brainwagon

Last year a group tried to fly an 11 lb model airplane accross the Atlantic. In four attempt, they managed a maximum distance of 479 miles. They are going to try it again soon, so check out TAM Homepage to keep up to date. If news is slow, you can waste some time reading about […]

It’s amazing how sometimes surfing leads you to interesting ideas that you’ve never had before. Like the mention of slashdot of pykrete, a combination of 14% wood pulp and water, which is frozen together to make blocks. During WWII, the British had a bold plan to build aircraft carriers several thousand feet long and capable […]

Digital Photography For What It’s Worth is a great webpage with many terrific hints for the digital photographer, including a rather interesting page on infrared photography with digital cameras.

Bruce Schneier is the author of Applied Cryptography, the incredibly useful encylopedia of modern cryptographic algorithms. He also publishes the Cryptogram, an electronic bulletin involving computer security, privacy and cryptography. Today I received the latest issue, which includes an article on fooling biometric fingerprint scanners. Tsutomu Matsumoto tried several techniques to create phony fingers that […]

CNN is running a story today entitled CNN.com – Shuttle engineers warned of burning wing – Feb. 27, 2003. It appears that serious doubts about the original analysis of wing damage to the shuttle were made right up until reentry, including a recomendation that they examine the damage prior to reentry via an EVA and […]

I like to peruse sweetcode, a very nice website that contains pointers to interesting but perhaps not very well known software projects. During a recent browse, I noticed a link to a project called nntp//rss. Interestingly enough, it provided a gateway that allowed you to access RSS feeds via NNTP from your favorite newsreader. For […]

INTERNALMEMOS.COM has a nifty article written by a colleciton of Sun Software engineers about the inappropriateness of Java on the Solaris platform. I think it illustrates how businesses fail to succeed because of their inability to prioritize properly on reliable rather than glitzy software. I rather like the Java language and would almost certainly choose […]

You think your day is bad, be glad that you aren’t a crab. Don’t watch this if you are squeamish or feel particularly kindly towards crabs.

I’ve also maintained a bit of an amateur interest in cryptography. While I understand a bit about modern ciphers such as DES, IDEAL and RC4, I find it more fun to play with older cryptosystems. When Simon Singh published his book The Code Book, I decided to work through the Cipher Challenge at the back. […]

I’ve always been interested in robotics (particularly of the amateur variety) and in the past few days I’ve discovered some excellent links. Slashdot ran an article recently that highlighted the Legway, a lego version of the Segway, built using the RCX controller from a Lego Mindstorms kit. It’s an awesome achievement, and very, very spiffy. […]

Dan Lyke apparently visited Hong Kong recently, and took some very nice pictures of the skyline at night. His panorama is very nice indeed, shot with a Canon PowerShot. I’m considering a Canon digital camera for my next purchase. Additional bonus: Brad Templeton also has lots of cool panoramic images.

Lawrence Lessig has another nice short opinion piece entitled Racing Against Time. If you’ve followed Lessig’s crusade against the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, you probably won’t learn anything new, but it is a nicely written and short article that extols the value of the Constitution’s rule for limited copyright terms. Worth reading!

I can always rely on Craig to send out interesting links having to do with guns, airplanes or just destruction. SUDDEN IMPACT !, From AMMOMAN.COM shows many high speed photographs of bullets bursting wax, oranges, Jello, and helpless cans of Coke.

Somebody at work presented a link to this site because it contained a review of the new Monsters Inc. DVD, but it turns out to be a truly hilarious weblog. LILEKS (James) is an eclectic mix of politics and nostalgia. Check out the BLEAT for interesting daily news, but don’t miss the Gallery of Regrettable […]

Try checking out overflight.com for instructions on how to build a fire balloon that will likely trigger widespread reports of UFO invasions in the local media.