A Dump in San Fransisco Costs the Same as a Castle
According to this article you can buy a dump in San Fransisco, LA, New York, Boston, etc. for the same price as a freaking castle in Europe, South Africa, Mexico, Sweden, etc. Really.
Open GPS Tracker
This is really cool. It is a very simple GPS tracker system you can build with minimal, inexpensive electronics parts (based around an Atmel Microcontroller and a basic GPS chip) and a $20 prepaid cell phone. You simply solder the simple circuit, program the microcontroller with the open-source firmware, and plug in the phone. The device tracks the GPS location and send you an SMS text message or an email periodically with updates. You can also request the current position by emailing or text messaging the unit. There are lots of other features as well. It is all open-source, inexpensive, and darn useful! BTW, I found this via Make Magazine’s blog (here).
What is Really Means to ‘Support Our Troops’
From Digg: Go ahead, slap THIS sticker on your gas-guzzling SUV. Click to enlarge.
Free Money Straight Off the Printing Press
Ahh the lovely government Economic Stimulus project. This has to rank up there as one of the stupidest ideas in U.S. History. Of course, that is not going to prevent me from accepting my check. Really, though, does anyone think this will actually work? It certainly will not do anything except make everyone happy for a few minutes. Then we’ll all go back to being miserable again.
I liken the Stimulus plan to simply printing out new dollar bills on a printing press and distributing them blind. It isn’t really new money. No one earned this money. You are just magically creating this money and giving it to us for no reason whatsoever. The only difference here is that the national deficit will just increase that much more.
Oh well. I’ll take it anyway. Who won’t?
Concrete Countertops
We’re looking at new countertops for the kitchen. The problem is, countertops are uber-expensive! We were seriously considering tile, since the “bang for your buck” is by far the best. We were going to get granite tiles, which are about $5 for each square-foot tile at Lowes (as opposed to about $70 per square foot for solid surface granite from Lowes or another installer). I think this kind of tile countertop would be great and it would hardly cost anything, but my wife isn’t a big fan of tile countertops because of the grout. She doesn’t like having to clean the grout, which can get food and stuff stuck in the grout seams.
So, we’ve started looking at concrete. Yes, you can make countertops out of concrete. Concrete has the advantage of being a solid surface and you can custom-make it into any shape you want. You can also make it look like just about anything. You can make it pretty much any color and give it just about any texture you want. (more…)
The RepRap - A Cheap 3D Printer that Hopes to Replicate Itself
The RepRap is a project with the goal of becoming an inexpensive 3D printer that can replicate itself. A 3D printer is a device that can create a three-dimensional object, typically by “printing” successive layers on top of the previous to build up a three dimensional object, much like an inkjet printer that prints layer upon layer of material. Most 3D printers are pretty darn expensive (as in upwards of $4,000), but a RepRap can be constructed for around $550 with widely available parts. The design and the software that drive the thing are all open source. They are shooting for self-replication some time in 2008 - very cool! (more…)
Bush Acknowledges Existence Of Carbon Dioxide
From the Onion: In an unexpected reversal that environmentalists and scientists worldwide are calling groundbreaking, President George W. Bush, for the first time in his political career, openly admitted to the existence of carbon dioxide following the release of the new U.N. Global Environment Outlook this October.
Even More RPS News
Well I hate to keep posting stuff about RPS, but I just can’t help it - there is so much going on in the RPS world. There has obviously been a considerable amount of research of this fascinating game. This latest study has found that beginning with a scissors throw presents your best odds for winning. Something tells me that if enough people read this article, however, rock will become the better opening throw. That is the beauty of RPS. It is always changing.