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Where to Buy Dry Ice

May 28th, 2008 12:36pm. General

dry-ice
Airgas sells dry ice under the Penguin Brand name all over the place. Click here to find out exactly where you can buy dry ice in supermarkets. I found this dry ice box in the front of a Safeway in San Jose.

Ha!

May 27th, 2008 8:13am. General

You are Jayne, the Merc


You have a unique sense of fashionable hats and a discomforting closeness with your firearms. You may be the object of adulation for a small group of people.

Take the Which Firefly guy are you? Quiz at HeavyInk.com

Jetpack!

May 20th, 2008 12:26pm. General

I sent this reply to Rick about… well, read for yourself

Don’t tell Charlotte. She wants a motorcycle but refuses to get one because she knows it’d be WAY too dangerous for her. And I should definitley NOT get a jet pack!
NOT
NOT!
NOT!!!

——– Original Message ————-
From: Rick Taylor
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 10:35 PM
To: Lee Sonko
Subject: Yves Rossy

http://www.jet-man.com/prod/index.html

You heard of this guy? Reminded me of your RC wings, thought you would be interested.
——– End of Original Message ——

Molecular Gastronomy

May 20th, 2008 10:14am. General

I went to a molecular gastronomy talk put on by Michael Zbyszynski at Maker Faire a few weeks ago. Here’s the bullet points I wanted to remember

Get supplies here: http://le-sanctuaire.com/ 315 Sutter Street on the 5th Floor

Recipes: Read the “Hydrocolloid Recipe Book

Sous Vide cooking (pronounced “sue veed”) is used by about 60% of the food on your plate at most restaurants.

Carrot Juice Caviar recipe: http://www.instructables.com/id/Carrot-Caviar/
a very interesting example as to what you can do with molecular gastronomy

http://forums.egullet.org

A blog I found on the subject
http://thegreatindoorsman.com/?cat=17

The Hampster Dance

May 19th, 2008 6:41pm. General

Several years ago I ripped the original Hampsterdance.com homepage from Archive.org. It’s just a joy that every few months I get a thankful email from someone. Here’s the one I got today:

Hi Lee-

I just wanted to thank you for preserving the original hamsterdance so faithfully. I click on it whenever I need to smile!

Get some old-school internet joy right here.

(The sound plays correctly in Internet Explorer but not Firefox. Hey, it’s a faithful rip of the original site)

My Sister Made Terrific Banana Bread

May 16th, 2008 9:35pm. General

Last month Melissa sent me a banana bread. I have to say that it was completely terrific. She wrote,

i made three, gave one to a friend and kept one. the one i kept was super cinnamon and was so good, it was a borderline cinnamon bread.

yeah that recipe is a total keeper…the secret are the folgers fresh crystals!

There you have it!

Go See & Hear Amazing Music in NYC June 1, 2008: Lulacruza

May 16th, 2008 12:45am. General

These people are amazing. If you are near New York City on June 1st, you should go see thelulacruzam. You won’t be sorry!

Here’s the email I got from them tonight

“A delicate blend of untamed nature dialoguing with new technologies, Lulacruza is a cornerstone in the musical DNA of Latinamerica.”

- Revista 23, Argentina

We’ll be playing in NYC at the beginning of June with an amazing video artist; and our incredible friend Dygn will be opening for us. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see Lulacruza with live visuals in an intimate venue (please make reservations!) And forward this information to anyone in NYC who might be interested. Thanks!

Sunday June 1st, 8 pm
@ Monkey Town
Lulacruza

+ dygn
visuals by Lady Firefly

58 N 3rd Street (between Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Reservations: 718-384-1369 or go to www.monkeytownhq.com
$8 (they also serve delicious food)

*************
NEWS:::
Watch our new live mini-video/documentary: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RMRvefhAN_4
While in NYC, we will also be mixing our new album Soloina and getting ready for our South American tour in the Summer!

We hope the Spring is bringing you all a lot of beauty, understanding and expansion.
light resounding))))

ale & luis

www.lulacruza.com

“Seldom does a sound emerge so ripe and innovative. Lulacruza’s Luis Maurette and Alejandra Ortiz weave haunting female vocals with South American instruments and electronically manipulated field recordings.”
Visavis.com

“The universe of this duo spins around four elements: wind, earth, fire and especially water, creating primitive and vibrant songs. Like a nymph from the Andes Mountains, Alejandra hypnotizes you with a voice and lyrics that pay homage to Pacha Mama, mother earth to the Incas. Luis is in charge of creating the décor; an electronically processed primitive forest.”
Proyectounder.org

How to Avoid Paypal Fees

May 14th, 2008 12:42am. General

If you have a “Personal” Paypal account, you can accept $500.00 USD monthly and up to 5 credit or debit card payments annually. Credit cards are charged a transaction fee of 4.9% plus $0.30 on your Personal account. So you can accept payments from your friends (paying restaurant tabs and the like) with your personal account without incurring any of those annoying fees as long as your friend is paying you from their Paypal balance or an echeck. It can be a bother to maintain 2 Paypal accounts but you can end up saving over $150/year in Paypal fees!

