deblogatory: 02/01/2007

14 February 2007

The Digital Sundial

Digital Sundials International's Digital Sundial which produces a digital readout of the time with no moving parts and nothing other than just the light of the sun.

13 February 2007

8 Diseases That Give You Superhuman Powers

8 Diseases That Give You Superhuman Powers: "Brain Diseases I Wish I Had"

11 February 2007

Bitteroot Fire

"This awesome picture was taken in Bitterroot National Forest in Montana on August 6, 2000. The photographer, John McColgan, is a fire behavior analyst from Fairbanks, Alaska. He took the picture with a digital camera."

From Heat & Glo comes a fireplace that runs on water. Requiring 1/2 gallon of water an hour, the fireplace requires no venting because it burns hydrogen leaving only water vapor as a byproduct. There is no dangerous byproducts like carbon monoxide or nitrous oxide.

10 February 2007

The Parasitic Candirú

From DamnedInteresting.com, comes the story of a parasitic vertebrate, a fish known as the toothpick fish or Candirú, that is attracted to the ammonia released from the gills of fish as they breathe. That in itself would not be very bad at all, except for that fact that they can't distinguish between than and a human relieving himself in the Amazon. The fish swims up the uretha, lodges itself there with spines, and quickly becomes engorged with blood to the point it no longer is able to dislodge itself. Removal requires surgery -- the excruciating pain goes without saying.

Animated Knots

An excellent site that shows you all sorts of knots, with animations on how to make them.

The Amazing Origcami of Kamiya Satoshi

Origami maker Kamiya Satoshi has made some pretty incredible creatures. His colorful chonological gallery stretches back to 1999 and is filled with animals, fantastic creatures, plants, insects and geometric shapes. As far as I can tell everything is made form a single sheet of paper (sometimes as much as 2 meters square). The amount of detail is often spectacular -- for example each of the scales on the dragon at the beginning of this post is individually creased to look like a 3D scale, not glued on or some other cop out. Here is a page that shows one of his "simpler" creations, a beetle, and the diagram of the creases on the paper needed to make it and a search result from YouTube of videos of his work.

DaVinci 's Automobile

DaVinci's Automobile as recreated from plans in his notebooks.

09 February 2007

Nifty desk lamps

Some nifty desk lamps from Frank Buchwald.

How to move a large load on the ocean

An interesting post from the Fogonazos Blog.

'Doomsday' vault design unveiled

The 'Doomsday' vault, a vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government.

07 February 2007

Surviving on more or less

Three articles on living within your means, and scraping by:
Surviving (and thriving) on $12,000 a year, Can you live on $12,000 a year, and Scraping by on $150,000.

Fireworks, Lightning and a Comet

If it weren't for the fact that this photo was hosted on nasa.gov I would have thought it just a composite. Take note of the comet to the right of the fireworks too. For a full size version of the picture, click here.

General Tso's Chicken

New York Times article on where we get General Tso's chicken from.

Spontaneous Combustion

LeggNet's Digital Capture of a light bulb burning out.

Body Snatchers

From Damn Interesting comes an article about Capgras Syndrome wherein a person "suffers from the delusion that one or more of their close friends or family members have been replaced with exact duplicates."

Interactive Night Sky Map

SKY-MAP.ORG provides an excellent interactive map of the night sky which shows millions of objects, as well as constellations and the ability to see what is above you right now.

Black and White Twins

Black and White Twins who were born to a mixed race mother and father.

Folding Chair

The Folding Chair from Glumbert.com

Optical Illusion Paintings

Some interesting optical illusion pics from frogview.com.

The Apollo Mission Panoramas

From Panoramas.dk comes interactive panoramic views in Quicktime of the Apollo 11 to Apollo 17 missions -- The missions that put the first and last man on the moon and every Apollo mission in between. Kind of like your own personal lunar holodeck! As the site claims: "Experience the moon just as the astronauts did -
almost as you were there."

The Panoramas.dk site has many other interesting intereactive panoramas for you to enjoy as well.

deblogatory