Posted by maddh at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2005

Cool a Guinness to 2°C with a jet engine

This article isn't new but Hackaday dug it up and it fits in with my interests. This guy in New Zealand wants to cool down his Guinness (you must capitalize it) as fast as possible and possibly die while doing it. The theory is that when a compressed gas expands from liquid to gas it draws a lot of heat energy out with it, cooling down the surroundings. He plans to release an entire tank of propane in a few short minutes, but instead of just dangerously releasing the gas into his garage, he's dangerously burning it off with a jet engine made out of a car's turbo turbine. Me? I would have just used a refrigerator, but no one would want to read about that.

Posted by maddh at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 15, 2005

Finally, a cocktail that's right for me....and you, and you, and you, and...

At last, this whole internet thing is starting to live up to the hype. Thanks to the mixilator, no longer will I have to sit through 1-on-0 drinking sessions suffering an onslaught of unimaginitive, impersonal cocktails. David Embury's drink generator will whip up a little something-something just for you depending on time of day, taste, strength, and other key preferences that only you and your bartender/therapist are privy too. Links to Cocktail DB for ingredient explanations (WTF is Sauterne?!?), and suitable substitutions (apparently, ordinary white wine will make a fine alternative to Sauterne) are helpful and almost necessary. Also, there are robots [/nerd quotient satisfied]. So now instead of pouring Busch Light onto cheerios for my AM fix, I can enjoy a tarty, aromatic "Handled Drummer". Wicked! Thank you AOTS.

Posted by Heir_Ick at 07:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pee-powered battery smaller than a credit card

It's about time, because my old suitcase sized pee-powered battery was such a pain to lug around and fill. Plus I lost the lid so it was prone to spilling. Physicists in Singapore have developed a credit card sized power source able to deliver 1.5uW at 1.5V using .2ml of fresh urine as a catalyst. If only Howard Hughes could have known it was power he was collecting in jars, not just fetid urine. It is meant for one-off disposable items (home medical testing kits are one application) to deliver low power for several hours, so we're not yet to the point of peeing directly into the laptop (solving two problems at once for marathon coders/gamers). Get ready for the custom case badges "Powered By [Mountain Dew/Coffee/Budweiser/Unicorn Blood]".

Posted by maddh at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2005

Can't come to work today, my genes are actin up

Science, in it's eternal quest to take the fun out of life through explanations, has discovered that your genetics can make you prone to hangovers while others can easily build tolerance (drinking more beers than you are years old). Like most genetic research they experimented with fruit flies, and since I also fly around in a jar and lay my eggs on rotting fruit it logically follows that their findings apply to me. While I don't know much about getting flies drunk, I do know that they can be used to power miniature aircraft. Chew on that one for a little.

Posted by maddh at 10:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack