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Slashback: Reuse, Rotors, Prairie Dogs
No sir, we can't keep sending you more. guido_sst writes: "The winners of the Great AOL CD Invention Contest sponsored by UltimateChaos have been announced at http://www.ultimatechaos.com/contest/. Winners include two lamps, a clock, and a 'scaled' car."
Also, the DVD-grabber style cases that AOL is spreading right now make a nice way to give your relatives pictures on CD-ROM, once you slip in your own insert sheet.
Now you can read all your letters from Mom again. Remember the Enigma machine cleverly stolen and cleverly returned from Bletchley Park? You may recall that though the apparatus itself was returned, the all-important Enigma rotors were not recovered at that time. Now you can stop holding your breath, because evilandi writes: "ThisIsGloucestershire, the website of the local newspaper covering UK spy centre GCHQ's home town of Cheltenham, have this story telling how the police have finally recovered all the missing rotors for the stolen Enigma historic wartime encryption device. Without the rotors, the Enigma device returned to the BBC would have been useless. This brings the stolen Enigma story to a close; a man was arrested and the entire Enigma device is now complete and back in safe hands. The working Enigma device should be back on display at Bletchley Park soon."
Yes, I'd like one copy of "Gopher Hunt," please? emanuel writes: "After reading the gopher:// manifesto, it got me to do something that I had been considering for some time: move my internet presence into gopherspace and out of the Web. The problem: few people have a gopher browser, and most Web browsers have poor (Internet Explorer) to non-existent (Netscape 6) gopher support. The solution: write a gopher-to-Web gateway which will allow anyone with a web browser to navigate gopherspace. And while I'm at it, why not add WML support to let mobile phone users into gopherspace as well (after all, gopher is well suited for wireless devices)? So after a few evenings of mad coding, I have something that works fairly well (but is far from complete). See the webgopher project at gopher://gopher.heatdeath.org/. It's Free, and I'd love some involvement from other gopherheads." Greetings to my 7th Grade English teacher Note that the next installment of Hellmouth Revisited is now online.
A friend of mine hangs AOL CDs from the mast and boom of his sailboat to scare away birds (and keep away the attendant birdcrap.) A scarecrow for modern times.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Sorry this might be a tad off topic but...
So I don't have a cool use for AOL cd's (aside from the standard frisbee/weapon uses), but we did find a cool use for one of their mailings.
I was going through the mail one day and as I was flipping through things, I started hearing the familiar "You've got mail" voice... it was really strange... eventually I found a laregish card board box from AOL from which it was coming.
So brought it back from the lab and was fiddling around with it for a while to figure out what was triggering it (yeah I'm slow sometimes) and eventually one of my lab mates pointed out that it was light sensative, so whenever it was exposed to light (then dark again to reset it) it would go off.
So we cut the the speaker and the bit of electronics out (it had a battery attached to the board). Speakers are magnetic, so at first we thought, gee... cool fridge magnet, but then we had a better idea... we stuck the speaker to the inside of the fridge. So now whenever anyone in the lab opens the fridge... "You've got mail!". Its pretty funny, especially when new people rotate in.
Surprisingly enough the battery has held up pretty well for over 3 months....
-- Point? None! Cob.
The whole freakin' system is out of order!
Why did a simple lamp that *anyone* could have done get 1st while a clock, a clock with AOL CDs as the gears, gets 2nd, and a car gets third?
Move the freakin' lamp to third place, incrementing the clock and the car, and you'll have a better judging.
Making a clock takes real skill that not just anybody can do.
The ascii girl #3 in his pr0n directory at gopher://gopher.heatdeath.org/00/pr0n/pr0n003.txt% 09%09%2B looks underage! Damn ascii kiddie pr0n! Damn ascii child pr0nographers, exploiting our underage letters and numbers like that...
[Note: joke, not troll. Now, put the moderation point *on the floor* and back up, slowly...]
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Enigma rotors turn up
Your microwave oven is just a 600 watt transmitter at 2.3 GHz. Normally, the water in food adsorbs the microwave energy, and heats up. (This, by the way, is why the 2.6 GHz ISM band wireless networks are very susceptible to rain fade). Now, if there is nothing in the oven, the energy has no where to go. The technical term for this is "high VSWR", high voltage standing wave ratio (pronouced vis-war like "his car"). The electrical field will build up to a very high level, enough to possibly arc over in the oven. Once that happens, the power will flow along the arc, and most likely damage something. Also, any leaks in the oven will become much worse, and you might get an RF burn if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Finally, even if none of the above happen, the magnetron (the device that makes the RF) will heat up inside, and may burn out or explode.
That said, the odds of this happening if you run your oven for short periods of time (tens of seconds or less) are pretty small.
If you want to help prevent this, place a small quantity of water in the oven. That way, the energy has a place to go (until the water boils away.)
Other "stupid microwave tricks" that I am in no way responsible for you hurting yourself with: Microwave an old florescent tube. Or an incandescent lamp. Light a birthday candle, and microwave it.
Remember, you are on your own if you do this. I didn't tell you to do it. If you get hurt, try to kill yourself so you don't breed.
