I'm feeling unoriginal...

... so I thought I'd introduce you to somebody else's originality instead. 5 years ago, a semi-famous internet personality known as Ze Frank decided to make a video every day for a year. The project ("the show") ran from March 2006 - 2007, and produced some pretty awesome and inspiring content. The best part of the show was not the show itself (although the show inspired the whole video-blogging genre as it stands today), or the layers of in-jokes, but the user-interaction, side projects, content creation and community he inspired. The only thing I regret is that I wasn't aware of it at the time.

For a taster of The Show, click here then check out the popular episodes.

In other news, I've decided on my next biggish project, provided I can get the glass bulbs and gas at a reasonable price:

Images from here

By adjusting the gases (mostly low-pressure noble gases) and pressures, some pretty awesome effects can be achieved. I've always been interested in HV and electronics in general, and have always thought that these were pretty much the coolest devices ever. The main issue with creating one is the glass bulb - having one implode on you wouldn't be much fun, and the wrong gas-mixture or pressure will create dim or invisible streamers. This won't be getting in the way of the 3D printer - that's for my end-of-term free time.

Yours hopefully-cutting-down-on-the-brain-crack,
Charlie

3D Printer Progress

I'm afraid this post is going to be a relatively short one, because I don't have particularly much to say. On Friday, I picked up the electronics for my 3D printer, and soldered much of that together. After some quirks of the design (for instance, completely refusing to start unless a temperature sensor is connected, and not giving any warning that this is the case), I was able to get the motors running successfully.

I now need a beefier power supply (a heated bed, useful for making parts which don't curl and look a mess, will probably be eating several times more power than an old scanner power supply can deliver). The vague plan is to cannibalise an old computer PSU with some add-on circuits to keep the output pretty stable - computers are a nice, constant load most of the time, but motors and heated beds which might suddenly switch on or off aren't so nice (especially when everything's switched off, the load is far too small to keep the output voltage stable).

In other plans, I dug up an old CRT monitor from my collection of junk. Expect to see some high-voltage goodness in the next few weeks. That is, if that lovely flyback doesn't kill me first...

If any of this has been too electronics-orientated then don't worry, I'll include something slightly less geeky in the next installment. Also, in order not to break the combo of "rich media" (I hate that term) in every post, I leave you with the following reminder of the week's viral sensation:

Have a great week,
Charlie

On particle accelerators and penguin-balloons...

My last week was filled with trips galore! First was the visit to Cambridge - a talk from an admissions tutor essentially telling us that unless we achieve 97% in our modules we may as well not even bother applying to Cambridge, dinner with ex-pupils who were fortunate enough to achieve said results, and a vaguely maths-related talk to end the evening.

Next came the trip to Diamond - seeing the inner workings (well, not working at the time, fortunately) of a 5MW particle accelerator is pretty inspirational - the planning, thought and effort that goes into keeping a machine like that working at exactly the right frequencies and timings is phenomenal. No pictures, I'm afraid - if anyone else has any I'd be interested.

Last was the DT trip - seeing the "Big Bang Theory" live show (in which Copper ions magically burned red, and Barium ones green...?), being promoted-to by several engineering and tech companies, and seeing some other cool DT-related things:

Bio-mimicry in action - this balloon-robot mimics how penguins move, allowing it to majestically "swim" through the air.

This doesn't even need to be a caption to be awesome.

Those were the highlights of my week,

Charlie

PS Still waiting on electronics for the 3D printer - I haven't forgotten about it...

Quake, Trips, and Insane People

So, I've recently started playing around with the Quake II game engine (more specifically, Jake2, a Java port of the original). Not much to say on it yet, only that it is incredibly powerful and well-written, given that it's a cross-platform, hardware-accelerated port of a decade-old game. I'm going to be borrowing some of its design concepts for a project of my own within the near future.

Click it to view it in full-resolution. If you're not too chicken to handle the size, that is...

Secondly, this following week is going to be an awesome one. 3 trips in 5 days - Cambridge Uni for a maths talk, tour around the Diamond Synchrotron, and some DT-related visit. With a name like the Diamond Synchrotron, and the general fact that it's a particle accelerator, how could it possibly fail to be awesome? Disregarding the risk of it creating a black hole in the middle of Oxfordshire and destroying all life as we know it, of course. (To see why people complaining about the risks of particle accelerators, and the LHC specifically, should cease spewing their uneducated opinions as loudly as possible, see this).

Image from the Synchrotron's website, found here 

In other, considerably less awesome news, I discovered (well, was linked to) a website with rather conservative views, and happened to read a selection of their top 100 list of "reasons not to watch porn". The highlights include, in summary:

39. It hurts.
40. It can lead into further addictions.
48. Sex is gross.
58. You don't have any internets left.
69. You laugh at immature things. *snirk*

I kid you not, some people actually believe that those are valid points to make.

Yours hopefully-more-able-to-think-critically-than-they-can,
Charlie