A solution to Global Warming? Box it up and sell it!

Apparently there is a magic box in the UK that can be attached to the back of a car and trap emissions for recycling as biodiesel.

The three estimate that 10 facilities could be built across the UK to handle the carbon dioxide from the nearly 30 million cars on British roads.

The inventors say they have spent nearly 170,000 pounds ($348,500) over two years developing the "three distinct technologies" involved and are hoping to secure more funding for health and safety testing.

Not surprisingly, the trio won't show anyone -- not even their wives -- what's inside the box.

After every demonstration they hide its individual components in various locations across North Wales and the technology is divided into three parts, with each inventor being custodian of one section.

"Our three minds hold the three keys and we can only unlock it together," said Houston.

Source: From Wales, a box to make biofuel from car fumes | Science | Reuters

Mario - Lightning bolt style

Someone finally found a use for the lightning generator known as the Tesla Coil: 

This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.

So just to explain a little further, yes, it is the actual high voltage sparks that are making the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a "long" piece of fiber optics.

Source: Duckon 2007-Steve Ward's Singing Tesla Coil video

The Impact of Facebook's Platform

Singularity is an O/S from Microsoft currently being written on top of C#.NET.  To me it looks a bit like the concept of Windows as an O/S, with DOS in the background, except Windows is written in C# instead of C++.  It seems a bit redundant, like when MS should have done away with DOS altogether and stuck with strictly Windows as the O/S.  Although I did spend a few years writing DOS command scripts, so I am glad they didn't or I would still be driving my Ford Escort with the holes in the floor.  And it's tough to write an O/S, so kudos for the effort.

Singularity offers a unique opportunity to quantify the costs of
hardware and software isolation in an apples-to-apples
comparison. Once the costs are understood, individual systems
can choose to use hardware isolation when its benefits outweigh the costs.

I'm not sure whether that means it's going to run on a Macbook or not.  I think what it means is that it will allow you to virtualize the O/S a bit more and run multiple O/S'es on the same box.

I think I would rather have my computer startup into Facebook as an O/S, with Word & Excel somewhere in my profile.  Sounds a bit more fun.  The blue screen of death could be a photo of one of your friends drunk at a party a couple of years ago wearing a lampshade hat.

It would also save my wife some time opening Internet Explorer and typing www.facebook.com.

The Facebook Platform reminds many of us of Windows; and people are calling it "the social operating system" on which you can develop your Internet apps.

Source: The Impact of Facebook's Platform

Why just Internet Apps?

Deep Thoughts in a shallow pond: August 2004

I wonder if this guy got his Soundwave MP3 Player going in time for the movie.  He could have made a killing. 

The premise is simple. Someone needs to purchase the rights to use the image of Soundwave, the evil Decepticon Transformer, from Hasbro. Then make a hard disk-based MP3 player out of Soundwave (slightly smaller than the original Transformer toy, though, for portability) that actually transforms. Then sell the individual transforming cassette Transformers (Casseticons, was it?) as individual USB flash-based MP3 players that can be placed inside the larger Soundwave unit to extend its library.

Source: Deep Thoughts in a shallow pond: August 2004

Is the iPhone boring? How about Facebook?

 

Question: What the toughest challenge that an innovator faces?

Answer: It’s different for every innovator, but the one that crushes many is how bored the rest of the world was by their ideas. Finding support, whether emotional, financial, or intellectual, for a big new idea is very hard and depends on skills that have nothing to do with intellectual prowess or creative ability. That’s a killer for many would-be geniuses: they have to spend way more time persuading and convincing others as they do inventing, and they don’t have the skills or emotional endurance for it.

Source: How to Change the World: Ten Questions with Scott Berkun, Author of "The Myths of Innovation"

The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army

 

So that night, I went out and I bought a premade pie crust. And a tub of Cool Whip. And then I stopped by a Korean grocery store and purchased a whole, frozen squid. And sprinkles.

I got back to the barracks, and started the preparations for the morning. Which pretty much just means I started thawing the squid in a shower stall. My roommate was a bit surprised when he got back.

“Is that a squid in our shower?”
“Yep.”
“What’s it doing in there.”
“Thawing.”
“Goodnight.”

Source: The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army