I hate the tv

Over at Improv Everywhere they’ve got the details.  And pictures on Flickr.  Thanks pevo.

Streaming media is dominated by a bunch of software companies whose products I don’t want on my computer. I’m a user of firefox, media player classic, ffdshow, media player connectivity, Real Alternative, and others. I do not use IE or Microsoft WMP because they sucks and probably report my viewing habits to homeland security.

For all those sites which don’t work, its nice to know that there is a way of downloading the media to play locally. You can also store copies of your favorites. Use lawfully, you crazy kids.

Look into his eyes…

Meet Tom Bearden. He’s the co-inventor of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator, or MEG, a device which provides a net positive amount of energy by pulling it out of another dimension. Don’t believe it….Well look here smarty pants a working prototype:

When I get some spare time, I’ve been planning on building a windmill to generate some power convert some wind energy into electrical energy. Maybe I’ll just build one of these instead….wonder if he’ll provide schematics.

I found out about tom after running into his Lecture on Soviet Weather Engineering. Its pretty interesting stuff,  especially the pictoral examples; a must for physics buffs and majors.  Someone send that man a fisheye! =)
I’d like to believe it and the above stuff about the MEG, but its difficult to be convinced with the small amount of understanding of the items which I have now. But trust me, If I get a MEG to work, you’ll hear about it. Stay tuned.

From the inq, A guy who wrote an open source program to allow a computer to hook up to a model train has been hit with some nasty letters and some legal threats from a Japanese company who claims he is infringing on their patents. The project on sourceforge has not been shut down, so it looks like the author is not bowing to the pressure.

This issue is going to come up over and over in the near future so we need to be very diligent and ensure that correct precidents are set. The nature of software nowadays is that many people will be concurrently developing just about everything. If it doesn’t exist yet, wait a little while and it will. With this amount of development, patents just stifle innovation. Keeping in mind that patents were meant to encourage innovation by providing a timed monopoly to the pating party in exchange for showing how something is done.

Here is a nice tutorial on making a pinhole.  It shows how useful such a lens is for looking for dust on a sensor.

Things like this…

…are great examples of common things that can be done better if someone just some thought put into it. There’s always going to be a need for creative design. Thanks GRYNX

Here are some other examples I ran into some other examples last night while learning about Buckminster Fuller

I ran across this in a thread on FW…It details how to build this little guy:

It is a PC connection to a regular old phone. So you can use a regular phone like these at home:

Update:  This looks to be less work and more quick-and dirty.  Probably the way I’d go… They just open it up and solder wires to pads where sound comes in and out.

Way cooler than this, I ran into this little gem at the TechEblog Top Ten Strangest Lego Creations site.

Here’s a good place to find one to use in this project. Also, you could find some legos that are the same size and thin, and use one above and below to keep the cap on.