Category: Uncategorized

This is a follow up to previous posts about going metric. Everyone should already have switched to celsius for temperature; metric units of centimeter, kilometer, etc. for length; and km/h for speed. If you haven’t made the switch make it now. Go into the settings for all your computers and other devices and switch everything…

Is this a joke? People should accept personal responsibility for not recognizing what something like Twitter is and move on. I got a Twitter account out of curiousity and wrote one, fairly minimal thing. Then some creepy person who I have never met and had no idea how they saw my comment responded to it.…

Watching a fascinating documentary about the Greek Euro Crisis presented from the interesting viewpoint of a British Euro-skeptic former member of Parliament. In this scene he’s interviewing a German MP standing somewhere in Frankfurt and there is this extraordinary building in the background. I’m glad I watched this video because it seems the only exposure…

click on image to visit manufacturer’s site What makes this tape measure cool is that it is metric/imperial, not imperial/metric as almost all the ones in stores in America are.  In an American store if you see tape measures, if they even have metric at all – which quite sadly most do not – they…

A futon mattress is basically a big bunch of cotton (and possibly some other hybrid elements like foam). While cotton is a nice material to lay on and has nice, airy properties, one downside is that it will easily suck up moisture from your body laying on top of it. Obviously moisture will have an…

Unless you have an expensive tatami futon bed, in most standard futon frames the futon pad itself rests on slats of wood which run the length of the frame and are spaced a few inches apart.  However I have found that even with a thick futon mattress like a 6″ cotton/foam hybrid one, its still…

For anyone who might be interested in some of the underlying technology of bullet trains this BBC documentary is quite interesting. Now that the California High Speed Rail system is being built it might interest people what technologies actually enable bullet trains to operate. As the documentary shows, there’s quiet a difference between standard trains…

Making good coffee depends on a number of factors. Nowadays drip coffee is enjoying a boom as people like the full-bodied, rich taste of coffee in which water is slowly poured over grounds and allowed to drip. Its easy to make your own at home. All you need is a little plastic drip funnel and…

Watching a documentary about gypsies and crime in Europe. It starts in Madrid and one sees the unbelievable boldness of children criminals who are part of a culture that is based on crime. Then it jumps to Italy and they show how authorities in Milan have tried to crack down on them. But even after…

This is a really nice documentary about the Sun. But what really struck me was an episode 14 minutes into it when they are witnessing a total solar eclipse. Anyone who’s seen even a partial eclipse, such as the 12 May 2012 annular eclipse in California, knows how moving such an experience it is. We…