Legos in Space

If you are reading this blog, you have probably already heard of Lego.  They are little colored bricks made out of ABS plastic which snap together and can be used for building all sorts of things, from houses to robots to electric trains.  ABS plastic is also used in hard hats and some pipes.  It is extremely strong, but is non-toxic, which is why it was chosen to make Legos.  Recently, on the Science Channel, Legos were featured on a show (I can't quite remember which one), probably because in 2008, Lego celebrates its 50th anniversary.   The show mentioned that there are 62 Legos for each person on Earth, or about 400 billion in total, and that if everyone joined theirs, ten towers could be made, reaching from the Earth to the Moon.  This was where I started thinking.  Many people have said that a space elevator may be built someday out of carbon nanotubes, and will make entering space much easier, as the elevator shaft would be much slower than a space shuttle, which would mean that explorers would not have to face pain from huge G-forces.  Unfortunately, such an invention would probably never be engineered, due to extreme expense and difficulty building it.  However, as far-fetched as this sounds, it would probably be much, much easier to build such a tower out of Lego-like blocks.  A space elevator built in the way usually described would be very difficult, as it would be hard to build the extremely huge nanotube belts.  The belts could only be made of a few joined pieces, which would have to be joined at the cargo platforms, but could not be made out of many small sections, as they might break apart due to the properties of carbon nanotubes.  Using Lego-shaped blocks would eliminate this hurdle, and make building a space elevator significantly easier.  Of course, the material that these bricks would be composed of would have to be very strong.  Also, the spaces between bricks would have to be vacuum-sealed and the outside covered with panels.  However, it would be much easier, and probably cheaper, than building huge nanotube belts.

On a much smaller scale, I thought, bricks could be designed like Legos to make building much easier, while still allowing buildings to be beautiful and strong.  For example, let use take the example of the office or workspace.  For most people, these words are euphemisms for the dreaded cubicle.  By using prefabricated bricks, users could move their blocks around to customize their cubicles and allow them to build convenient nooks for things.  Since variety is the herb (rather than the spice) of live, users could move their bricks around in different ways to prevent them from getting bored of their arrangements.  Also, if bricks had screens in them, users could make new wallpaper, put virtual Post-It™ notes on their walls, and even make their walls become a huge computer screen.  Lego-shaped bricks could be used to build many things, from wind tunnels to skyscrapers.  If courts ruled that the Lego company were to be paid royalties on these Lego-shaped bricks, stockholders of Lego would be giddy with glee, as Lego would make at least $100 billion every year if not more, were this idea to be adopted.  But that would be acceptable under most circumstances, don't you think?

The image was by a US Department of Transportation employee, and like all federal works, is within the public domain.  It was uploaded by the Wikimedia Commons user Howcheng.  And I, unlike many other bloggers, don't violate copyright laws.  Even if the image doesn't specifically say it is copyrighted, it still is by default.  Its copyright isn't always registered, but it's still copyrighted.  Get your facts straight people.

Google Sky

By the way, readers, I am deeply sorry I haven't posted in so long.  I have been busy with other activities and am glad that I can return.

Anyone who has looked at a picture of the Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field knows the wonder and beauty of the universe.  Of course, the universe is littered with rubble and wanton gases, but pictures of the vast, colorful galaxies and stars show that these do not make the universe ugly.  Sadly, most people don't have access to very many star charts and photographs.  That has changed with the creation of Google Sky.  Google Sky is a Google feature which can show views of the Solar System, the Hubble Deep Field, and several other space features.  Like Google Maps, it allows users to zoom in and out, and move around in space.  And no, there aren't UFOs.  I tried looking and there weren't any.  For those who love constellations, there is a special camera for these, though it doesn't have that many.  There are also features like Google Moon and Google Mars, which, as their names would imply, show maps of Mars and the Moon.  For all of you who are competing in Google's X Prize to send a rover to the moon (and I know there are many of you), using Google Moon is almost mandatory, to plan where your rover will move.  The sad truth is that the winner of the first place $30,000,000 prize will probably have to spend over $100 million to actually get there.  Another sad truth is that most Google users probably have know idea Google Sky even exists.  To explore space in Google Sky requires exploring the hidden side of Google first.

