Shiny Things

10:57 am - How Smell Works

I thought today's Straight Dope mail bag article was particularly interesting. I remember when I was pretty young a friend mentioned that he hated going into livestock barns, because he knew if he could smell the manure, manure molecules must be in the air and getting all over him. He was right.

I've wondered for some time if we would ever be able to mechanically reproduce smells the way we do with light and sound: perhaps something that releases samples from the seven primary odorant groupings (camphoric, musky, rose, peppermint, etherial, pungent, and putrid) could do a worthwhile but limited simulation, sort of like black & white TV does for vision. You'd have to periodically replenish the chemicals, I assume.

It was also interesting to me to learn that you can't actually smell metal, but smell instead the oxidated lipids upon them. Come to think of it, maybe that's why all metals seem to smell the same.

08:40 am - Squid Beaks

Scientists have apparently pondered for some time how a creature with no bones can use a hard, sharp beak without damaging itself. The answer: the chitinous material of the beak changes in density from the hard point to where it attaches to the rest of the squid, creating a protective cushion. This potentially has applications for human prosthetics. (Discovery News) Squids are nifty.

11:39 am - Cheaper Eyeglasses

Found today on 43folders.com: how to save money by ordering eyeglasses online.

This is something I'm sure I'll need to try out fairly soon. 

09:45 am - How Sewing Machines Work

I've wondered about this for years, but never thought to look it up until bushi7 and I were talking about it this morning. I think it came up because we were looking at old photos of my family and saw Mom's old sewing machine in the background. And we just watched Fiddler on the Roof this week.

How Sewing Machines Work (howstuffworks.com)

04:53 pm - Big Dog

I know I told all of you that I would no longer link to etre's Reaction blog, because you should all be subscribing yourselves, but this is so shiny that I can't help myself.

This video demonstrates Boston Dynamics' Big Dog, a robot that can "traverse uneven slopes, ice, snow banks and piles of bricks and can even withstand the occasional kick in the side to boot."

04:24 pm - Argyria

Today's Straight Dope article is about the practice of taking colloidal minerals as a homeopathic remedy. At the end of the article Cecil points out that taking colloidal silver can lead to a condition called argyria, in which the skin turns bluish gray.

I'm glad I read this, because a while back I happened to see a guy on Oprah (it was on in the breakroom: I wasn't watching it willingly) who had blue skin. I was fascinated, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, so I couldn't find out more. By looking up argyria in Wikipedia, I found a link to this article about him. 

07:13 pm - Prince Rupert's Drop

A nifty video bushi7 sent to me.

09:30 am - Chemistry Videos

bushi7 shared with me these nifty chemistry videos, selected by Wired. Things that impressed me:

1. Anyone who watches a show called "Brainiac" but thinks negative hundreds of degrees of liquid nitrogen will have any impact on positive thousands of degrees of thermite (duh).
2. How dangerous gummy bears can be.
3. How much I think follybard is going to love video #7.
4. Watching the brew in #6 change over and over again.
5. How funny the Wired science host is.
6. Finding out how chemical hand warmers work.
7. How hard a time my six-and-a-half-year-old computer is having with playing videos.

08:14 am - Apostrophe Trouble

People with surnames like O'Brien or Al-Kurd or van Campen are being forced to change them because of bad interface design and bad programming. This comes as no surprise to me, but it's good to be reminded of it.

05:51 am - Phun!

bushi7 showed me this demo movie last night for Phun, a free 2D physics playground, and I'm itching to start playing with it.

10:42 am - Alkali Metals in Water

Behind this link there's a video of people demonstrating the reactivity of various alkali metals with water, starting with lithium, sodium, and potassium, but including rubidium and cesium. Boom!

EDIT: Unfortunately, it's faked. Sad. Here's one that's not.

07:14 am - Photosynth demo at TED

Behind this link there's an amazing demonstration of digital photo imaging technology, especially the synthetic image of Notre Dame generated from thousands of individual photos on Flickr. Wonderful stuff.

