It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got a Blu-ray DVD player. I was psyched when I first heard about the new high-definition DVD’s that were planned. But then Sony introduced one standard and a competing standard called HD DVD was being developed too. So there was a long format war with studios lining up on different (sometimes both) sides. Buy the wrong technology and you’d be stuck with a dinosaur. That’s ultimately what happened to those early adopters who bought the lower tech, more affordable HD DVD players.
Fantastic Contraption
My old roommate, Rich, sent me this website. He has a Master’s in Physics and another one in Engineering Science and knew I would like it. I can’t really explain it, so you will just have to visit. Basically you build mechanical contraptions to move an object to a certain spot.
http://www.fantasticcontraption.com
It starts out easy, of course. Then it gets harder and harder and the contraptions required get more and more complicated. I started out by always building a little car that would take the object wherever it needed to go. Once you finish a level you can save it or you can look at other people’s solutions. If you buy the program, then you can rate people’s solutions. There are thousands of solutions, but the really good ones are the 4 and 5 star solutions. The 5-star solutions are just amazing. There are catapults, chains, spear throwers, cranes, lifts, and so on. Some solutions just stumble along, some are just beautiful. Mine are usually cars.
Try the game out first. The tutorial is pretty short and you can do the first few levels in a few minutes each. After you check things out, you can look at some of the ones I did, with links below. Feel free to share your own designs too.
Cheap Gas
I saw gas last night for $1.95 a gallon. When gas was $4 a gallon a couple of months ago, people were rushing to dump their trucks and SUV’s to get more efficient vehicles. So has the opposite happened now that gas is cheap again? Since car shopping in May, I’ve been on a bunch of car dealers’ e-mail lists. I got an e-mail this week from a Toyota dealer saying they are having a Prius Clearance Event, a “blow out” sale on 25 cars, selling them at dealer invoice cost.
WordPress Blog
A guy wrote to me last weekend and said it would be nice to have a blog or discussion area on legislative issues for the Engineer’s Association website. I know that the web hosting company will allow a blog because we already have a discussion area set up that I’ve talked about before.
Keychain Swiss Army Knife
For years I’ve kept a small Swiss Army knife on my keychain. I use it almost every day, using the scissors probably the most. I lost my favorite which had a pen instead of a toothpick, but recently my backup to that broke (I sent it back under its lifetime warranty, we’ll see what happens). So I hastily bought another one, also without a pen (the stylus for my Palm TX has a pen in it, so usually I have a pen wherever I go). I regretted it almost immediately because I quickly discovered that Victorinox has a huge number of variations on a theme at Amazon. First, you can get all kinds of colors. I got a dark green one, but you can get the standard red, black, blue, purple, white, pink, yellow, or gray. You can get translucent colors which are called ruby, emerald, amethyst (purple), citrine (yellow), and sapphire (blue). You can get several colors of tie-dye (orange, green, purple, and pink) or you can also get a flowered pattern called Edelweiss with background in red, violet, blue, lime green, or pink.
Like I said, my older one had a pen. I found out this is called the Signaturewhereas without that it is called the Classic SD. If you get a Classic and swap the toothpick for a red LED light, it is called the Swisslite. If you want both the light and the pen (losing the toothpick and tweezers), it is called a Signature Lite.
You can also get a bottle opener with a Phillips head screwdriver, which would come in handy at times. You can trade in your scissors for a bottle opener (a bad idea since the scissors are one of the most useful things on there) and that is called a Rally. Alternatively you can just add a bottle opener, in which case you’d have a Rambler. Take the Rambler and put a pen where the toothpick goes, and it becomes a Manager. Take out the tweezers and put a light and now you have a Midnight Manager. By this time it is about twice as thick as the Classic, but the same length. This is what Jeb has, but he says he doesn’t use the light much, making me think the Manager might be ideal.
If you want something really thin, you can get the metal Alox classic which doesn’t have the toothpick or tweezers. It comes in red, black, green, and blue.