Guys with Too Much Time on their Hands

Obviously these guys don't have nearly enough to do... that's the trouble with us guys... when we have free time we tend to get thinking... and that can lead to "what if" questions ... that can lead to experiments, often of an explosive nature... though I have to admit, I'd like to see some of these things personally. No, not the sperm donors... ;-)

Too Much Time

Some classic examples of my thesis on what results when guys get bored...

• Large Hot Pipe Organ
  The Large Hot Pipe Organ is the world's only MIDI controlled, propane powered explosion organ.... in other words, a BIG musical pipe organ that generates it's sound from propane explosions. Waaaaaay cool. Rent it for your party or wedding reception... not cheap, but unique !!!

  Some highlights from the technical overview:

  • The instrument consists of twenty pipes 10 1/2 inches in diameter, ranging in height from 3.33 meters up to 10 meters.
  • The LHPO provides a multi-sensory spectacle which is musically, visually, and thermally stimulating for the audience. The LHPO is extremely dynamic and can sometimes be very loud, perhaps hearable up to several kilometers away.
  • Weight: Installed: 11 metric tons
  • Gas consumption: 2.8.1 Peak: 3000 kg/hr; if single tank is used, it must have at least a 1 1/2 inch diameter port to support this flow rate. Typical: 400 kg/hr

• Micro Helicopters
  a very cool example of the model-making craft; complete radio-controlled helicoptors under 100 grams batteries included. (one down to 48 grams) ... no, you can't buy these yet... ;(
  Update: see his new site with his Pixelito (6.9 grams!) yes, this guy obviously spends a LOT of time on this...

• Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments
  From the Science Hobbyist site, results of interesting (and dangerous!) experiments done with a microwave oven. Lots of other ways to waste use your time here... particularly in Weird Science, "subpages full of articles ranging from unusual to crack-brained." See also How to build yourself a One Atmosphere Plasmoid.

• 3 lbs sodium + small pond = fun   (mirror site, slashdot)
  from GMSV: Three pounds of sodium: $100; Plot of land with a private pond: $100,540; Look on fire chief's face: priceless: "While anecdotal evidence would suggest that many people have thrown sodium into the lakes and streams of the world, they have been reprehensibly lax in documenting the results. I could find no reliable, and I stress the word reliable, reports on what actually happens. What reports I did find were contradictory: As you will see, I now know why. The only videos I could find were of pathetic thumbnail-sized bits skidding about in a bowl. To do better than that, I decided I should produce a comprehensive online reference on sodium dropping, with documentation on the size and shape of the chunks, how thrown, and most importantly with videos of the resulting explosions. To do this, I held a Sodium Party. People brought chips and soda and we had a cookout."

• Grilling with LOX (liquid oxygen)
  Good info on use of liquid oxygen (LOX) when BarBQing... "Started with 60 lbs of charcoal, and burnt up 40 lbs of it in 3 seconds. Result is a grill ready to cook in about 3 seconds, and all the old grease, etc burned off. Don't try this at home."
  Note that the grill itself vaporizes in the one experiment ;-)

• Some Grown-Ups Go Silly For Buying Putty in Bulk
  "...many bulk buyers still prefer getting their putty direct from Dow Corning and its distributors, where it is not only cheaper, but also available in white, so customers can color it themselves with exotic pigments.... Lately, Mr. Kivert has begun organizing "powder pools," too, for bulk purchases of color pigment, such as a recent 70-ounce order of glow-in-the-dark blue... Handing a pound of putty to an adult can yield psychological insights: Uptight people "want nothing to do with it," says Mr. Muderick. But a lot of his former consulting clients spend hours in meetings keeping their putty in perfect cubes...." See also www.hart.com/putty/ and sillyputty.com.

• Hacking Big Mouth Billy Bass
  From Slashdot, scubamage writes "Whilst browsing the net today, I found a link to a hardware hacking project by a well established Stanford graduate. His goal is to take those annoyingly popular Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish, and not only allow users to interface it with their favorite linux box, but also to allow it to lipsync, and eventually be used as a videoconferencing peripheral. Quite an interesting read, complete with step-by-step instructions to make your own, and software source to be played with." (admit it, you've always wanted to do this... Personally I'd like to set one up as an intercom at my front door... ;-)

• Did you ever wonder what it would be like to see a water balloon pop in space?
  ok, not in vacumn, but experimenters burst water balloons in the low-gravity environment produced aboard a NASA Glenn DC-9 aircraft... pretty cool.

• TCP/IP over Bongo Drums
  "In an attempt to show that primitive communications can still function in modern networks, some students took up a challenge from a professor to replace the lowest layer of the OSI networking model with a set of bongo drums!" (via slashdot)

Ways to Throw or Shoot Things

Admit it, all guys love to shoot stuff, and the bigger the better...

