To pull up an interesting topic from long ago, the Palm Pilot Robot is really cool not because it can do anything interesting or even because it’s a particularly practical robot. It’s interesting due to it’s unique method of locomotion. It is a three wheeled robot with can move in arbitray directions even though it has no steering mechinisms. It does this with the help of a set of wheels with rollers capible of rotating perpendicular to their main axis of rotation. Ok it’s really hard to explain, but pretty simple to under stand if you take a look at the robot and the wheels.

I’ve always heard mention of Tuberculosis, I’ve even met a few people that said they had it. I’ve also always had the impression that it was a rather serious debilitating disease. None of the people who I’ve had tell me they had it were in any way shape or form ill so that all didn’t add up. Anyway the topic came up talking to my mom the other day and that prompted me to go look around and see if i could find decent information on the topic. Apparently there’s a Tuberculosis infection that in about 10% (over life) of the cases turns into Tuberculosis the disease. The first is harmless (execpt that it can turn into the other) and the second is deadly in about 50% of the cases. You can not catch the infection/disease from someone who has the only the infection. Tuberculosis is passed by disease bearing persons when they cough, sneeze, etc. (added) It’s interesting that on the day I read about it and do a blog entry /. does a post on the subject.

Ever wondered wheree the saying “sleep tight don’t let the bed bugs bite” came from? Well here’s the answer. Apperently there is a bug commonly called bed bug which was nearly erradicated by DDT. In the U.S. they’re still pretty rare, if you get bitten at night it is more likely a spider than a bed bug (I’m sure that makes you feel better.) Anyway add another useless fact to my database.

This /. post about exceptional seeing at Dome C in Antarctica lead me to a page about with details about a project that measured the interference from aborations in the earth’s atmosphere and their affect on telescopes. It (mainly a FAQ) was a really interesting read with some pretty cool pictures on the page and links to more. The fact mentioned using jet fuel powered stirling engines as a heat and electricity source so i decided to do some searching to find out what exactly a stirling engine is. Following a link on the WikiPedia page about them lead me to this article on HowStuffWorks. If you’ve never run across HowStuffWorks it’s a really cool site that does exactly what the name implies and explains how various things work. There’s 100’s of articles about all sorts of technologies and concepts. It’s a good place to kill a little bit of time in a productive manner.

Don’t like the view out your windows, Have a few extra lcd pannels laying around, looking for something to do with them? Maybe you should create a virtual window. I think i would try to do a little better job running the wires, but otherwise a really interesting and decently cool project. I’m trying to figure out how many people actually have 8 identical lcd monitors.

Lots of links can be found in the /. post, i won’t bother duplicating them here. The reasons i’m intrested are: it’s not expensive ~$800, it’s lightweight (i won’t want a pc as a table, i want something that i can remotely log onto my pc’s with which can have much more heft) and it runs linux, which assists with the previous point.

Not much to say about it other than it’s a cool idea and it would be funny if the open source world could come up with a solution to a problem that microsoft has delayed the next major upgrade to WinXP for and finally dropped from it’s schedule (2006) Check out the DBFS page.

I’ll throw in a link to another similar project Gnome Storage while i’m at it.

I’ve linked to Paul Graham’s essays several times previously. His most recent essay is about the history and art of the essay. It was actually very interesting including background on why english lit. and writing are merged into a single course of study.

Heralded as the the fourth great advancement in flight a new system of propulsion utlizing a large fan the length of the wing has been developed and christened FanWing. An article in the independant has a quick overview of the system as well providing a list of the previous three people: Orville and Wilbur Wright, Sikorski, and Sidney Camm and their contributions/advancements, respectively: airplanes, helicopters, and the jump jet.