Thursday, April 30, 2009

Bodum Double Walled Glassware

CoolTools has an article about Bodum Insulated Glassware. I encountered these on our recent trip to New York City. After walking around for a few hours we decided to stop for a latte and a snack. We ended up at a place called Max Brenner: Chocolate by the Bad Man. My latte was served in one of the Bodum glasses and I was impressed right away. The glass was cool to the touch even though the drink was initially too hot to drink.

The restaurant itself is worth a visit if you're in the area and fancy some dessert- and it is near the NY location of the Forbidden Planet. (Here is a review of the restaurant with some pictures.) I had some very nice chocolate cake which came with some fruit, some ice cream and a small flask of raspberry sauce. It was a bit expensive though so you wouldn't want to go everyday.

Reserve your user name

Have you ever tried to find a user name to use on all the sites that make you pick one? Well namechk.com will let you check a huge list of sites to see if your name is still available. Sadly chris is taken.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Film Addict

Film Addict is a site that lets you find out how many of the IMDB top 250 films you have seen. You can also compare to your friends to see who has seen more of the films.

I've seen 35.6% of the films on the list. You can compare to me here.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Trees of the Glebe

glebetrees.com is the website for a small community project that is trying to inventory all the trees in my Ottawa neighbourhood. It is a good example of the sorts of things that you can do now that we have the Internet.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Lego Yamato

The Brothers Brick has a post, with pictures, of the largest Lego ship ever made. It is 22 feet long and took 6 years to build. You could build you own if you have 200,000 Lego bricks in your basement.

Zeppelin Knot

Mother Earth News has an article about a knot used for securing the mooring lines of Zeppelins and other airships.

The article is from 1980 and quotes someone who trained US Navy airshipmen 50 years before.

via Make
(in an article with a video about using a trucker's hitch to tie down a canoe on a car)

Followup: Survival Topics has an article with a better explanation of how to tie the knot.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Sunlit Poetry

Make TV has a short video of a project that uses the moving light of the sun to project poetry onto the sidewalk. The video contains a few different items but the sun poetry is the first one.

I'm not big on poetry but this would be a cool idea for a monument or memorial.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Segway Puma

Make has a post with some pictures of a concept vehicle from Segway and GM. It has two wheels and balances like a Segway but the occupants sit site by side and are covered by a roof.

It could but fun for running errands but would probably need a trailer to carry groceries.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

A Programmer in the Trading Room

New York Magazine has an article by a computer programmer who used to work on derivatives desks in trading rooms in New York. He retired a few years ago and is now an oyster farmer but seems to feel some guilt for his work on systems that packaged mortgage backed securities. My guess is that the traders involved don't feel anything similar.

The article reminded me of several reasons why I don't work in a trading room anymore.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Thumb Calendar

Here is an interesting scheme that lets you print an entire year's calendar on a business card. It is called a Thumb Calendar because you use your thumbs to cover the parts of the calendar that you are not using.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

An Eclipse from the Moon

The Japanese Space Agency has an article with pictures of an unusual eclipse. The picture is taken from the moon and the body blocking the sun is the earth.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Gap Minder

I have previously blogged about a TED presentation that used an application to show a series of statistics over time. Now the software is available as a flash application at GapMinder.org. The app is preloaded with all sorts of data that you can compare over time.

There are some demo videos and some preset examples that you can play with. It looks like you can upload your own data if you want to.

Worth checking out. The user interface is extremely well done.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Space station grows again

Astronomy Picture of the day has a nice photo of the newly expanded International Space Station.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

A German Serial Killer (or not)

The Questionable Authority has a post about a hunt for a serial killer in and near Germany.
The mystery woman has been linked by DNA to six murders and a string of thefts in a 15-year spree in three countries.
Eventually the DNA was found to belong to a worker at the factory that make the swabs used to gather evidence at crime scenes.