To the Moon, Alice!

May 13th, 2008 9:01am. General

lro

My name is going to the moon. Well, it’ll go around the moon a whole lot, never to actually land, but that’s beside the point. NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) is being launched later this year and I registered to have my name written on a (hopefully radiation-proof, non-volatile) memory chip.

Sure, it’s silly. Sure, some unnamed readers of my blog with autonomous anarchic zones landlocked inside Arlington, MA, USA think that NASA shouldn’t be sending anything anywhere. But hey, my name is going to the moon!

And yours can too!

More with the Wonderful

May 12th, 2008 10:20am. General

My cousin Christian and his baby sister!

deann deann2

It took a minute for Christian to warm up to being on a video chat. This was his first time. His mom told him to turn back around in the chair because all I could see was his butt… so I stood up and turned around. After we started talking about Webkinz and turning the camera sideways and such, we started having a fun time :-)

Skype Video: Something Wonderful

May 11th, 2008 2:46pm. General


I bought my family webcams. We now chat on Skype with video chat often. It’s really terrific. Setting it up was easy. I’d just VNC into their computer and set it up for them… I’d tell my cousin, “Put in the CD that came with the webcam” [click click click]. “Ok, now plug the webcam in”. [wait a moment] “Can you see yourself on the screen?

“Yes!”

“Ok, now I’ll sign you up for Skype and put you in my address book. [click click click] And I’ll call you. [ring ring] Can you see me and hear me on the computer?”

“Yes! Oh this is terrific!”

1968: “2001: A Space Odyssey” video phone

2001-telephone-call 2001-telephone-call-1

.

2008: My aunt in Florida chatting with my cousins in Nashville

video-skype

More Coachella 2008 Pix

May 8th, 2008 9:26am. Art, General

Here’s more images from SWARM at Coachella.

This first set is from JDV

swarmgimg_6080

Lisa and Mills and a totally awesome robotic sphere

kraftwerkfanimg_6018

An orb cheering at the Kraftwerk show

leewranglerimg_5869

The orb whisperer

nightorbimg_6077

A very pretty orb indeed!

I shot these next pix

img_0634

The orbs were quite popular with the ladies

img_0657

We’re like famous!

img_0666

Most of the crew (taken by Dean Gray of the Desert Local News)

img_0508

It was a really nice bus ride. Jimmy from Green Tortoise drove us down and back again. Highly recommended :-)

The Wright Brothers: Dewey Cheetum and Howe?

May 1st, 2008 11:09pm. General

“Fly! Fly and be freesued!”

I’m going to have to verify the claims made in this article about the allegedly superlatively litigious Wright Brothers before I fully believe it and mope for a week.

SWARM Rocks Coachella

April 30th, 2008 11:02am. Art, General

I got back from Coachella Monday morning. The weekend was tremendous fun.

High-points:

Kraftwerk - I’ve heard bits of their music for years but their super-low-key on-stage performance was enthralling.

KraftwerkKraftwerk

Prince - He’s an incredibly talented guitarist, an incredible singer, terrific on the piano, an incredible showman and choreographer, a fantastic songwriter, and incredibly expressive and sexy on the largest stage. He even transposes cover songs to be his own phenomenally. (and I’ve had a crush on Sheila E since like 1988)

prince-sheilae

brett-dennenBrett Dennen - If she is on my top 3, I obviously don’t belong at Coachella but a folk festival. She should headline one.

Walking around with an orb following me - Marcus drove the orb while I interacted with people interacting with the orb. This one lady kept asking how they worked and I strung her along until she demanded “I am an Electrical Engineer. Tell me how it knows where it’s going!” She was crushed when I told her it was remote controlled though I tried to console her with our plans of full autonomy. I also thoroughly enjoyed driving the orb while Marcus played with people.

sergeSerge Tankian’s performance was fun if inaudibly loud, standing about 5 rows back with Marcus.

Fatboy Slim is such a presenter, I loved the first several minutes of the show. Then he turned the bass to 11 and I couldn’t bear staying in my spot 250 yards from the stage :-(

Low-points:

Roger Waters - The music sounded too similar to how it did 20 years ago, I’m not a fan of stagnancy or living on your laurels. And I have to admit Floyd reminds me of some difficult times in my life. His new song “Leaving Beirut” was…. it wasn’t a song but a 4 page high-school essay on what he did on his summer vacation. And he read it as such. Apparently, Pink Floyd’s members make better music together than apart.

Roger Waters at amateur night

.

.

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Here’s SWARM running around during Kraftwerk :-)

.

swarm-kraftwerk-mills2

swarm-kraftwerk-mills1

swarm-kraftwerk-mills3

swarm-coachella

Mozy 25% discount

April 23rd, 2008 3:24pm. General

Do you want to get Mozy, my favorite backup program at 25% off? This is the best deal I’ve seen for it. When you sign up, use this promo code: UPLINE

The Mozy folks tell me this promo code will only work for 1 week, starting April 24th, ending on about May 1st.