I will not be writing for a while

Due to the fact that I have broken my thumb and cannot type well, I will probably not be writing for a while.  I am sorry about this.  Please keep checking though, I hope to start soon!

The Monowheel

Most have heard of the unicycle, a vehicle where the rider is seated above a single wheel.  However, few have heard of such a creation as a monowheel.  In a monowheel, the wheel is much larger, allowing the user to sit on a special seat inside the wheel.  Confused?  The pictures should help you out.  The first was believed to have been built in 1869 by a craftsman named Rousseau from Marseilles.  (There were many strange machines in the late 1800's in France.)  The monowheel was built to be easy to navigate on bumpy roads (compared, that is, to the pennyfarthing bicycle with a large front wheel and a very small back one), but had a few unfortunate disadvantages.  The monowheel could not easily be steered (one had to lean from side to side), was unstable, and, when braked, often led to an effect sometimes known as gerbilling, where the monowheel would roll and spin the poor rider in circles.  Improvements have since then been made to the monowheel's design.  Monowheels have been made with better brakes, motors, steering capabilities, systems that prevent gerbilling, and even gyroscopes to prevent the monowheel from falling over.  There aren't any manufacturers of such inventions, but you can order them from builders or try to build one yourself.  Steering has been managed by using tilting gyroscopes, propellers, vertical wings (not for low-speed models), and outboard skids which produce friction against the ground.  As whimsical as these machines are, some people actually ride them at events.  In the 2005 Doodah Parade (what a strange name!) of Columbus, Ohio, Keith Dufrane rode an electric monowheel on the streets.  (See the picture here.)  It had a system to allow steering and prevent gerbilling for his safety.  The monowheel usually uses a rubber-covered steel bar with four prongs as both a brake and an anti-gerbilling mechanisim.  Though one could question the monowheel's practicality, it is an interesting, imaginative invention.

wikiHow University

If you have ever wanted to improve your writing by taking a formal writing class and participating in a workshop, but not had enough capital for such ventures, wikiHow University is for you.  Some have most likely heard of wikiHow, the free, editable how-to guide in many languages.  It has over 10.4 million readers who visit the site more than 13.6 million times per month, and has (at the time of this writing) 36,361 articles, from How to Get Into an Ivy League School to How to Make Salmon Sushi With Mango Meat.  Considering it was started so recently (it was launched Febuary 15, 2005), it has shown rapid growth.  Unlike Wikipedia, another wiki-project, wikiHow is for-profit and shows Google Adsense ads to users who are not logged in.  Since wikiHow has become more and more profitable, it has started to pay for more services for its users, such as free flights to certain meetings.  Thus, wikiHow has started to offer a free 6-week writing class taught by the Gotham Writer's Workshop of New York.  Tuition is completely covered by wikiHow, and the class is held fully online.  The class of 16 students will be instructed by an experienced writer, and the class will contain lessons, discussions, and writing assignments wherein students and the teacher give feedback and share ideas.  Material is available online 24 hours a day for a whole week per lesson, so it matters not whether you are in Mongolia or Tierra del Fuego.  It is mainly geared towards writing how-to guides, but will cause improvement in general writing quality as well.  It is also accredited via the International Association of Continuing Education and Training, and graduates receive 1.8 CEU's and a Certificate of Completion.  Unfortunately, high demand for classes results in the fact that most cannot go.  In the event that many sign up, the most active editors are selected.  However, if the first class works out well (and most likely it will), they will continue with more sessions and perhaps different classes.  So if you sign up for an account at wikiHow and become a regular editor, soon you will get to take the class.  Editing wikiHow isn't hard and can even be rather enjoyable if you like writing.  It's rare that such educational opportunities are offered for free, for anyone.  If there were more programs like this, society would be improved as people are liberated by education.

