Incredible Machines
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]
"There is much pleasure in useless knowledge." — Bertrand Russell
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]
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 […]
Funniest…video…evah. [tags]YouTube,Game Violence,Video,Humor[/tags]
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 […]
I’m sorry, but this is just wrong. Terribly wrong.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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.
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 […]
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]
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) […]
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 […]
I suspect the world would be better if that percentage were even greater.
Apparently 15% of all web traffic is cat related. There's no reason for Brainwagon be any different.
Thanks Mal! I'm trying to reclaim the time that I was using doom scrolling and writing pointless political diatribes on…
Brainwagons back! I can't help you with a job, not least because I'm on the other side of our little…
Congrats, glad to hear all is well.