09:55 am - Head-Tracking VR

Johnny Chung Lee, using a Wii remote and sensor bar, demonstrates a VR system that changes the perspective of your display as you change your viewpoint. Very, very shiny.

I found this on the Etre blog. I'm going to stop linking to things from the Etre blog, because you should be reading it yourself. It's that nifty. Here's the RSS feed. Now you have no excuse.

09:03 am - Second Life Ergonomics

bushi7 sent me a link to these articles about ergonomics for Second Life avatars. I thought they were fascinating: it's one thing to remember to make things easy for people to use, but virtual people have different needs. I'm sure much of this same advice applies to all virtual 3D environments.

• Part 1
• Part 2

05:43 am - The Wrist Phone

bravesir_reuben has alerted me that it's time for me to upgrade my OnHand PC brand PDA watch. This new iMobile M600 cellphone watch has many features that my old watch needed: USB, rechargeable batteries, color, MP3 and movie playback, and--hello--it's a cellphone (it even comes with a bluetooth headset, so I can have a little blinking light over my ear to distract people). And all of this is at the price I originally paid for my old watch.

However, I've recently stopped wearing my watch. I wasn't keeping the data up to date, because it was a pain over the RS-232 adapter, and then the wristband broke. I replaced the wristband but didn't keep the new springbars, and now the band won't stay attached, so it kept falling off. Then I noticed that I already have a cell phone that I was only keeping in the car, but it has all the information I typically wanted on the watch--time and phone numbers--and it even has a built-in flashlight. Now I find that I don't miss having something on my wrist that keeps getting caught on things, and I like for bushi7 and the kids to be able to contact me at any time (though I don't share the number with very many people: I like privacy too). The only downside is that I can't inobtrusively check the time during meetings anymore: I have to get the thing out of my pocket. What I need now is to upgrade my phone with a laser pointer: I'm starting to find them very handy in meetings, and then I'd have an excuse to have my phone out so I could check the time too.

Also, my cellphone service only works with the phones they provide (none of which are wristwatches or have laser pointers). So I'd have to change carriers, and probably pay more than the $5 a month or so that I'm paying now. I don't mind too much putting down a chunk of change on a new piece of equipment, but I hate acquiring new recurring expenses.

So, shiny as the wrist phone is, I'll be giving it a pass. For now.

12:40 pm - Teaching Games

For those of you who aren't reading Gameplaywright, Jeff Tidball just posted an article with advice on teaching games to new players. It's just as applicable to board and card games as RPGs, and also applicable for us game designers when we write the games' manuals.

06:16 am - The Unreliable Narrator Adventure

This looks like a fun one-shot adventure. You start with the PCs in a tavern, meeting a client after the job they were hired to do. They explain to the client why they don't have the Macguffin they were hired to procure. Hilarity ensues.

Could make a good RGaming session with StoryCards. Actually, it sounds like the basis for a whole new Indie RPG.

08:37 am - Cool Wheels

Instead of lugging around an ice chest, somebody came up with the bright idea of having the ice chest lug him around. Thus was born the Cruzin Cooler, which will carry 27 12-ounce cans and one 300 pound rider (and pull an optional trailer) at speeds of up to 14 miles per hour. At least the driver can't get to his beer while he's sitting on the lid.

01:17 pm - Crazy Wii Remote

Every once in a while we have a problem with a Wii remote that stops working. I'll have to remember the technique documented here.

05:22 am - Chopsticks Reloaded

At Protospiel 2006 I helped playtest Greg Lam's Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000, and it was awesome. I bought a set when it became available, and some of you have played it with me. I played it with my brother-in-law over vacation, and he loved it too, so I ordered a set for his birthday. I was surprised to discover that Greg has provided new rules and pieces for the game. The update is $5 total ($2 for the bits, $3 for shipping), or FREE if you order another of Greg's games at the same time. Woohoo!