanta. So if instead of a single big capacitor, you lithographically print an array of nanoscale capacitors, all of the sudden you can make it so that you essentially can't get dielectric breakdown. In fact, you can store so much energy that the stresses become so great that it's best to use a carbon nanotube for one of the electrodes in each nano-capacitor. :)

    And even ignoring next-gen battery techs, there is still *huge* range for improvement in li-ion. In particular, for the cathodes, my favorites are layered manganese cathodes which alternate long-life forms and high energy density forms of magnanese oxides to get both properties; and fluorinated metal cathodes. For the anodes, there's many kinds of tin and particularly silicon anodes out there that store nearly an order of magnitude more lithium than conventional graphite anodes. Silicon anode li-ion cells are just this month starting to hit the market. The tech has finally matured to the point where their longevity is sufficient.

    Monday, January 25, 2010

    Spaceship Cabaret

    Spaceship Cabaret is a venue. A place to play, with a certain style: It's a cabaret, on a spaceship =]

    Sunday, January 24, 2010

    Thursday, January 21, 2010

    The Big Night

    Saladino says I'd like this movie!

    Wednesday, January 20, 2010

    Font Equivalents

    Constantina ~= Times New Roman ~= DejaVu Serif
    Corbel ~= Trebuchet MS
    Calibri ~= Arial ~= DejaVu Sans Serif
    Cambria ~= Lucida Bold ~= DejaVu Serif (Bold)
    Candara ~= Trebuchet MS
    Consolas ~= Lucida Console ~= DejaVu

    Music of Interest

    • "American" K'naan - Trobadour
    • Anticon
    • Kuduro

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    Cameron Brown
    Video game designer and enthusiastic amateur musician.
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