Trouble brewing
Sam Adams May let Sam Adams use his name
The makers of Sam Adams beer didn't find any humor in the fact that the company name was being evoked in a mayoral election in Portland, Ore. So they sent a letter, asking for ceasing and desisting, and surrendering of the Web addresses samadamsformayor.com and mayorsamadams.com. "Boston Beer has used the trademarks 'Sam Adams' and 'Samuel Adams' since 1984," the letter said. The thing is, the guy running for mayor in Portland is, in fact, named Sam Adams. "I've been using it since 1963," he says. The brew company says it didn't know there was an actual Sam Adams running and is willing to discuss the possibility of Adams using his name in his campaign.
Fire alarm
Family bird is now the family's hero
The fire alarm was going off in the Muncie, Ind., home of Shannon Conwell and his 9-year-old son last Friday. And the fact that they didn't hear it could have been tragic, except for the fact that their Amazon parrot, Peanut, did hear it. And Peanut likes to imitate sounds he hears. So about 3 a.m., with the Conwells asleep on the couch - they had been watching a movie - Peanut started mocking the fire alarm. "He was really screaming his head off," Conwell said. "I grabbed my son and my bird, and got out of the house." Conwell said that if they had made it to bed that night, things might've turned out different, because they may not have heard the alarm or the bird.
Autos and animals
Fiat more roomy than ever guessed
A man in rural South Africa tried to steal two cows and two goats on Thursday. It was probably not premeditated, because he tried to steal them by cramming them into a Fiat Uno. The Uno is a small car, not typically used to transport livestock ... or even particularly large people. Residents of KwaZulu-Natal alerted police to the situation, and the man tried to speed away, a task made more difficult by the fact that the car was carrying two cows and two goats. While he couldn't outrun the police in the car, he found that he could outrun them on foot, and made off into the bushes. Police are still looking for him. But the animals are safe.
Be on lookout for kamikaze squirrels
Lindsey Millar, 23, thought it was weird enough that her 2006 Toyota Camry was on fire in the driveway of her Bayonne, N.J., home last Wednesday. Then she found out it was the work of a kamikaze squirrel. Firefighters say they found evidence that the squirrel, who has not been named, was on a power line above the car, and chewed through the line. As if part of a natural Rube Goldberg device, the squirrel proceeded to catch on fire, falling from the power line, hitting top of the car, sliding into the engine compartment ... and blowing up the car. Ta-da! "It's something to laugh about once she has a new car," Lindsay's brother Tony told the Jersey Journal. "It's not funny yet."
LED Weekend
Sandwich Maker
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Awash in freshwater data streams
Mike Broomall and three of his colleagues at the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale examined the green garbage bin with the pensive concentration of a team of surgeons.
"All I know is this thing's got to be tight," said Broomall, a research technician, fitting a black drainage pipe through a hole at the bottom of the trash can. The bins eventually will be used as quarantine tanks to study four species of fish native to the Susquehanna River.
The staff at the Stroud Research Center has something of a Rube Goldberg complex. They can turn a Coleman Cooler and some plastic tubing like the kind sold at Home Depot into a cozy love nest for breeding mayflies.
This ingenuity (or eccentricity) takes place daily at the water-research laboratory, tucked away on 900 acres of hilly farmland in southern Chester County.
Stroud scientists have studied the world's streams, rivers, and watersheds since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. This year the center is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and next Sunday it will be one of several environmental and conservation groups to benefit from the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup steeplechase races.
Running on a $4 million budget and a staff of 50, researchers here have investigated the quality of New York's water supply, the Amazon River, the tropical streams in northern Costa Rica, and the Schuylkill. Stroud likely is the only research institution in North America focused solely on freshwater streams and rivers, according to Bern Sweeney, president and director.
At the heart of Stroud's research is the White Clay Creek. Scientists have catalogued the stream's temperature, flow, chemistry, and biology every day for the last 40 years. They compare these data to those collected on every other freshwater body they study, including the Amazon. The shin-deep stream is about seven feet wide and looks surprisingly small for having such a big role.