Note:  This author is a wikiHow editor himself, with the username Beowulf195.  At the time of this post, he has written two articles: How to Open Up an iPod, and How to Avoid Being an Internet Troll.

The Tunnels of the Colosseum

Anyone who knows even a bit about Roman history would almost certainly know of the Colosseum, the great arena in Rome.  Made from marble and granite, the Colosseum would hold thousands of people, whether they were watching a comedy, or whether they watched fearsome gladiators fight each other to the death.  After violent episodes of men brutally slaying each other, the Colosseum would reek of blood and gore, but this wouldn't diminish the wonder of such a building.  It was 48.5 meters (158 feet) tall and its ellipse-like shaped measured 188 by 156 meters (615 by 510 feet).  The Colosseum contained columns in Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian styles.  Its floor was made of oaken planks covered with waterproof cloth (for mock sea battles) and sand.  However, literally under this floor were the obscure tunnels of the Colosseum.  These were made from concrete and stone, and were amazing examples of unseen architecture.  Anonymous these tunnels were; they were meant to be functional, not glorious.  The Colosseum's passages were built to provide the performers better access to the arena.  Trapdoors and hand-powered elevators were used to create a dramatic effect wherein the performers would rise from the floor, seemingly forming from the sand.  The performers waited in small rooms until it was almost time to perform.  They would then walk along the many passages before making a grand entrance onstage.  Entrances of boats into the Colosseum were more complex.  A system of locks and gates rose the boats up into rooms hidden beneath the area where the visitors sat, and boats were sailed through gates into the vast artificial lake.  Inside the dark passages, curious graffiti in both Greek and Latin was found on the walls, as well as murals done by the inhabitants.  In fact, an old passageway out of use led to a room outside the Colosseum which may have been a hideout for criminals, who were abundant on the streets of Rome.  The tunnels in modern cities also lurk underground, the shy cousins of bridges and bypasses, but many of these tunnels, such as subways, are quite populous.  In the case of the British Thames tunnel (which is still part of the London Underground after over a hundred years), the Parliament had restrained from building a second bridge instead because a bridge would be too much of an inconvenience for river traffic.  Perhaps in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, the aliens should have built a tunnel instead of demolishing Earth to build a bypass... then again, maybe not.

Sources:

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Roman_Colosseum.html

http://www.destination360.com/europe/italy/colosseum.php (Picture credit)

The Angel Oak

The so-called "Angel Oak" is the oldest living oak tree on the North American continent, and is likely to be the world's oldest oak.  (This is disputable; some trees have been carbon-14 dated whereas some haven't been.)  It is of the Live Oak species (Quercus Viginiana). The Angel Oak is approximately 1,500 years old and is located in the Angel Oak Park in Charleston, South Carolina, on John's Island.  The tree is about 20 meters (65 feet) high and its canopy covers about 1,580 square meters (17,000 square feet).  The Angel Oak is supposedly named after resemblance to angels, but is actually named after Martha and Justin Angel, former owners of it.  In the picture above, there is a person standing next to it who is 160 cm (63 inches) tall, to give you an idea of how large it is.  Thus it is relatively short compared to its vast canopy.  As evident from the picture above, the tree is wondrously beautiful, and very unique.  Few oaks grow outwards; most just grow taller, but the Angel Oak has grown in both directions and become so huge that it almost looks like a tree from fantasy and myths, such as Yggdrassil, the Norse World Tree.  It would even seem as though one could climb over on the branches from Middle Earth to Elfland, and back, except that of course there is no Elfland and that climbing the tree isn't allowed.  Not all of the branches are in the air, however; many touch the ground and even go underground a bit.  One may wonder what kind of acorns this tree would drop.  The acorns are reported to be of regular size, and are known to produce genuine direct-offspring trees.  Smaller versions of the Angel Oak have been grown from these acorns.  In spring and summer, many festivals and events occur under the tree, with music, dancing, and other festivities.  The Angel Oak is a powerful sight, and a beautiful tree.  Just as with moonbows, one should make an effort to see the Angel Oak.

