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January 22 Hand draw your own holographs!This paper examines a phenomenon that can cause abrasions in a surface to reproduce holographic images of the object that abraded it: http://amasci.com/amateur/hand1.html What's really neat is the method they demonstrate, which you can use to carve holographic images into a plastic sheet using nothing more than a compass and a bit of patience! September 28 Internet Speed TestRecently I updated the internet connection to my home internet to RoaRunner business class at 10mb/s down and 2mb/s up, man it's nice! One thin I have learned about fast connections, though, is that you still can only as fast as what you are connecting to, and a fast connection sometimes just serves to show how little bandwidth some servers offer you.
What's annoying is running some of the internet speed tests that are out there and having trouble finding a server that I can max out on. I came across a couple, the highest bandwidth coming from GoDaddy, which is no surprise. Then I came across this cool test:
Not only do hey have the speed they've got the coolest speed test interface I've seen yet, done up in Flash. Worth a look. December 29 Man takes flightNow this gives a new meaning to the term "manned flight"! 
Yes, that picture is for real. Visit his web site for more: November 17 Got a light?Why does it seem whenever I look up something trivial on Wikipedia or Answers.com I end up spending hours with dozens of windows open to all kinds of topics? All those links to related topics throughout the text, I guess it appeals to my tendency to free-associate... one topic spawns 5 others I want to know about, and each of those... well, you get the picture.
Anyway, I came across some cool images and information on the Pratt&Whitney J58, the engines that were used to power the amazing SR-71 Blackbird to over Mach 3, using 1950s technology, pretty amazing stuff!
This particular page has images and an account of the disposal of JP-7 fuel when the SR-71 program was decommisioned - to dispose of it they strapped down a J58 engine and lit her up! Quite the disposal system, as it can burn almost 100,000 pounds of fuel per hour... I'll never complain about my IROC's gas consumption again!
September 16 George the Bot"George" is a webot that can speak in 40 languages, interact with up to 2000 people at a time, and learns from its conversations, 10 million so far:
Article on the bot
Web site where you can talk with George
I've chatted only briefly, and it's interesting to see the influence that various inputs have had on him... he seems to hold various contradictory views about god, he seems to been influenced by Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, and doesn't seem to like George Bush. For example:
An interesting twist to this bot is that for a fee ($30/year) you can have your own instance of the bot, that learns from its discussions with you. Others may then speak to your bot, which supposedly will take on knowledge and personality from the discussions you have had with it. Hmmmm, I wonder if I could teach it to answer DirectX support questions
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