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!