Sources:

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

and:

www.AngelOakTree.org

Thanks to J. Allen Brack for the picture (which is licensed under the public domain).

Comiqs

If you have ever seen a comic strip and wished you could create your own, there is now a way. Excuse the spelling; it's called Comiqs. It is an online service where you upload images, or choose from their free image libraries, make text bubbles for the speech of characters, and put them together in slides. The result? Free online comics that you created by yourself. Sponsored by advertising, the site is becoming rather popular on the Internet. Some websites also use it to make a "Comic Strip of the Day" and post a link to their comic on their site. What will this mean for the future of Internet publishing? For many, it will be the freedom to express their ideas with the simple comic strip. But what else will it mean? Comiqs-devoted publishing sites may spring up and allow users to post their finished comics there. Also, graphic e-books may be published by the scores---and made with Comiqs technology. On sites like Digg and Reddit, users might post links to their creations--perhaps so many links that those sites will have seperate categories for online comics. Does anyone know what this will bring? No. However, what we know it will do is increase artistic equality. For the first time, anyone can make their own cartoon. It is now that people will hear other's artistic voices, in the form of comics.

Blender 3d

Have you ever wanted to create realistic 3d drawings, but you aren't exactly a superb drawer?  Even if your drawing skills are wonderful, you may still be interested in the Blender 3d software.  This software package is free and allows users to create 3d drawings, animations, and even games and other interactive software.  It is open source software and licensed under the GPL, and its website can be found here.  An example drawing is shown in this post.  I had seen some of the screenshots of creations, but I had thought that those could only be made by experienced users and most people, on their first few tries, wouldn't be able to produce work of such high quality.  I was proven wrong.  Although I was following a tutorial to produce the drawing, the quality was breathtaking.  The shading, colors, and shaping of the form were so distinct and beautiful it almost looked like a professional drawing.  Of course, the program is very complex, but after completing the tutorials and experimenting a bit, one will eventually become adept at using it to create architectural forms, models, scenes, and objects.  After all, who would understand the command MOD:Sphere:shade-mesh without previous knowledge of this program?  The fact that it is free is wonderful; professional programs such as Auto 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya cost from $2,000 to $7,500 for a license, and one would need to hire a professional computer artist to use it.  Before, only studios, wealthy people, and large companies could make 3d drawings of such superb quality, but now, the open source community allows any interested layman to produce these drawings.  There are also other pieces of software such as the Crystal Space game engine, which, combined with Blender, would allow users to produce games and other interactive programs of near-professional quality.  The open source spirit asks us why such abilities should only be available to the elite specialists, and really does something about it.

Splavovi

In the two rivers of Belgrade, the Sava and Danube, a new form of houseboat has evolved known as the splav.  The splav is essentially nothing but some German steel barrels, welded into a frame, with a small wooden building on the top.  Since most of the ingredients are cheap or free, and it isn't expensive to get someone to tow your splav to an unclaimed place on the shore, the splav is quite often used as a low-cost housing.  There's also a ready food supply; the Sava and Danube rivers are mostly open for fishing and, when one literally stakes their claim on shore, they are allowed a small area of land as a garden.  It's also possible to put some edible plants aboard the splav's deck.  A few people who are employed and have other homes make a nice  little summerhouse on the water, however, these are endemic to thieves, mildew, and flame.  Some also use it as a tax haven where they sell contraband goods and don't pay any taxes.  After all, there's no mail, and no identity, so... they use it to their advantage!  Restaurants are also a common, mostly-legal enterprise on the river.  The view is excellent and the air is cool and fresh on deck, so these restaurants are attractive to many diners.  Usually such businesses as restaurants and nightclubs use abandoned barges or possibly "splav cities" made of several splavovi connected.   There are also such things as "premium splavovi", which tend to be larger and may have two stories.  They are meant to seem more like real houseboats.  Some are gaudy and have strange designs, such as ones modeled after Chinese pagodas, though some are more conservative.  These seem to be the new houseboat industry in Germany, and they often have insulation and multiple rooms, like houses.  Houseboats were a dying breed in Europe and America, but the splavovi of the Sava and Danube may be a sign of revival.  With higher water levels worldwide due to global warming, they may even be necessary in our future.

