Friday, May 31, 2013

151: Four things


Resistance rods on a Bowflex exercise machine. From left to right the bars are rated at 10, 10, 30 and 50 pounds of resistance, you can hook them in any combination of up to five bars (the 5-pound bar isn't pictured).

If you see each bar as a binary, and hooked means 1, that's 31 (binary 11111) possible positions per side. You could get fancy and allow for asymmetric values, so the maximum would be 11111 11111, or 1023.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

150: Tool

This is my 19-year old Leatherman, I bought it in a PX in Germany sometime in 1994. It is still basically intact except for a broken blade time. Even the leather belt case for it looks brand new.


Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Monday, May 20, 2013

Friday, May 17, 2013

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Monday, May 13, 2013

133: Sunset

This is a simulation of all of the stuff (except maybe the moon) that I can't see right now due to light pollution and being stuck in the middle of suburbia. In theory sunset for my location is 8:03 PM, but the only way anyone can see the sun from here at that time is from one of the tall buildings half a mile away.

BTW, the simulation is open source and runs on Linux, Windows and Mac: http://stellarium.org/


Friday, May 10, 2013

130: Stars

... and bars

This is the Enola Gay, the USAAF B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It is on display at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, near the Washington Dulles International Airport. The plane is named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets.


Thursday, May 9, 2013

129: Snack

The previous version of this bar was basically a Snickers bar clone. This version is 10 calories lighter and is almost an inch shorter. Bastards.


Wednesday, May 8, 2013

128: shape

This is actually a key. It's projected onto a wall, backlit by six LEDs from my USB microscope diffused through a looking glass.

Monday, May 6, 2013

126: Broken


Fell on my hands and knees while on a walk with Ivette this morning. Broke the skin on my right hand, tiny tiny cut that stung like hell. My pride, on the other hand, is pretty bruised.

The reason for the fall? The shoes. The sole on my Skecher shape ups has basically zero lateral stability. To add insult to injury, my brand new walking shoes (New Balance) got delivered today, they were waiting at our doorstep when we came back from the walk.