• One Fine September Morning... (Punt Mortar)
  speaking of large pipes and explosions, check out a gun that fires bowling balls, quite a distance too...

• Room Defender
  an automated sentry robot for your desk or room... fires one or more foam disks at intruders.

• Backyard Artillery
  a place to buy all sorts of fun toys that shoot stuff, from the catapult watch, rubber band guns, laser tag remote-controlled tanks to kits to build real catapults. dozens of ways to get yourself in trouble ;-)

• Catapult Kits
  Their motto: Have you hurled today?

• Trebuchet.com Videos
  get some of the videos of efforts to build full-size trebuchets (catapults) seen on various shows on Nova, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Learning Channel, etc. I've seen some of these shows and they're amazing.

• DIY Cruise Missile
  Not completed, but self-explanatory.

Amazingly Cool Inventions

• Universal Laser Systems VersaLaser, a desktop cutting/engraving/etching system
  Via slashdot, "In an article at PCMag.com, Bill Machrone describes what has to be the coolest printer ever (or close to it). A company called Versalaser sells a printer which uses a laser and can cut/write on everything from paper to wood to stone. Available in 25-50 Watt models, starting at only US$10,000. Great for the geek who must have it all! Unfortunately, Windows drivers only at this time."
  Some interesting details:
  • "The VersaLaser looks like an oversize printer without feed or output trays. It accepts paper, wood, a variety of plastics, leather, some coated metals, and even stone and marble."
  • "Instead of treating the laser as a machine tool driven by CAD/CAM software, Universal has engineered the VersaLaser from the ground up as a PC peripheral. To your system, it's a USB printer. Through the included driver, you can print from Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator, Visio, or any application."
  • As the pcmag article ends: "Depending on your point of view, the VersaLaser is high-priced or ridiculously cheap, at a shade under $10,000. Everyone with a shred of entrepreneurial spirit takes one look at it and starts doing the math on building a business around one. Everyone can think of an application or a market that's ripe for a new intersection between custom manufacturing and mass production. The VersaLaser is an enabler. I like that."

• Tornado in a Can
  Frank Polifka's Windhexe can be used for grinding things down to dust or even dehydration using a controlled vortex generator, very interesting. "Almost everything that enters the chamber is instantly atomized to micron sizes. Products that are high in moisture, even molecularly bound, are processed and dried economically. Since his early tests, products such as recycled concrete, glass, stone, aluminum cans, coal, vegetables, meats and many other products have been tested, instantly converting them to powder." (via slashdot and The Washington Post)

• The Universal Off Button
  "TV-B-Gone, a new weapon in the fight against the pervasiveness of television in our society. With this device, which takes the form of a keychain fob with a single button, you can turn off virtually any TV set. How does it work? By rolling through all known IR power-off codes, one by one..."
  (it'd be interesting try one secretly in a TV store to see all the salesmen freak out when everything goes off ;-)

• SawStop
  "Smart saws: Good example of combining relatively straightforward technical methods with imaginative and useful user experiences... a new power saw monitors electrical resistance across the blade to detect and stop movement within five milliseconds of being touched by human skin."

• Synthetic Diamonds, A company is working on new techniques to make diamonds
  
  • Wired: The New Diamond Age: "Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel. Next up: the computing industry."
  • Slashdot: The Diamond Age (8/12/03)
  • Slashdot: Diamond Age Coming Soon (2/14/04)
  • Apollo Diamond
  • Nova: The Diamond Deception

Home-Improvement Gone Wild

You know you've had ideas for your house that your wife vetoed, right?

• EBay item # 1761906773: Missile Silo Home
  "Located in the Adirondack Mountains and nestled between lakes Champlain and Lake Placid, this secluded home is the brainchild of developers Gregory Gibbons and Bruce Francisco. The retired Atlas-F Missile Silo has been transformed into a quiet, safe and secure luxury home in an area designed by the government to withstand a direct nuclear hit... This may be your last chance to find an uncontaminated and usable hardened underground complex." (link from GMSV)

• EBay item # 2375751781: Huge Underground Facility (Titan 1 Missile Base)
  Another one, this noting that it has no groundwater seepage. Good to know. ;-) (via slashdot)

• Missile Bases: 20th Century Castles, Unique underground properties
  A realtor offering more bases, Atlas-E, Atlas-F, and Titan 1 sites. They claim to have already sold 27 of these properties...

