While in Perdido Eric bought this book on the first day it came out and finished it the following day. Then David read it in two days and I was able to start it, but then had to buy a copy myself when I got home so I could finish it.
Category: Uncategorized
Dots on Soda Cans
At Perdido, Kelly pointed out that there are colored dots on the bottom of soda cans. Different cans have different colors. I checked all the cans and they all had a dot of some color on the bottom. Even cans from the same 12-pack will have different colors. I thought there had to be a reason, but didn’t know what it might be. I did a search on Google and had the answer in minutes:
http://www.nordson.com/Businesses/Container/Products/containerinkdot.htm
In a factory there might be several machines printing the cans and each machine prints a different color dot on the bottom of the can. This way, if there is a problem they will know which machine to shut down while the other machines continue working.
Happy Birthday Blogmaster!
Big daddy blogmaster
Spares us from disaster
He’s vector-based or raster
And fights off the evil Blaster
Happy Birthday Jeb!!!!
Sparklers
While watching Avondale’s excellent fireworks with Mom (down from 16 people) last night I saw some kids playing with sparklers. For years sparklers were the only fireworks you could buy legally in Georgia and we got to play with them when we were kids. But I got hurt worse and more often from sparklers than any kind of firework I can think of. Sparklers consist of a flaming hot wire spewing sparks that kids wave around while burning each others retinas out. Meanwhile with regular fireworks everyone knows the rules: light fuse and get away. What could be simpler than that?
Gadget Convergence
Once you get enough gadgets you can do just about anything. For example, on Saturday I got a new smart card for my satellite receiver to replace my old one which was probably too easy to hack into. When I replaced the card about a quarter of my stations disappeared. I ran some diagnostics and figured out that half of the stations from one satellite (the “odd” transponders, the “even” ones came in fine) were not coming in at enough strength (the dish receives signals from satellites at two different locations in the sky about 9 degrees apart which I think is amazing). Technical support said I needed to fine tune the aim of the dish, which made no sense to me since the only thing that had changed was I put a new card into the receiver. And since I was getting the even transponders it didn’t make much sense that I couldn’t get the odd ones. But it’s hard to argue with people who know what they are talking about.