And lastly, "Short, controlled bursts".
www.eFax.com are spammers
But then, I did just wake up. :-)
I can just see it now:
enigma1>sho ver
(they would, after all, be pretty enigmatic).None of your business.
enigma1>sho interfaces
None of your business. (etc.)
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Yeah, when I pointed this out to an AOL Canada guy at a computer show when they were just starting to promote AOL Canada, he said "Yeah, well, we're not really calling ourselves America Online anymore. Just AOL."
Kinda like ESSO (S.O. or Standard Oil)
Jets of blue flame shoot up out of the grape halves!
--
This
I entered this contest - I doubt I will even be mentioned in the "other entries" catagory (ie, all those who _didn't win), when they put it up (have they? Haven't checked in a while). My entry was a laser lissajous pattern maker, using the AOL CDs as the mirrors on a LEGO frame...
Anyhow - what I should've done, had I known that lamps were going to be the popular thing (and this was actually an idea I was going to do, but I thought that the laser maker was a more "geek" thing - stupid me):
The light-up AOL CD coaster - take an AOL CD, nuke it properly (to get the crackle effect), laminate the label side (to prevent future flaking?), and on the silver side, glue some EL thin-film backlighting material. Maybe make a half-inch stack, cored out, and house the step-up system and 9 volt battery to power it. Mount a switch somewhere else.
The light would shine/glow out through the top crackled surface, surrounding your can... Would look pretty neat...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I've only burnt one microwave doing it, since I have found a good balance. What happens is the sparks from the metal will ignite the alcohol and you get a nice little blue flame from it mixed with sparks. Very pretty.
If you use to high of proof alcohol the flame will be mostly invisible though, which I learn with some 151 (waste of a shot if ya ask me).
Another cool trick is to get a bowl with about a shot in it and break the CD (multiple CD's work best) into little pieces (careful with this part.. they shatter very easily, best to mix with a plastic bag) and dump the pieces into the bowl.
Microwave for about 10 seconds, looks even cooler. I think ths is slightly more risky however, I've had pieces shoot out of the bowl a few times.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I find the non-US versions of AOL rather amusing - For example, you have America On Line Europe. Huh?
Dont sue me for trying it and setting your house on fire, it's not my fault. It just looks rather cool.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Troll?
Huh?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Would have been useless? Like 60+ year old encryption technology isn't useless already?
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
What to do with your collection of AOL CDs, an antique drill and a flourescent bulb? Anxious to know what happened to the missing Enigma rotors? Want to go digging with gopher, but with your Web browser?
No.
You mean scratch the polycarbonate side?
The data layer on the cd is just under the label. CDs are rather resistant to scratches in their plastic because those scratches don't actually destroy data an the laser beam can focus around them. Scratch the label though and you will wipe out the pits.
Take a dry erase marker (or permanent if you don't like the cd) and make a line (on the plastic side) from the center of the cd to the edge. Put it in your CD player and the player will probably be able to play the CD just fine because of focusing, and error correction. Better (usually older) cd players will be able to play CDs with up to four or five such lines. (Newer cd players are cheaper partly because they aren't made so well anymore.)
Take your AOL CD and place it in your microwave
Time it for 3 seconds and hit start.
Just as the time is about to run out, you'll see sparkling fun, and your CD will be left with lightning burn marks with which to decorate your room!
Pictures of Toasted AOL CDs... Wow. :)
Toasties!
"Darn, my winmodem won't work with Linux? I'll have to recompile it... with my blowtorch."
Pass this software with the registration number and password printed below on to your friends for their FREE trial offer! 6P-4010-2805
WARES-POORLY
Does anyone else find that pretty ironic? ;-)
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Now that was a Troll. Good Moderation!
/. but miss the karma feedback. If I drop my karma significantly then I can work on contrbuting as before and enjoy watching the karma rise. When I hit 50 again, I'll troll and flamebait and off-topic all over again.
Why have I been trashing my karma in recent posts? Because being over the 50 point limit means I can only lose points. I like contributing intelligently to
This is fun!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The WebGopher thing is cool, but if you go to the webpage for heatdeath ( here ) you can try the Java gopher to web gateway. It's a hell of a lot cooler than the gopher support for, say, IE.
Ingredients,
friend
1 AOL cd.
Borrow your friend's favourite/most expensive CD.
Scrape up your AOL CD very badly on the data-side.
Put the AOL CD in the jewel case backwards.
When you return the CD say something like "oh.. check to make sure it's in there" so you can see the look on his/her face.
-... ---
doesn't a www->gopher interface kinda defeat the purpose of gopher?
oh, like... a stable client, lightweight protocol, etc, etc...
--
I would like to take a look at it..
-gerbik
Actually, they make pretty bad frisbees. To begin with, they lack the flight-producing shape that causes a frisbee to generate lift when thrown. Along with that, they're dreadfully overstable, and thus will hook sharply to the left when thrown with clockwise rotation.
But then again, I'm a frisbee snob.
pooptruck
Have you ever played the game where you try to flick playing cards into a hat acrosss the room? We played that with AOL CD's and an inverted lampshade. It's exactly that hook that makes the game challenging.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
After reading the gopher:// manifesto, it got me to do something that I had been considering for some time: move my internet presence into gopherspace and out of the Web.
So, is this considered going underground?
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