Somewhere around 12:30, I notices that my keyboard was a bit dirty. I shook it and saw that some pieces could use a little encouragement from the can of compressed air that I keep handy. I blew out the dust and began spraying my whole desk to banish all manner of dust and dirt. Then, a bit of the 1,1-Diflouroethane spilled out and a bit of that made contact with my candle flame.

Whoosh.

There be fire. A little bit, but I thought it was cool! So, I spent the next few minutes issuing controlled bursts of 1,1-Diflouroethane directly into the candle. On my last try, I stood back a bit and issued a heavy burst.

The fire was spectacular but as you non-pyromaniacs have already realized as you read this, I was bound for some trouble. A bit of the 1,1-Diflouroethane managed to sink into the pool of wax and when it went up it sent a spray of wax in every direction. On me, on my chair, my desk, my monitor, my keyboard, and on my black MacBook.

Crap.

I went to the bathroom and got a towel and started to clean things up. The wax came off pretty easily. The floor was a bit slippery now so I went and sprayed some cleaner on it and it soon became clean and lustery.

When I started to clean the wax off my MacBook, I noticed how good the clean sections looked. I looked over at the candle (now extinguished) and decided to dip my towel into the still-soft wax. For the next five minutes, I rubbed in the wax and then wiped it off, much like I would do to my car.

Holy minty fresh MacBook Batman! My MacBook was completely free of the what I thought was permanent dullness of age. It was black again. Smooth. Dirty was gone. Scratches were all but invisible. The machine looks almost new.

I had tried regular cleaner before, but I was never able to achieve this kind of brilliant new-looking surface. The black MacBook seemed to have the ideal material for this procedure and I imagine ThinkPads would also benefit from a little wax. I’m not sure about aluminum MacBook Pro’s, though. Still, it couldn’t hurt to try.

Now, I just have to make sure my kids don’t figure out the compressed air thing. The apple will not likely fall far from the tree.

Thanks Al!

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html

Watch his hair grow over and over, facial hair come and go, and glasses appear and disappear. More fascinating are the effects of aging which are clearly evident.

“It’s a little bit blowey out there.”

Yes, indeed.

More hilarious imagery at http://trippychicken.wordpress.com/. Some cool T-shirt designs, too, over at zazzle.com

Via NotNFSW

via NotNSFW

Space by *kris-wilson on deviantART

I volunteered at Burning Man and learned a lot as a result. I met lots of interesting people. Then, in one of the “Burner” mailing lists, I came across this little tidbit and I thought to myself, “Yeh, this describes it.” At least it’s the best attempt at describing what is more or less an event impossible to describe to someone who has never been there…. So, here it is. Author unknown…

Tear down your house. Put it in a truck. Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together. Invite everyone you meet to
come over and party. When everyone leaves, follow them back to their homes, drink all their booze, and break things.

Buy a new set of expensive camping gear. Break it.

Stack all your fans in one corner of your living room. Put on your most fabulous outfit. Turn the fans on full blast. Dump a full vacuum
cleaner bag in front of them.

Pitch your tent next to the wall of speakers in a crowded, noisy club. Go to sleep. Wake up 2 hours later in a 110+ degree tent.

Buy a new pair of favorite shoes. Throw one shoe away.

Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away. Drain all the water from the toilet. Only flush it every 4 days. Hide all the
toilet paper.

Pay an escort of your affectionate preference to not bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and sunscreen, wear a skanky
neon wig; dance closely naked with you, then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

Visit a restaurant and pay them to let you alternate lying in the walk-in freezer and sitting in the oven.

Don’t sleep for 5 days. Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs. Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various parts of your body. Forget how you did it. Don’t go to a doctor.

Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores for the perfect, most outrageous costume. Forget to pack it.

Spend weeks preparing and freezing tasty, nutritious food and then forget it in your trunk for a few days of 110 degree heat. Eat it
anyway - and like it.

Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until you think you are going to scream. Scream. Realize you’ll love the music for the rest
of your life.

Get so drunk you can’t recognize your own house. Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.

Sprinkle dirty sand in all your food.

Mail $273 to the Reno casino of your choice. (price of average BM ticket in 2008)

Go to a museum. Find one of Salvador Dali’s more disturbing but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

Spend thousands of dollars creating a deeply personal art work. Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city. Blow it up.

Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire. Play a short loop of drum’n'bass until the embers are cold.

Have a 3 a.m., soul-baring conversation with a drag nun in platforms, a crocodile, and Bugs Bunny. Be unable to tell if you’re hallucinating.

Repeat.

The Dyson sphere (or Dyson shell) was originally proposed in 1959
by the astronomer Freeman Dyson in “Search for Artificial Stellar
Sources of Infrared Radiation” in Science as a way for an
advanced civilisation to utilise all of the energy radiated by their
sun. (Link)

Dyson spheres have always fascinated me. I read Larry Niven’s Ringworld where the Dyson Sphere’s little cousin, a Ringworld, is discussed at great length. You can see a rendering over at Jeff Russell’s Starship Dimensions page. Many times I have bookmarked various links to FAQs, but I’ve never spent the time to read them. Until now.