Stroud scientists also recently finished examining the water quality of the Schuylkill. According to Sweeney, 50 percent of the water quality has been lost, mostly because of deforestation and industrial and residential development. The goal for researchers, Sweeney said, is to use this data to figure how to allow for human activity and development without compromising water quality.
The center is also experimenting with planting 6,000 trees along the east branch of the Brandywine Creek to act as pollution buffers.
Constructed to look like a Quaker farmhouse, the Stroud Center has a brick and clapboard exterior and a gabled roof. But inside, abstract murals on the walls add contrast to the rustic wood and stonework.
These contrasts between urban and rural, modern and quaint, are apparent throughout the center. The scientists' offices are cluttered with stacks of papers and books, looking like typical academic suites except for the knee-high water boots stashed under desks.
One of the original founders, William Bolton Stroud, for whom the center is named, wore work boots and khakis to the center. Stroud walked a mile to the center from his farm, using a machete to cut down plants that were harmful to the creek.
When he wasn't hacking weeds, he enjoyed a buttoned-down role on the board of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
Stroud's wife, Joan, helped champion the center's educational programs. Stroud currently educates 3,000 students each year and provides professional development to more than 200 teachers.
The other cofounder, Dr. Ruth Patrick, was in her 60s when she helped establish the center. Patrick split her time between the water-research center and serving as the head of the limnology department, which studies bodies of freshwater, at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Sweeney, who joined the center in his early 20s as a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, recalled that Patrick had a remarkable intensity and vivacity.
"When she talked to us, it would never be, 'What did you think of the Phillies game?' " said Sweeney. "It was always, 'What new have you learned today?' She was challenging us every day."
The Strouds passed away - Joan in 1985 and William in 2005. Patrick recently celebrated her 100th birthday and still has an office at the academy.
Sweeney said he hoped the center's work would help ease a "global freshwater crisis."
American consumption depends on 150 gallons per person a day, he said, whether it's for drinking, manufacturing automobile tires, or producing light bulbs. By comparison, people in India use 10 gallons a day. Sweeney said it's imperative to conserve and maintain high-quality freshwater.
"Every drop counts," he said.
"All I know is this thing's got to be tight," said Broomall, a research technician, fitting a black drainage pipe through a hole at the bottom of the trash can. The bins eventually will be used as quarantine tanks to study four species of fish native to the Susquehanna River.
The staff at the Stroud Research Center has something of a Rube Goldberg complex. They can turn a Coleman Cooler and some plastic tubing like the kind sold at Home Depot into a cozy love nest for breeding mayflies.
This ingenuity (or eccentricity) takes place daily at the water-research laboratory, tucked away on 900 acres of hilly farmland in southern Chester County.
Stroud scientists have studied the world's streams, rivers, and watersheds since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. This year the center is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and next Sunday it will be one of several environmental and conservation groups to benefit from the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup steeplechase races.
Running on a $4 million budget and a staff of 50, researchers here have investigated the quality of New York's water supply, the Amazon River, the tropical streams in northern Costa Rica, and the Schuylkill. Stroud likely is the only research institution in North America focused solely on freshwater streams and rivers, according to Bern Sweeney, president and director.
At the heart of Stroud's research is the White Clay Creek. Scientists have catalogued the stream's temperature, flow, chemistry, and biology every day for the last 40 years. They compare these data to those collected on every other freshwater body they study, including the Amazon. The shin-deep stream is about seven feet wide and looks surprisingly small for having such a big role.
Stroud scientists also recently finished examining the water quality of the Schuylkill. According to Sweeney, 50 percent of the water quality has been lost, mostly because of deforestation and industrial and residential development. The goal for researchers, Sweeney said, is to use this data to figure how to allow for human activity and development without compromising water quality.
The center is also experimenting with planting 6,000 trees along the east branch of the Brandywine Creek to act as pollution buffers.
Constructed to look like a Quaker farmhouse, the Stroud Center has a brick and clapboard exterior and a gabled roof. But inside, abstract murals on the walls add contrast to the rustic wood and stonework.