Note:  Most information in this post was from MAKE magazine, volume 12 and from the article Floating City by Bruce Sterling.  MAKE magazine is published by O'Reilly.  

The City of Gelatine

For those who have been to San Francisco, and even for those who haven't, this will be a very interesting story.  Liz Hickok, an artist, made a scale model of San Francisco.  It is named The City and was made in 2005.  Seems normal, doesn't it?  Except that it is made out of Jell-O blocks.    She made the model by researching architectural plans of buildings there and building models of them.  Then she constructed molds for these models, and painted a backdrop.  She picked a color scheme and bought the correct types of Jell-O in bulk to make the blocks.  After the city was set up, she put in lights from beneath the city, and took photographs of it.  The Jell-O ended up rotting and decaying, as expected, and it was disposed of.  A link to her website is here  and you can see a photograph of it at the top of this post.  You can also purchase a copy at her website, and there are videos of it there.

Moonbows

Moonbows, which are also called lunar rainbows, lunar bows, and white bows, are rainbows that are made with the light reflected off of the moon.  They are very beautiful, and they appear to be a glowing, shimmering, light-colored rainbow.  Depending on the angle one observes the moonbow from, the moonbow may appear slightly different.  A light, colored halo around the moon produced by refraction in ice crystals, however, is not a moonbow.  Unfortunately, it seems that moonbows are rather uncommon, and if one ever appeared near your home, it would fade in a few minutes, so bring a camera!  The moon must be bright and full or near to full, the sky must be black, the moon must be at 42 degrees or lower in the sky, and there obviously must be rain (or mist) in front of the moon.  There also must be enough mist, but no more.  Some waterfalls produce this phenomena; the only ones that feature it frequently are Cumberland Falls, near Williamsburg in Kentucky, USA, Victoria Falls, on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia, and Waimea Falls in Waimea, Hawaii, USA.  There is a picture of a moonbow in this post, but one should make an effort to see one in real life; spectators have claimed it is a gorgeous sight and a wonderful experience.  

Stiquito the Robot

The invention of Stiquito, a six-legged, inexpensive, autonomous robot by Dr. Jonathan Mills has had an astounding impact on the teaching of robotics as well as on amateur robot-building.  About 30,000 kits for building Stiquito have been sold, making it one of the most popular amateur robots.  Stiquito literally means "little Sticky" after its predecessor, Sticky.  Dr. Mills had performed extensive research on analog logic but he needed to test his ideas on a robotic platform.  He wanted a robot that was inexpensive, so that many could be built and tested, but, in the 90's, most robots were quite expensive.  He then attempted to build one himself, using nitinol from Dynalloy, Inc. to form legs from a material that would act like muscle, and used music wire from K&S Engineering to keep the legs taut.  He then designed an embedded device that would be used to control and move the robot.  After many prototypes, he designed Sticky, a larger robot that was a hexapod, like Stiquito.  Sticky wasn't very cost-effective, but a later prototype, named Stiquito, was rather cost-effective.  Those who are interested in building Stiquito and writing programs to control him are recommended to build from a kit.  A rather good one is Stiquito Controlled! with a guide by James M. Conrad.  Stiquito Controlled! is the model in the picture.  It is published by Wiley and Sons and by the IEEE Computer Society.  You can purchase a Stiquito Controlled!  at this link here.  (It isn't an affiliate link, if you wanted to know.)  Stiquito is easy and fun to program and use.

Welcome to Things to Discover!

Well, it being my first post, what should I say? Possibly an explanation of what this blog is even about. It's about, well, things to discover. Like things about cultivating edible mushrooms. Or creating 3D drawings on a computer. Or just a post about something interesting in science, math, literature, etymology, or anything really. So if you want to discover something new occasionally, something worth your while, read the posts here. Thanks for visiting, hopefully next post will be here soon!