• If you're curious about these old bases, explore these:
  • Some photos taken by a few self-avowed trespassers to one abandoned underground silo/base
  • SF-88 Nike Missile Site in Marin County, California is restored and open to the public. (The Nikes were mainly defensive anti-aircraft missiles, not ICBMs.) See the links on their site for more cool missile info.
  • Titan II ICBM Web Page, including lots of info, links and photos of some missile bases.
  • Titan Missile Museum, Arizona

• Rotary Engine Fish Tanks

• For sale: Eurotunnel Tunnel Boring Machine
  Need a bigger basement? Then buy yourself this 580-tonne tunnel boring machine used to dig the Chunnel. (the tunnel under the English Channel from England to France) Anyone who's interested should note that the buyer must collect the item themselves, and returns will not be accepted. Sounds like it might need a tune-up before you can use it. Ebay Item # 3284949854. (via slashdot)

Alcohol-Related

A fair number of experiments and developments fit under the category of consumption of alcohol; saving effort, enhancing the experience, alterative mixes, or making it more convenient... This is different from the many things we do that we as a result of alcohol consumption ;-)

• Stanford researchers: beer bubbles sink, sometimes
  Stanford University scientists have solved another great mystery of the universe with today's announcement of a new study proving that when beer is poured into a glass the bubbles sometimes fall rather than rise. "Indeed, Andy and I first disbelieved this and wondered if the people had had maybe too much Guinness to drink," Zare said. (via slashdot)

• Robo-barman serves up beer
  An engineering student in Florida has invented a robot which opens his beer bottles for him... He said: "I was trying to do something that was unusual and had never been done before."

• The pub-seeking handheld
  Working with scientists at Bristol University in merry olde England, Hewlett-Packard has developed a watch that uses the Global Positioning System to tell you the location of the four nearest pubs and your distance from each.

• iGlassware: Wireless Beer Glasses
  "What do you get when you combine a glass, a PIC computer, two capacitors, a coil and a zener Diode? A wireless beer glass that signals your waiter when you need a refill. The circuit is an RFID transponder that measures the fluid level in a glass and transmits a globally unique ID coupled to the fluid level reading when queried by an antenna hidden in your table. The query provides enough power to drive the circuit so no batteries are needed. A technical paper describes the circuitry in the table and the glass." (via SlashDot)

• Peltier beer cooler

• Skittlebrau
  Experiments in what combinations of beer and Skittles candy go well together. Short answer - don't drink this at home, particularly the "Old Skilwaukee." ;-)

Just Odd

And... some things we men do are just odd... in ways that are really hard to categorize...

• World Beard and Moustache Championships
  Interestingly, there are beard and mustache clubs and international championships, guys getting together just to grow hair. Be sure to check out the photo gallery. Really amazing.

• Workers to Donate Sperm to Pay Plant Debts
  BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Workers at a Romanian car factory have decided to donate sperm to get the debt-ridden plant out of the red, private television ProTv reported on Tuesday...
  Here's a new way to help the company bottom line...

• Stop Alien Abductions
  I quote: "THIS WEBSITE TELLS YOU HOW TO MAKE A THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET, THE MATERIALS AND TOOLS YOU NEED TO MAKE ONE, AND WHERE YOU CAN OBTAIN THE MATERIALS. The thought screen helmet blocks telepathic communication between aliens and humans. Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them. Results of the thought screen helmet exceeded expectations. Since January 2000 aliens have not taken any abductees while they were wearing thought screen helmets using Velostat shielding."
  (I wonder how many were taken before they started wearing the helmets? ;-)
  This falls more into a different category of nutcases rather than guys with too much time, but it's similar so what the heck... and the creator of this site definitely had too much time on his hands...

• Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie: An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating Mind-Control
  Similar to Stop Alien Abductions, this nicely-done site tells you all you'll need to know to make and use your own AFDB to "shield your brain from most electromagnetic psychotronic mind control carriers" including everything from the vital "shiny side in or out?" question, use of Canadian coins, AFDB's for children and pets, etc. Be sure to check out the site author's book while you're at it, "Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie: Practical Mind Control Protection for Paranoids."
  (FWIW, I have no idea if this guy is serious or spoofing ~jw)

• I come to bury IAmCarbonatedMilk.com, not to praise it
  From BuyClamsOnline.com to billromanowskisucks.com, a stroll through the graveyard of defunct domain names offers a melancholy vision of monumentally stupid hopes that were cruelly dashed.
  Amazing what people registered... though not all men surely...
  I particularly like IHateAndrewSalkeldTheFatUglyGreasyStarTrekLovingWanker.com

• Strange Horizons: Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User's Notes
  "Let's face it: any script kiddie with a pair of pliers can put Red Hat on a Compaq, his mom's toaster, or even the family dog. But nothing earns you geek points like installing Linux on a dead badger."
  (it's a speculative fiction story, in case that's not clear ;-)