Want to save ANOTHER $15 on Mozy? Check out my other discount here.

Power Tool Drag Racers

April 21st, 2008 9:28am. General

Steven Nelson built some power tool drag racers for the upcoming competitions at Maker Faire May 3-4 and Ace International Speedway May 17-18.

:-)

grudgegrudge1

HOWTO: Be a homeopathic bioterrorist

April 19th, 2008 12:14pm. General

This HOWTO was written by Paul Kuliniewicz. Reproduced here under CC license.

————————————————–

HOWTO: Be a homeopathic bioterrorist

  1. Buy a carton of orange juice and 30 1-gallon jugs of water.
  2. Place one drop of orange juice into one of the jugs of water. Shake.
  3. Take one drop of that dilution and place it into the next jug of water. Shake.
  4. Take one drop of that dilution and place it into the next jug of water. Shake.
  5. Repeat the process until you reach the last jug of water.
  6. Take a drop of that final dilution and place it into your municipality’s water supply.
  7. Everyone gets scurvy!

Frequently Asked Questions

WTF?

According to homeopathy, diluting a substance makes it more potent. While traditional homeopathy creates medicine by diluting harmful subtances, we can apply the same principles to weaponize healthy substances. Since orange juice has lots of vitamin C, a homeopathic dilution of orange juice would induce a crippling vitamin C deficiency in anyone who drank it.

How does diluting something make it more powerful?

Because some guy in the eighteenth century decided it does.

How does diluting something make it have the opposite effect it normally does?

Because that same guy decided it does.

Neither of those makes any sense.

I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in the pocket of Big Pharma, you soulless corporate shill.

I mean, at that level of dilution, it’s unlikely there’s even a single molecule of orange juice in the water.

So? There doesn’t have to be. The water remembers what was in it.

How does that work, exactly?

Dissolved silica from the container. Or aerosols that get mixed in during shaking. Or quantum entanglement. Or friction with a fancy-sounding name. Which one sounds the most sciency? Because it’s that one. I was just joking about those other ones. Though they’re also true. Even though they’re mutually contradictory.

Is there any scientific evidence any of those are actually the mechanism?

Sure! I totally know a guy who knows a guy who tried it, and it totally worked.

No, I mean is there any scientific evidence? You know, double-blind tests and controls and null hypotheses and everything.

Well, no, not with those kinds of tests. It’s well-known that double-blind tests don’t work for homeopathy.

Why is that?

Why, since well-controlled double-blind tests of homeopathy always fail to show any difference between homeopathic treatments and placebo! Since we know homeopathy is true (as you’ll recall, some guy in the eighteenth century decided it’s true), that proves double-blind tests don’t work. Besides, so-called “scientists” are also all in the pocket of Big Pharma, just because if homeopathy were true it would invalidate everything they “know” about chemistry and medicine.

Wait, aren’t there trace amounts of just about any water-soluble compound you can think of in tap water? Shouldn’t the water that comes out of my faucet cure every ailment known to man?

No, that’s stupid.

Why is that?

The water didn’t get shaken the right way.

So there’s a special way you’re supposed to shake the water now?

Apparently.

Are you just making all this up to defend the ridiculous idea that homeopathy actually works?

No.

How do I know you’re right?

You think selling bottled municipal tap water for $1 a bottle is a ripoff? Think of the margins on selling small amounts of water as medicine!

DoublingStocks.com: scam

April 18th, 2008 9:06am. General, Product Reviews

I clicked on a Google Ad for DoublingStocks.com. The ad and the site was very adamant about how terrific their service was. I googled around and found several sites with people that didn’t have good things to say about it. And then here was the clincher:

This Pennystocks.com page had lots of info about the company that showed them as being sketchy (like that their published phone number didn’t work and their published address isn’t a real building) and pointed me to this archive.org page about the company’s previous endeavor, pokerbobby.com.

A pretty compelling tidbit is that these grifters reused images from their previous job. Note the two pages below. :-(

pokerbobbycom

doublingstockscom

The Beautiful Thing About Ashes: Nick Woolsey: Poi

April 17th, 2008 11:56pm. Art, General

Charlotte and I have been learning poi spinning recently. One thing we’ve been doing is watching videos on the intertubes. We came across this video that introduced us to Nick Woolsey. Nick is pretty amazing. His videos show his excellent teaching, a puckish grin and an earnest streak 2 miles long. Oh and also that he is a freaking amazing poi spinner.

Introductions done, here’s the video Charlotte found that introduced us to Nick. You can find more about this video on his site and find him at Playpoi.com. Nick’s Youtube page is worth watching.

high quality .mov version: beauty_of_ashes

The Tightrope Walker’s Dream: Inspiration and Encouragement

April 17th, 2008 8:20am. General, Product Reviews

Today’s inspiration and encouragement comes from my downstairs neighbor. The only thing I can add is that, in the Author’s Corner, he writes, “this book was truly delightful to make”. I can visualize him saying that and I absolutely believe him. This is worthwhile.

The Tightrope Walker's Dream by Graham Best