N2A

It sits on a Corvette C6 chassis. Front clip styled like a 57 Chevy. Side like a 58, rear like a 59. Hence the designation "789."

More here.

That's a Costume!

Think little Bobby's homemade Halloween costume was an involved undertaking? Check out Big Daddy!

Fine Art

Photofunia

Digital Pinhole

No..... I'm not the mad photographer who converted his Nikon digital SLR to a pinhole camera. That would be Curtis. The thing is, it works like a charm.

Curtis has upgraded his cardboard tube to a gutted out Sigma zoom lens that fits his bayonet mount, but the thing is, it works. Here is one of his images made over the winter.



Pretty darned neat.

Now if you were to get a body cap, cut a hole in it, and glue on a piece of PVC pipe........ Hmmmmmmmmmmm.........

Anti-Gravity Tube

"An eddy current is set up in a conductor in response to a changing magnetic field. Lenz's law predicts that the current moves in such a way as to create a magnetic field opposing the change; to do this in a conductor, electrons swirl in a plane perpendicular to the changing magnetic field. Because the magnetic fields of the eddy currents oppose the magnetic field of the falling magnet; there is attraction between the two fields. Energy is converted into heat. This principle is used in damping the oscillation of the lever arm of mechanical balances."

Ummmmm OK. Magic.

Monster Truck Madness!

Food Fight

Post It Notes

Slo-Mo Firearms Cycling

Love the pics of the cutaway 1911 firing.........

Old Newsprint

The Wanokoto Labs web site has a program in which you can upload any digital photo and have it converted to look like a newspaper photo that is 50 years old. Neat!



See the original pic here.

BigDog

BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal's, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight.

BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

In separate trials, BigDog runs at 4 mph, climbs slopes up to 35 degrees, walks across rubble, and carries a 340 lb load.

BigDog is being developed by Boston Dynamics with the goal of creating robots that have rough-terrain mobility that can take them anywhere on Earth that people and animals can go. The program is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).

Steam Punk

I must be behind the times.........I guess most old guys are. I have noticed a certain whimsical Victorian styling to many objects d'art, and even functional items as well. Kind of a history that never really was.

I always found this styling cool. I remember the guy with the helicopter in Mad Max. He had panache, a certain technological out here aloofness that defied categorization. More recently, I learned this styling has been given a name.........Steam Punk. So that is what I have enjoyed! Ironically, Steam Punk is the essence of a design that is hopelessly out of step with modern convention. Sort of an alternate reality with a history that split from ours somewhere in the past, and either zoomed off into an apocalyptic wasteland, or a world of eccentric, opulent beauty.....or both. Cathode bulbs, brass, glass and bizarre filigree, yeah, I could get into this stuff.

The Cocoon Nebula

What creates the colors of the Cocoon Nebula? The Cocoon Nebula, cataloged as IC 5146, is a strikingly beautiful nebula located about 4,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus). Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing open cluster of stars. Like other stellar nurseries, the Cocoon Nebula holds, at the same time, a bright red emission nebula, blue reflection nebulas, and dark absorption nebulas. Given different mixtures, these three processes create a host of colors in this image taken recently by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii, USA. Speculation based on recent measurements holds that the massive star towards the left of the picture opened a hole in an existing molecular cloud through which much of the glowing material flows. The same star, which formed about 100,000 years ago, now provides the energy source for much of the emitted and reflected light from this nebula.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Balloon Man Visits The Nursing Home

DEM L316

Are these two supernova shells related? To help find out, the 8-meter Gemini Telescope located high atop a mountain in Chile was pointed at the unusual, huge, double-lobed cloud dubbed DEM L316. The resulting image, shown above, yields tremendous detail. Inspection of the image as well as data taken by the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory indicate how different the two supernova remnants are. In particular, the smaller shell appears to be the result of Type Ia supernova where a white dwarf exploded, while the larger shell appears to be the result of a Type II supernova where a massive normal star exploded. Since those two stellar types evolve on such different time scales, they likely did not form together and so are likely not physically associated. Considering also that no evidence exists that the shells are colliding, the two shells are now hypothesized to be superposed by chance. DEM L316 lies about 160,000 light years away in the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy, spans about 140 light-years across, and appears toward the southern constellation of the Swordfish (Dorado).

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Thor's Helmet

This helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages is popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is actually more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. Cataloged as NGC 2359, the nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The sharp image captures striking details of the nebula's filamentary structures and also records an almost emerald color from strong emission due to oxygen atoms in the glowing gas.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Say Hello to my Little Ring....

Now I have seen Knuckle dusters and Palm pistols before, but this little pinkie ring shooter is a new one to me!

Courtesy of Club Littlegun

Stars

A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is a giant elliptical galaxy - the closest active galaxy to Earth. This remarkable composite view of the galaxy combines image data from the x-ray ( Chandra), optical(ESO), and radio(VLA) regimes. Centaurus A's central region is a jumble of gas, dust, and stars in optical light, but both radio and x-ray telescopes trace a remarkable jet of high-energy particles streaming from the galaxy's core. The cosmic particle accelerator's power source is a black hole with about 10 million times the mass of the Sun coincident with the x-ray bright spot at the galaxy's center. Blasting out from the active galactic nucleus toward the upper left, the energetic jet extends about 13,000 light-years. A shorter jet extends from the nucleus in the opposite direction. Other x-ray bright spots in the field are binary star systems with neutron stars or stellar mass black holes. Active galaxy Centaurus A is likely the result of a merger with a spiral galaxy some 100 million years ago.

The tantalizing Pleiades star cluster seems to lie just beyond the trees above a dark castle tower in this dramatic view of The World at Night. Recorded earlier this month, the starry sky also features bright star Aldebaran below the Pleiades and a small, faint, fuzzy cloud otherwise known as Comet Holmes near picture center at the top of the field. Starry Night Castle might be an appropriate name for the medieval castle ruin in the foreground. But its traditional name is Mörby Castle, found north of Stockholm, near lake Skedviken in Norrtälje, Sweden.


Astronomy Picture of the Day

Touch

Hat tip to Peter

Rube Goldberg Machines

And one from Honda.........