Archive for category: Link of the Day

Incredible Machines

April 13, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

When the Japanese aren’t trying to figure out if spun eggs bounce, they are productively employed in constructing all sorts of incredible Rube Goldberg machines. [tags]Rube Goldberg[/tags]

Toy gas fired missile and launcher assembly – Patent 6055910

March 22, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Read the abstract of this patent carefully. A toy gas-fired missile and launcher assembly whose missile is composed of a soft head and a tail extending therefrom formed by a piston. The piston is telescoped into the barrel of a launcher having a closed end on which is mounted an electrically-activated ignitor, the air space […]

YouTube – Game abuse strikes back

March 21, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Funniest…video…evah. [tags]YouTube,Game Violence,Video,Humor[/tags]

Check out Re-Imagineering

February 28, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

I must admit: I haven’t a clue as to how the whole Disney-acquires-Pixar thing is going to work out, but I do know one thing: it’s probably good that John Lasseter will be helping out on the whole theme park thing for Disney. The one thing that the Disney parks seem to have suffered from […]

Boing Boing: Cat piano

February 28, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

I’m sorry, but this is just wrong. Terribly wrong.

Tick destroying rover

February 28, 2006 | Link of the Day, Science | By: Mark VandeWettering

Courtesy of hack-a-day comes this awesome story of a student project to make a robotic rover whose purpose is to eradicate ticks.   It basically follows a buried underground wire along the perimeter of the property, all the while releasing carbon dioxide gas.   Ticks are apparently attracted to the CO2, anc collect along the course, and […]

Aztec + Lego

February 25, 2006 | Arts and Crafts, General, Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

It’s a strange fact that any two words (or interests) that you might have will eventually find a webpage that illustrates them both.  Of course, every geek in the universe likes Legos, and a couple of years back I made an aborted stab at learning something about Mayan hieroglyphics.   I didn’t think I’d find a […]

National Archive movies available on Google Video

February 24, 2006 | General, Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Via Ars Technica is the announcement that many films from the National Archives will be made available via Google Video.  Their pilot program had 104 videos, consisting of many newreel clips from WWII, documentaries about the formation of the national parks service, and documentaries from Nasa including the 1969 documentary The Eagle Has Landed, documenting […]

Maps for ipod, the Juan Buhler way…

February 21, 2006 | General, Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Juan Buhler (former SIGGRAPH sketch chair, current Pixarian, and cool street photographer) sent me a link to his cool idea for using the video ipod to store maps. He realized that the thumbnail viewer in his iPod video displays six thumbnails in each row of his video iPod, so he stitched together a map of […]

The Art of the H-Bomb

February 17, 2006 | Arts and Crafts, Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Courtesy of Bill Gurstelle’s Technology Underground, check out the U.S. Navy’s collection of paintings of nuclear tests on the Bikini atoll. Very cool stuff. [tags]Nuclear Explosion, Art, Navy, Bikini Atoll[/tags] Addendum: I bet I would have gotten more traffic to my website if I used the tag Bikini instead of Bikini Atoll.

3D Painted Rooms – 2Loop.com

February 14, 2006 | General, Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

I’m just passing along a link from Eric’s email to me today: 3D Painted Rooms – 2Loop.com These rooms are painted so that, when looked at right, optical illusions will appear. Very cool. I especially like the second to last one.

Lay Siege to Your Enemies!

February 10, 2006 | Link of the Day, Toys and Gadgets | By: Mark VandeWettering

Feel the need to lob tennis balls at those who oppose you? Try checking out these rather nice plans for a small trebuchet. With such a mighty seige engine, none dare oppose your military might! Seriously though, these things are: interesting mechanical devices fun to play with and excellent for tossing water balloons. Unless of […]

HL2 Rube Goldberg Device: Reloaded

February 9, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

I remember seeing some of these Rube Goldberg devices setup using the Halflife 2 physics engine before, but not many are this elaborate and complicated. There are some really good bits inside. HL2 Rube Goldberg Device: Reloaded – Google Video [tags]Google Video,Halflife 2[/tags]

I’m on the way out…

February 7, 2006 | Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Find out how popular your name has been over the years.  “Mark” seems to have peaked in popularity in the 1960s, while my dad’s name “Vernon” probably peaked back in 1918, and now is all but extinct.  Forget about some of my other uncles names: like Clarence, Virgil (never really popular, even in its heyday) […]

LEGO Technic Difference Engine

February 7, 2006 | I Kid You Not, Link of the Day | By: Mark VandeWettering

Need I really say more? An implementation of Babbages Difference Engine, capable of evaluating 2nd and 3rd order polynomials with two or three digits of precision. Needs some video demonstrating it in operation, but wow. Bonus links: Wikipedia entry on the Difference Engine Difference Engine in Meccano A nice description of the Difference Engine, with […]