“Invisible Electrostatic Wall” at 3M adhesive tape plant

http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html

An account of a bizarre force field generated by a spool of tape being unspooled, cut and respooled at a 3M plant.

From a post on Reddit.

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Renaming files – The easy way

To rename masses of video and tv files easily, you can use Flexible Renamer to reformat the way files are named and strip unwanted strings like [xvid]  and so on.

To correctly name episodes according to season and episode number using tvrage and other tv databases, you can use Filebot, a useful cross platform TV renaming program.

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Kristianne Baille

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Cat can’t print.

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Composting for home heating?

This idea’s a bit impractical, but still awesome.

http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/Jean_Pain.html

Compost piles properly made, of course, heat up. Reaching 60°C (140°F), a heap of this volume would ferment for up to 18 months and provide (through a simple plastic coil embedded in the pile) heated water for domestic use throughout the run of the reaction. Pain reports that he heated his five—room house of 1000 square feet (100 m2) and provided hot water (at a rate of 4 liters! minute) for its occupants from a 50 ton pile for six months, but that a 12 ton pile maintained that output for a full 18 months

(Aerobic composting would need some kind of ventilation to avoid the generation of methane due to anerobic decomposition.)

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Christopher Nolan (Director of “The Dark Knight” ) on 3d and prime lenses.

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/06/christopher-nolan-tested-3d-conversion.html

While Nolan told the audience that “I’m not a huge fan of 3D,” he did go on to reveal, “We did tests on “Inception” to look at the post conversion process, and they worked very well. It’s quite easy to do, in fact. But it takes a little time, and we didn’t have the time to do it to the standard that I would have been happy.” Furthermore, the director won’t shoot in 3D — he prefers to shoot on film, and using prime lenses (fixed focal length lenses), which aren’t possible with 3D cameras. But don’t worry about the film lacking visual pizazz. As was revealed earlier this year, Nolan has already used a variety of film formats on “Inception” to try and create a grand, immersive experience shooting in 35mm, 65mm and VistaVision.

But even if Nolan toys with 3D for the next installment of the Batman franchise, he has some fundamental issues with the format he’ll need to get over, saying that “on an experiential level, I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating” and that “the truth is, I think it’s a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it’s three dimensional… You know 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a ’2D movie’ is a little misleading.” Which is perhaps the best defense of traditional projection we’ve heard in a long time.

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Steve Reich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Reich

American composer Steve Reich is a pioneer of minimalist music, and his work “Electric Counterpoint” has been sampled by The Orb in “Little Fluffy Clouds” and by RJD2 in “The Proxy

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Snow-bo by verabee

http://verabee.com/snowbo.html

Cheerful little story with a zombie hobo.

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Juice, the mp3 podcast downloader

Juice, the podcast downloader

Juice, a podcast downloader.

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Tomheartoes

tomheartoes

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