These contrasts between urban and rural, modern and quaint, are apparent throughout the center. The scientists' offices are cluttered with stacks of papers and books, looking like typical academic suites except for the knee-high water boots stashed under desks.
One of the original founders, William Bolton Stroud, for whom the center is named, wore work boots and khakis to the center. Stroud walked a mile to the center from his farm, using a machete to cut down plants that were harmful to the creek.
When he wasn't hacking weeds, he enjoyed a buttoned-down role on the board of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
Stroud's wife, Joan, helped champion the center's educational programs. Stroud currently educates 3,000 students each year and provides professional development to more than 200 teachers.
The other cofounder, Dr. Ruth Patrick, was in her 60s when she helped establish the center. Patrick split her time between the water-research center and serving as the head of the limnology department, which studies bodies of freshwater, at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Sweeney, who joined the center in his early 20s as a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, recalled that Patrick had a remarkable intensity and vivacity.
"When she talked to us, it would never be, 'What did you think of the Phillies game?' " said Sweeney. "It was always, 'What new have you learned today?' She was challenging us every day."
The Strouds passed away - Joan in 1985 and William in 2005. Patrick recently celebrated her 100th birthday and still has an office at the academy.
Sweeney said he hoped the center's work would help ease a "global freshwater crisis."
American consumption depends on 150 gallons per person a day, he said, whether it's for drinking, manufacturing automobile tires, or producing light bulbs. By comparison, people in India use 10 gallons a day. Sweeney said it's imperative to conserve and maintain high-quality freshwater.
"Every drop counts," he said.
Friday, October 26, 2007
LED Weekend
About midway through last weekend, it suddenly occurred to me that LED-based lighting was following us everywhere, and that it was significantly enhancing pretty much everything we did. In the areas that solid state lighting had not arrived yet, its presence was sorely missed (including in some headlights that got left on, necessitating a helpful jump-start from a fellow fisherman at a chilly pond; a bit lower power drain than the vintage 2003 halogens would have come in handy).
The first stunning encounter came at rock concert. It has probably been 17 or so years since we last enjoyed getting our nervous system scrambled by some serious decibels, but having worked security at a string of concerts back in college, light-duty earplugs were standard equipment for the whole family. That can take some intensity out of the event but it's an ROI tradeoff I'll stand by. The first warm-up band had some LED floodlights that were pretty much placed for the lighting needs of the band, as well as some additional white sets to shine brightly at the audience. Light where you want it, and it stands up to repeated assembly, disassembly and travel. It only makes sense.
The second warm-up added some color changing to the mix, so no surprises there. Once the headliners took the stage, there was a wow-factor that screamed "you couldn't do that kind of thing in the old days". The stage backdrop included two lower video screens, stage left and right, and a third centered above those. As we would discover soon enough, each screen was outlined with full-color LED-driven light pipes. In addition to the pipes, there were a series of display panels measuring probably 4 by 8 feet each (1.3m x 2.6m for the metric system folks) located to each side of the upper screen, as well as below it between the lower screens. Initially, they provided a lot of white light, but progressed into rhythmic color changing patterns and waves flowing across those and the video screens, and then into a variety of designs and scenes. At one point, stunning bluish-white lighting bolts angled down along the displays, including a vivid indigo corona and appropriate "flash scatter" that just looked real. The music was great, but the lighting made it a total experience. I've read about concert lighting in our own news, but this was an order of magnitude more than expected. Not simply smooth RGB, or extensions of the displays, this was nearly a show on its own. We've come a long way since the Laserium concerts first showed up at the San Francisco planetarium.
Standing in line on the way to say hello to the band and get a T-shirt autographed, the couple behind us mentioned something called the Maker's Fair being held this same weekend. "You mean God is having a party at the fairgrounds?" I asked. "Sort of, but it's Maker Faire and more of a serious geek-fest, with all kinds of inventions, stuff blowing up, guys who play with scary turbocharged firepots and other craziness that's hard to describe, but worth the price of admission," they replied. The event was making its first foray outside of the San Francisco bay area with a trip to Austin, so what the heck.
