A video produced, by Household Hacker, that depicts an iPod being charged by a Gatorade powered onion has been circulating the internet recently, making Gizmodo, Digg, The Gadgets Weblog and TUAW. The video looked pretty neat and I had to test it out for myself.
I was pretty skeptical, as electrolytes in solution just conduct electricity, they won’t produce it and the anode and cathode would have to be two different metals. I hoped that the onion would add something to the mix so that it would work. I followed their instructions exactly, but sadly could not get either my nano or 4G iPod to charge.
I am pretty sure that there are two different cords in the Household Hacker video. One is coming from the onion and the other from a power source, through that suspicious notebook that the iPod is sitting on.
Ever since I first learned to type in elementary school, in the mid ’90s, I have been using 2 spaces after periods. Recently, I have noticed that many people do not do this and am curios why.
I have a feeling that I was simply caught between generations; I was taught by a teacher that learned to type on a typewriter. Typewriters used a fixed width font, much like programmers today, and an extra space after every period was necessary for the eye to easily pick up the new sentence.
Modern word processors only require one stroke of the space bar to provide adequate space after a period. On the internet, most browsers will only render 1 space, even if there is 2 spaces in the code, unless “%nbsp” is used.
I have developed the habit of ‘double spacing’, and I do not plan on trying to break it. I will simply remain the victim of a generation overlap and keep working my space bar twice as hard.
I have been using Nike and Apple’s Nike+ Sport kit for the nano for about 6 months now, and have been more than impressed with the system. I think that the Nike website could still use some improvement, but that is just a minor annoyance.
A few days ago, I left the shoe sensor in my pocket and ran it through the wash, after which I was amazed to find that it still worked. I understood that it was meant to be waterproof, but not this good. I thought that it would just be able to withstand the moisture of sweaty shoes.
….thoroughly impressed….
I read “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris just over a month ago, and I just realized that I missed something huge in that book. In his article The Problem with Atheism, Sam Harris mentions that he doesn’t use the word atheist throughout the whole book. I am shocked that I missed that. The book is a never ending criticism of religion, but Sam Harris avoids the term atheist. Sam Harris
think[s] that “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “bullshit” to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion.
He also uses the example of racism. Our society doesn’t label people that aren’t racist non-racists. The label is only put on the racists. Being a non-racists is a default position, just like an atheist. He goes on to say that atheists should ditch any collective term and just dive under the radar and just ‘be’. While under the radar, atheists should try to do good to their immediate surroundings and eventually logic and reason will spread.
I respect this position, but I am not sure that I completely agree with it. We need to rid this world of blind faith before it blows itself up, and I’m don’t think that ‘diving under the radar’ is the best option. I just can’t see this method getting through to the masses. This method does have one huge asset. Spreading logic and reason person to person will not get criticized by the media or religious groups, because there is no public front to the movement.
I am going to leave this to further discussion and end on a John McCarthy quote.
“An atheist doesn’t have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can’t be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.” —John McCarthy
A recent pet peeve of mine is the naming of ‘Automatic’ toilet flushers. I am referring to the kind that use a motion sensor and you have to wave your hand in front of them (pictured below). These should be called ‘no touch’ or semi-automatic flushers, because the toilet operator still has to make a conscious effort and wave their hand.
I was thinking about this while sitting on a can controlled by one of these devices, and I took a picture on my way out with my cell phone.
There are fully automatic flushers on the market. These are the kind that flush as soon as you stand up and walk away from the toilet, an act that you would have done anyways and are therefore automatic. I am calling for a vast renaming of ‘automatic’ flushers to something like non-contact or sanitary. Anything but ‘automatic’ will do.
My problems with virgin media’s broadband service continued this last week. I have blogged about them not meeting their advertised speeds in the past. I was left with no internet for over a week after a the cable mysteriously broke.
The day after the internet broke, virgin media sent out a technician to diagnose the problem. He said that the the cable would have to be replaced and that he would need to send out two people to do the job. He was by himself, so he couldn’t replace the cable. It took 10 days for the next ‘crew’ to arrive. I was expecting two people to show up, as that is what I understood the job required. To my surprise, there was only one technician with one arm!!! He was able to put in a new line by himself and our internet is working now.
I am now recovering from RSS withdrawal, with a weeks worth of feeds to catch up on….I’ve got some reading to do….
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