Cracking an Egg Under Water

What happens when you crack an egg 60 feet under water?

Star Trek - Gaseous Anomolies

Its childish.  I know.  But I can't help it.

It's hot out there

Photo via Imgur

I used to live in Boulder, Colorado.  Its a gorgeous place.  It seems that every summer now I worry about my friends there and whether or not this will be the year that their houses burn down.  The heat and dry wind seem to be a perfect combination to spread fire.  As you can see from the picture above, there are fires in the mountains above town (not to mention several of my friends and I have lived up in those mountains).  Sparks can easily blow down on to town and start a blaze.  This is just not a good situation.  The video below is a time lapse of this fire developing.

Things look much more dire in Colorado Springs.  I guess it's pretty hot in Arizona too.

via VeryDemotivational

Stay cool out there.

Somebody that I used to Know

There's a haunting little tune by a group called Gotye that has been performed a bajillion bands called "Somebody the I used to know."  One of the most popular covers and a favorite of mine is the video below.

However, a new version just appeared by a guitarist named Mike Dawes.  He performs all the parts himself as a solo instrumental piece.

His skill is apparent from the start, but as the song evolves he starts adding the more interesting little embellishments.  As readers of Digital Diner have read about in the past, I'm attracted to Michael Hedges-type fingerstyle guitar playing.  I think this performance is worth a listen.  Enjoy!

Form Follows Purpose

When I lived in Colorado, I used to drive by a little town called Bailey where they had a hot dog shaped building.  I always thought it must be interesting to produce hot dogs in a hot dog shaped building.  I mean someone had to have the idea that they would be able to sell more hot dogs if their building was shaped like one.  Furthermore they had to keep thinking that was a good idea long enough to design and build the building.  In fact, it had to be so compelling that they were willing to overlook the probability that they might have trouble reselling the building later, or that it would make it very difficult to change to a burger joint if the market needs changed.  Its impressive on many levels.

I was reminded of that little building when I saw a whole collection of buildings that represent what is made/sold from within the building.  I particularly liked these:

You probably wont be surprised to find that Longaberger Company, Newark, OH makes baskets.

The public library in Kansas City has a parking lot that looks as if it is made of giant books.

To see all ten buildings, check out the article here:  10 Buildings Shaped Like What They Sell 

Via Mental Floss

How do you pronounce Uranus?

I've wondered about this and I'm sure you have too. It's just one more example of how we here at Digital Diner get to the bottom of the issues you care about. 

New Cooling Technology

When building new faster computers these days, there are two main problems: getting enough power in to the CPU and getting enough heat out.  The folks at Sandia Labs have a solution to the latter problem. They have build a spinning  heatsink that, rather than connecting directly to the CPU as most heatsinks do today, spins just a thousandth of an inch above the CPU.  This creates something called an air bearing that is almost as efficient for transmitting heat as a direct connection.  This system can suck heat out of a CPU 30 times more efficiently than a standard heatsink.  Now that is a cool invention (see what I did there?).

via Gizmodo

Fun with a Slinky

Long long ago, I worked for a company called WaveFrame that build high-end digital audio workstations.  These were basically complete digital studios in a box.  Now days, most of the fancy functions that would run you a quarter million dollars in our device are available on a laptop computer, but at the time it was pretty exciting stuff.  One of the interesting features that the AudioFrame had was a sampler that allowed you to record a sound and then play it back at different pitches on a keyboard.   Almost by accident I found that if you record the sound of an outstretched slinky connected to our office ceiling and then pitch shift it down several octaves (these sorts of things happened in my office during those days, and the AudioFrame was particularly good smoothly pitch-shifting a long way) it turned into a rather fantastically indescribably metallic sound effect.  This sound ended up being included in our sound library.  Our product was used widely in Hollywood, and to this day (25 years later), I still occasionally think I can hear that sound in science fiction movies.  I feel like yelling out in the theater, "Don't be scared!  Its just a Slinky!!" I never do though.

All this is just to say what you already knew.  A Slinky is a wonderful and versatile gadget.  We already know that.  Here on Digital Diner, we've reported on things that can be done with a Slinky in the past.  The video below revisits one of the features of these fine toys to illustrate a feature of physics.  Enjoy.

Bedroom Disaster Area

Andy Smith was a seventh-grader in 1984.  He had a problem that many kids his age have encountered.  His room was a mess.  However, unlike other kids his age, he decided to take some drastic measures to help him out of this problem.  He wrote the president of the United States (Ronald Regan at that time) the following letter:

Today my mother declared my bedroom a disaster area. I would like to request federal funds to hire a crew to clean up my room.

Reagan replied with the following letter.

(Source: Reagan: A Life In Letters; Image: Ronald Reagan, via.)

Andy Smith

Irmo, South Carolina

May 11, 1984

Dear Andy:

I'm sorry to be so late in answering your letter but as you know I've been in China and found your letter here upon my return. 

Your application for disaster relief has been duly noted but I must point out one technical problem: the authority declaring the disaster is supposed to make the request. In this case your mother. 

However setting that aside I'll have to point out the larger problem of available funds. This has been a year of disasters, 539 hurricanes as of May 4th and several more since, numerous floods, forest fires, drought in Texas and a number of earthquakes. What I'm getting at is that funds are dangerously low. 

May I make a suggestion? This administration, believing that government has done many things that could better be done by volunteers at the local level, has sponsored a Private Sector Initiative program, calling upon people to practice voluntarism in the solving of a number of local problems. 

Your situation appears to be a natural. I'm sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster. Therefore you are in an excellent position to launch another volunteer program to go along with the more than 3,000 already underway in our nation—congratulations.

Give my best regards to your mother.

Sincerely, 

Ronald Reagan

via Letters Of Note

Young App Developers

The recent Apple World Wide Developer Conference was the first one to allow in kids as young as 13.  Apparently there are more and more kid developers putting apps on the app store and so Apple decided that they should be able to come to the conference to talk with other developers.  Of course, we've reported on this child developer trend before, but it seems that it is only getting stronger.

The Wall Street Journal has a nice article on the subject here.