The fair was scattered around a good chunk of the county fairgrounds here, and the first invention we encountered was a 10-foot tall, LED-based color-changing interactive Buddha. Touch different places and Buddha would glow in those spots, or set off on his own course of psychedelic "invisible man" renditions. From there, we simply had to take a few steps in any direction to encounter items that simply wouldn't have existed without LEDs. Brainwave biofeedback display systems, twinkling wall art and firefly emulators. (The builder commented that he was from Washington State, and they didn't have fireflies, so he studied the twinkling patterns of a herd/flock of Japanese fireflies, programmed it into a microcontroller, mounted LED die to the end of fine wires, gave the assembly a battery and put it into a jar - instant summertime on the bedstand.) At the same stand, they were displaying a bicycle wheel that served as an LED-based display screen. All you needed to do was pedal and you generated the requisite electricity to power the LEDs and controller, which automatically adjusted things for the current rotational speed and presented both static and moving RGB images.
Nearby was the guy with an LED display cascading along his back, and overall, many of the displays were lit with small LED spotlights (again, hard to break when traveling). In the second pavilion, you could purchase your own LED Christmas tree kit (soldering iron not included). One community college teacher was demonstrating weatherproof "social statement" LEDs that were simply an LED soldered to a nearly used-up button battery and pasted to a magnet so you could signify your favorite protest in a nondestructive way using recycled materials (only in Austin, Seattle or San Francisco, one suspects. The ones that look like bombs seem to be reserved for Boston).
LEDs even made it into the 50,000 lb full-scale "Mousetrap" game. If you're not familiar with the particulars, it's a board game in which you slowly build a Rube Goldberg marble rolling machine to trigger a little mouse-catching cage to drop. In this case, the marble was a bowling ball, and the mousetrap a 4000 lb concrete block that gave a ground-shaking "whump" onto an old vacuum cleaner and an LED illuminated mouse robot (which ended up being ejected from the crushing, merely losing its battery, but not for lack of trying to be in the right place at the right time). Previous recipients of the trap included a bicycle helmet (ouch) and a washing machine.
The most interesting realization was how many of those inventions didn't merely have a solid state light source added to them, but were created because there was such a thing as an LED to invent them with. It's analogous to the fact that while accounting existed long before the PC came into being, but video gaming did not. An application was created because there was technology to invent it with. The fair was a concentrated dose of "look what we can do now" based on the fact that the LED/SSL industry had produced bright, efficient, reliable solid state light sources, apparently at a reasonable enough price for them to be everywhere in these entertaining realms.
Since we have real fireflies around the yard, all that was left that day was to go home an turn on the little "airplane on a stick" next to our bedside and watch the LEDs pulse out cosmic patterns... dreaming of the applications none of us have thought of.
Rube Goldberg Sandwich Maker
London Olympic flame to be carbon neutral
The first stunning encounter came at rock concert. It has probably been 17 or so years since we last enjoyed getting our nervous system scrambled by some serious decibels, but having worked security at a string of concerts back in college, light-duty earplugs were standard equipment for the whole family. That can take some intensity out of the event but it's an ROI tradeoff I'll stand by. The first warm-up band had some LED floodlights that were pretty much placed for the lighting needs of the band, as well as some additional white sets to shine brightly at the audience. Light where you want it, and it stands up to repeated assembly, disassembly and travel. It only makes sense.
The second warm-up added some color changing to the mix, so no surprises there. Once the headliners took the stage, there was a wow-factor that screamed "you couldn't do that kind of thing in the old days". The stage backdrop included two lower video screens, stage left and right, and a third centered above those. As we would discover soon enough, each screen was outlined with full-color LED-driven light pipes. In addition to the pipes, there were a series of display panels measuring probably 4 by 8 feet each (1.3m x 2.6m for the metric system folks) located to each side of the upper screen, as well as below it between the lower screens. Initially, they provided a lot of white light, but progressed into rhythmic color changing patterns and waves flowing across those and the video screens, and then into a variety of designs and scenes. At one point, stunning bluish-white lighting bolts angled down along the displays, including a vivid indigo corona and appropriate "flash scatter" that just looked real. The music was great, but the lighting made it a total experience. I've read about concert lighting in our own news, but this was an order of magnitude more than expected. Not simply smooth RGB, or extensions of the displays, this was nearly a show on its own. We've come a long way since the Laserium concerts first showed up at the San Francisco planetarium.
