Category: tech

tech

Ding Goes The Oven – Tweet Goes The Feed

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Twitter is just in the news more and more these days. First Lance Armstrong used it to get his stolen bike back. Then we have the rumor that Google is going to buy it. Now, we have the news that some excellent geeks at Poke have hacked together / masterfully crafted something they are calling BakerTweet.
What is it you ask? It’s a wonderful hardware / software solution for alerting people to the latest oven output from the Albion Cafe, Bakery and Food Store. It’s a wireless Arduino thing that can be customized via a web interface to allow for various custom messages to be Twittered at the twist of a dial and the push of a water/flour-proof button.
What’s brilliant is The Albion actually using it. And it actually works. Check out the video below:

BakerTweet from BakerTweet on Vimeo.

tech

Dropped Your Phone in the Toilet?

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The Gray Lady has an article titled Low-Tech Fixes to High-Tech Problems and one problem that they discuss happens to a lot of people: dropping your cellphone in the toilet (or in my case a cup of beer while at a NJ Nets game). My phone in that instance was ruined but maybe it didn’t have to be if I followed the steps below:

  1. Take the battery out immediately, to prevent electrical short circuits from frying your phone’s fragile internals
  2. Wipe the phone gently with a towel
  3. Shove it into a jar full of uncooked rice.

It works for the same reason you may keep few grains of rice in your salt shaker to keep the salt dry. Rice has a high chemical affinity for water — that means the molecules in the rice have a nearly magnetic attraction for water molecules, which will be soaked up into the rice rather than beading up inside the phone. I have a strong hankering to watch old Mr. Wizard’s World episodes right now…
The rest of the article is full of interesting info, like how you can extend your house’s wi-fi range by making a wave reflector out of an aluminum cookie sheet. Enjoy.

tech

To All My Fellow Bloggers: Keep Your Day Job

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Fake Steve Jobs, aka Daniel Lyons, has an article in Newsweek this week titled Time to Hang Up the Pajamas in which he states that growing rich by blogging is a high-tech fairy tale.

I learned the hard way: while blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.

So, if you had dreams of turning your Ninja or Pirate themed blog into a money making machine, keep your day job (if you have one). A few years ago I had a dream of blogging for a living but then I thought about it and realized that posting around 10 times a day, every day time didn’t seem like it would be that much fun. Lyons for instance, after posting 20 times a day for about three years, is walking away “feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started.” Yikes.

tech

Ray Gun Reality

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The United States Army has turned over 100 years of science fiction into science fact as it has deployed a ray gun named Zeus in Iraq to blow up road side bombs. It works by shooting lasers at them and can do so from up to 300 meters away. It is named Zeus because this supreme ruler of Mount Olympus loved to throw lightening bolts around like they were candy.
I just love it when fantasy becomes reality. Now where is my flying car?

tech

Can a sub be above and not just below?

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DARPA is asking for a Flying Submarine concept which technically should be called “a submersible aircraft, as an aircraft design can be pressurized and submerged far more easily than a heavy submarine could be made to fly.” I believe the word I’m looking for is cool.
Another cool tidbit is that this is post #700. While most people start a blog and stop posting after only a few entries, WGTCTIP2 is going to turn five this coming January. Onwards and upwards as we head to post #1000!

tech

Happy Birthday Emoticon

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Twenty six years ago today, Scott Fahlman posted the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman 🙂
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
🙂
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:
🙁

As any teacher who has received a paper from a student in the past 5 – 10 years will tell you, the world has never been the same since.
To honor the occasion, Wired has an article about the founder of the emoticon movement and a slide show as well.
Smile – it’s Friday!

tech

An Advertisement About Nothing

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To my amusement and delight, one of my favorite comedians Mr. Jerry Seinfeld has filmed a number of Microsoft ads with Mr. Microsoft himself Bill Gates which are perfectly Seinfeldian. The first takes place at the mall where Jerry spots Bill buying shoes. The second takes place at a residential home where Bill and Jerry have moved in with a random “normal” family.
As PC World writes, the ads are “all just stuff to make you react. Whether you chuckle, guffaw, scoff or spew, you’re doing something — and that’s ultimately the point of the ads about nothing.”
They are funny to watch and almost like a traffic accident – though I may not want to look, I simply cannot not look. Plus, seeing Bill do “the robot” is quite enjoyable, though English striker Peter Crouch does the robot much, much better.
Over time, the ads are supposed to get more and more “specific” about Microsoft products and service. When that happens, who knows if I will feel the same way about Jerry shilling for MSFT. For now, I will just simply enjoy Jerry swapping George Costanza’s companionship with yet another major icon’s as he goes through the banal moments of life.
First he hung with Superman. Now he’s hanging with the richest man in the world. Sounds pretty fun to me.

Shoe Circus:


New Family: