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Godzilla vs. Mecha-Quickies
Moo-ha-ha. CmdrTaco is on vacation (and sending his e-mail to /dev/null, so please don't even try), so I'm doing Quickies this week. On to the good stuff. DigitalDaedalus wrote in to tell us about the SGI 404 pages. Cute. For those with that not-so-fresh feeling, dodobh wrote in to tell us about the Slashdot Purity Test. No, I won't tell you my score. In the 'ear candy' bin, casret told us that they posted the results of the XMMS plugin contest. Time for some stuff from the 'exploding stuff' bin. Aardappel wrote in about
Fisheye Quake, and Kintanon caught my eye with Fun With Grapes.
Charles Helfenstein told us about the anti-cubicle. Very cool. Fanmail used the force and wrote in about George Lucas In Love. With all the X-Men hype going on, Link wrote in about Mutant Watch. Smurfy cared to share AIEEE, the Acronym Interaction, Expansion and Extrapolation Engine. fwfr told us about the Sim-William Shatner. You'll need Flash.
Last but certainly not least, The Welcome Rain wrote in to tell us about your friend and mine, Robot Frank.
I'd heard about the grape trick a few years ago, but the screenshots here are nice.
What happens is that the sliced, somewhat-conducting grape is just about the right size to act as a microwave antenna. Large currents are set up in the grape, which cause the (very thin) junction between the halves to go *poof*.
You could probably enhance this effect by sprinkling the open surfaces with salt to make them more conducting.
Point a RealPlayer at /etc geek TV archives and check out Episode 5: Fun with High Voltage Electrical Discharges, demonstrates how to produce ball lightening in your microwave with a flaming toothpick.
There are 10 babies!
Check it out:
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/1.j pg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/2.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/3.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/4.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/5.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/6.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/7.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/8.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/9.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/images/404_babies/10.jpg
Who sais I live to make a fool of myself? :p ... Oh and is it me but are 8 and 9 the same?
............ no.
That purity test...called me a Microserf.
A MICROSERF!
Just for that, I'm going to whore the article I submitted last week, but didn't get posted. It's at my website; now to find out if I can see the Slashdot effect in action.
I hope JonKatz comments on it, or I'm going to kill him. And pour hot grits down his pants.
Of course, this article is going to get moderated down, because the moderators always moderate down dissenting viewpoints, right? Especially if they're Microserfs like I supposedly am.:)
...must go customize Slashboxes now...wonder what Slashdot looks like...
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Purity test. Bah! Being a /. geezer means I'm always right. I can blather on with the pointless stories about how I remember when there were no 'users' and everyone was anonymous, and when there was no Jon Katz, and no moderation, and when there was, I was in the 1st batch. With age comes wisdom and extreme cynicism, jadedness (is that a word) and outright paranoia (I think SETI@Home is actually Echelon@Home and people are actually scanning a chunk of net traffic for key words.) and discovering that you always make tpyos (and say the more important things inside the parens) rather than outside. Ooo! New article! Gotta go slamdunk some trolls!
OK, so I'm responsible for the test... you can all boo me!
I'm working to expand the Slashdot Purity test into a 500-question test, but I need suggestions for questions, and some other ratings (yes, I agree, JonKatz wannabe and Microserf are both lame but I couldnt think of anything funnier)
If you have any suggestions email em to me!
________________________________
The flaming toothpick in a microwave actually results in a plasma at the burning tip. There was an article here some time ago. (Too lazy/busy to search)
For another interesting effect, take a power cord, strip the insulation at the end, stick the two ends into a pickled dill and turn on the power. If done properly, you will end up with a nice glowing pickle. Dont do it for too long since it starts burning and stinking up the place.
Do the above at your own risk