Standing in line on the way to say hello to the band and get a T-shirt autographed, the couple behind us mentioned something called the Maker's Fair being held this same weekend. "You mean God is having a party at the fairgrounds?" I asked. "Sort of, but it's Maker Faire and more of a serious geek-fest, with all kinds of inventions, stuff blowing up, guys who play with scary turbocharged firepots and other craziness that's hard to describe, but worth the price of admission," they replied. The event was making its first foray outside of the San Francisco bay area with a trip to Austin, so what the heck.
The fair was scattered around a good chunk of the county fairgrounds here, and the first invention we encountered was a 10-foot tall, LED-based color-changing interactive Buddha. Touch different places and Buddha would glow in those spots, or set off on his own course of psychedelic "invisible man" renditions. From there, we simply had to take a few steps in any direction to encounter items that simply wouldn't have existed without LEDs. Brainwave biofeedback display systems, twinkling wall art and firefly emulators. (The builder commented that he was from Washington State, and they didn't have fireflies, so he studied the twinkling patterns of a herd/flock of Japanese fireflies, programmed it into a microcontroller, mounted LED die to the end of fine wires, gave the assembly a battery and put it into a jar - instant summertime on the bedstand.) At the same stand, they were displaying a bicycle wheel that served as an LED-based display screen. All you needed to do was pedal and you generated the requisite electricity to power the LEDs and controller, which automatically adjusted things for the current rotational speed and presented both static and moving RGB images.
Nearby was the guy with an LED display cascading along his back, and overall, many of the displays were lit with small LED spotlights (again, hard to break when traveling). In the second pavilion, you could purchase your own LED Christmas tree kit (soldering iron not included). One community college teacher was demonstrating weatherproof "social statement" LEDs that were simply an LED soldered to a nearly used-up button battery and pasted to a magnet so you could signify your favorite protest in a nondestructive way using recycled materials (only in Austin, Seattle or San Francisco, one suspects. The ones that look like bombs seem to be reserved for Boston).
LEDs even made it into the 50,000 lb full-scale "Mousetrap" game. If you're not familiar with the particulars, it's a board game in which you slowly build a Rube Goldberg marble rolling machine to trigger a little mouse-catching cage to drop. In this case, the marble was a bowling ball, and the mousetrap a 4000 lb concrete block that gave a ground-shaking "whump" onto an old vacuum cleaner and an LED illuminated mouse robot (which ended up being ejected from the crushing, merely losing its battery, but not for lack of trying to be in the right place at the right time). Previous recipients of the trap included a bicycle helmet (ouch) and a washing machine.
The most interesting realization was how many of those inventions didn't merely have a solid state light source added to them, but were created because there was such a thing as an LED to invent them with. It's analogous to the fact that while accounting existed long before the PC came into being, but video gaming did not. An application was created because there was technology to invent it with. The fair was a concentrated dose of "look what we can do now" based on the fact that the LED/SSL industry had produced bright, efficient, reliable solid state light sources, apparently at a reasonable enough price for them to be everywhere in these entertaining realms.
Since we have real fireflies around the yard, all that was left that day was to go home an turn on the little "airplane on a stick" next to our bedside and watch the LEDs pulse out cosmic patterns... dreaming of the applications none of us have thought of.
Rube Goldberg Sandwich Maker
London Olympic flame to be carbon neutral
Friday, October 19, 2007
Rube Goldberg Sandwich Maker
This was a project for a 3d animation class to create a rube goldberg machine. i know it would never work in real life and it is by no means accurate, but it looks pretty cool i think.
Rube Goldberg Device from the movie Waiting
A Rube Goldberg device from the end of the movie "Waiting." This device was made to simply pour beer into a mug, initiated from setting an empty mug onto a pedestal. Very cool!
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