The FAQ is fascinating. It’s written by Anders Sandberg with contributions by a number of other folks familiar with physics, chemistry, and geology. The FAQ goes on to discuss, “What if a Dyson sphere were real?” What would be it’s characteristics? What would it be made of? What would it look like from the inside/outside?

There are two types, Type I and Type II. Type I is a cheat. You simply have zillions of mini satellites (called Statites) arranged in a spherical shell around a star. The Type II is more interesting as it consists of a rigid shell that is pretty darned complicated to construct.

Toward the end of the FAQ I read something that made me laugh and so I fired up my blogging tool. It was a note within the question, “Can a Dyson sphere be built using realistic technology?” Within the answer is this gem:

A rigid dyson shell would require superstrong materials, and its
construction is complicated since half a shell is unstable. One could
conceive of some dramatic capping process, where a number of
previously freely orbiting structural components at the same time
moved inwards to lock together into a shell (for example twenty
spherical triangles). This would require tremendous precision, but
since supertechnology is already assumed for building a rigid shell,
it seems almost trivial. As somebody put it, if you can build a dyson
shell you don’t need it.

Why I find this so fascinating is likely due to the late hour and the caffeine running through my system.

The Chaiten volcano erupts during storms in the middle of the night on May 3, 2008 in Chaiten, Chile. The Chaiten volcano, located some 800 miles south of the capital Santiago, was considered dormant since it had not erupted for hundreds of years. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the area. (UPI Photo/Carlos Gutierrez) / eyevine Contact eyevine for more information about using this image: T: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709 E: i...@eyevine.com http://www.eyevine.com

Since these photos were on Google, though, I felt right as rain linking to them. Enjoy!

Ha, ha.

“We had a BBQ yesterday and JD reminded us the turtles should hatch soon. So I slowing started uncovering some sand. I went down about 6-8 inches and found nothing. Stated going down a little more when I felt something move under my finger. I stopped and we all waited. We then saw the sand start to move. About an hour later a little turtle came out about 1-1.5 inches long. He crawled around a bit, but mostly was staying still. I picked him up and placed him down about 3 inches from the edge of the water. After a few seconds he crawled in and swam away. Going back to the nest a saw the sand move some more, but it got dark and we had to go to bed. Before a left I smoothed out the sand to see if I could see any tracks the next day. In the morning I saw 5 separate tracks leading to the water!”

In this picture, you can see the cage my brother John put up around where the eggs were laid by the mom turtle. She laid the eggs in the beginning of the season.

I am reminded of Lisa and my honeymoon, on Jumby Bay Island off of Antigua. At the resort, there was a turtle nesting grounds and we were able to request a wake-up when the turtles were set down in the sand. It was an amazing midnight spectacle when we were roused from our bungalow and brought out to the beach. We saw at least six giant turtles laying eggs and we watched quietly in the bushes until they finished and crawled back to sea. When the beach was quiet, the nauralists dug up the eggs counted them and placed them back at specific depths before covering the eggs back up. A turtle’s sex is determined by depth (temperature).

This is the second year turtles hatched in my brother’s back yard. A good omen, I say.

I am told that after a day here, I’ll just say, ’screw it’ and stop communicating with the outside world. I promised to send e-mails to my kiddies, though, so I will search for WiFi.

Peace.

Before we set out, I set up everyone’s bikes. I called them out when their lunch was good and digested. Here is a picture of our rides. That mountain bike on the left is over 25 years old and still working great.

For the past few weeks, Giovanni’s riding helmet has been MIA. We have a spare, but it had a lame Transformers logo on it. Every time he has to use this helmet, he complains. So, I decided to pull out my handy can of black spray paint and go to work on it. In seconds, I had a brand-new jet black helmet. I set it in the sun and it dried in just a few minutes. There were still some traces of the underlying Transformers artwork, but a second coat would take care of that.

Here is a link to our route, a mere 7 or so miles. This route had minimal street traffic, which was a big drag with the route we took last week. If you click on the image, you’ll be taken to the Google Pedometer.

Marco definitely had the toughest time, being the youngest. His pace was very slow and I had to frequently motivate them. I promised the kids that if we made it to the second of three bridges, we could stop and have a snack. Well, they made it. See if there at the bottom of the map? That’s the bridge over Goose Creek, a popular little fishing spot. We saw lots of people on boats and jet skis out on the bay. I hope next year my brother and I will buy a couple of those. He has a house on the water and jet skis would definitely make for some good times. We also saw some people tubing. My brother and I tried to convince the kids to go tubing one day i n July, but they were too scared. Maybe next year.

Here are a few pictures of me and the kids sitting on top of a big rock at the end (and beginning) of the journey. The entrance to the bike path is in Cedar Creek Park.

From left: Antonio, Marco, Giovanni.

There I am with Giovanni and Marco. Yeh, with some moose antlers.

Thanks Kevin!

Thanks Kevin!

“Teach them well and let them lead the way…”