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Daily Blog 07/21/2013

  • Here’s what’s holding back 3D printing, the technology that’s supposed to revolutionize manufacturing and countless other industries: patents. In February 2014, key patents that currently prevent competition in the market for the most advanced and functional 3D printers will expire, says Duann Scott, design evangelist at 3D printing company Shapeways.

    These patents cover a technology known as “laser sintering,” the lowest-cost 3D printing technology. Because of its high resolution in all three dimensions, laser sintering can produce goods that can be sold as finished products.

    tags: 3DPrinting

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Daily Blog 07/17/2013

  • The so-called “dark web,” a shadowy part of the internet you haven’t likely visited and won’t find using Google, has become an online haven for anyone looking to buy or sell drugs, weapons or other illegal goods. And it’s leaving law enforcement stumped.

    tags: web technology

  • In wartime, technology is driven by our shared weakness for violence. In 1939, the RAF was still sending biplanes into battle. By 1945 we had jets. Spitfires and stealth bombers are beautiful things because more design man-hours have been devoted to the technology of killing than into any other field of endeavour.

    But in peacetime, sex is technology’s primary driver. Even when the pornographers don’t innovate they’re early adopters. The first known fruity movie was made two years after the first moving pictures of any kind. It’s been suggested that it was the greater availability of porn on VHS formats that helped it to win the video format wars over Betamax. And there’s a reason why Polaroid’s innovative camera that eliminated embarrassing trips to the chemist was called the Swinger.

    tags: google glass porn

  • Nico Ditch (occasionally Mickle Ditch or Nikker) is a six mile (9.7 km) long linear earthwork running between Ashton-under-Lyne and Stretford in Greater Manchester, England. It may have been dug as a defensive fortification, or possibly a boundary marker. It was constructed some time between the 5th and 11th centuries AD.

    The ditch is still visible in short sections, such as a 300-metre stretch in Denton golf course. In the parts which survive, the ditch is 3–4 metres wide and up to 1.5 metres deep. Part of the earthwork is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

    tags: manchester

  • What superheroes have in high morals and immense powers, they often lack in common sense, at least as regards to vehicles. That’s the only way to explain the plethora of weird, garish or outright idiotic superhero cars, jets and other nonsense clogging our nation’s highways and airspace. Here are 15 vehicles that were wrecks long before they hit the road.

    tags: superhero vehicles

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Daily Blog 07/13/2013

  • Let’s put this out there, right off the bat. Nuclear weapons are insane. Loony. Absolutely nuts. Usually though, someone somewhere can make an argument for their theoretical use that would involve maximum harm to the enemy with minimal damage to yourself. Sometimes, though, that equation goes wrong.

    tags: nuclear weapons

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Daily Blog 07/10/2013

  • This 24-foot long diorama created by Brickmania, depicts the WWII Battle of Peleliu, complete with a 10-foot long USS LST-325 ship, tanks, Marines, sailors, bunkers, ambulances and supply trucks. The model is filled with so many amazing details and features, including a shark waiting in the waters for doomed minifig men.

    tags: lego diorama

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Daily Blog 07/09/2013

  • The insanity of the early Cold War manifested itself perfectly in the Atomic Cannon, built by the US in the early ’50s to shoot nukes out of artillery. It turns out that the Russians built a nuclear gun, too.

    tags: russia weapons

  • There are few professional sports as closely bound to technology as cycling. A bike isn’t just equipment, as skiis or a tennis racket might be—it’s a partner in a symbiotic relationship between the machine and athlete. And it’s remarkable to see how drastically certain parts of that machine have changed in the last century, while others have stayed largely the same.

    tags: cycling

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 07/04/2013

  • Karl Fiara’s Mk1 Escort is a trip back in time for me; sat here in the glorious sun of the recent Players Classic Show at Goodwood it transports me back around 20 years. To when you had to be at one of the big season-opening shows to see what everybody had been building during the winter, where you could catch up with friends without knowing how many laps of the Nurburgring they’d done the month before,when the excitement was tangible in the air and cars like this Escort two-door were more commonplace and that can only be a good thing.

    tags: cars CustomCars reference inspiration

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Daily Blog 07/03/2013

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Daily Blog 07/01/2013

  • With 5 million square feet of leased warehouse, light-industry, and office space, and a network of more than two miles of rail lines and six miles of roads, SubTropolis is the world’s largest underground business complex—and one of eight or so in the area. To people along this stretch of the Missouri River, however, subterranean development also represents an innovative local way to save energy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

    tags: ecobuilding underground

  • The coyote, that cunning canine of wide-open spaces, has come to the nation’s capital. And to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, coyotes have spread to every corner of the United States, shifting their behaviors to fit new habitats and spurring researchers to cope with a worrisome new kind of carnivore: the urban coyote.
    ….
    The coyote’s affinity for life in the big city has surprised many researchers. But odder still is the coyote’s propensity for breeding with wolves. Canine species within the genus Canis, which includes coyotes, wolves and domestic dogs, are capable of interbreeding, but they usually stick with their own kind. The “coywolf” hybrid is larger than a purebred coyote. It is found in northeastern Minnesota, southern Ontario and southern Quebec, Maine and New York. Researchers recently studied the genetic profiles of 100 coyotes killed by hunters in Maine. Of those animals, 23 had some wolf genes. Most crosses occur between male wolves and female coyotes. Some of the hybrids go on to mate with other hybrids, creating what one researcher calls a “hybrid swarm” that has the potential to evolve into a new species.

    tags: city nature coyote

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Daily Blog 06/30/2013

  • Located in the market town of Cockermouth in northern England’s Lake District, J.B.Banks & Son Ltd ironmongers and hardware shop was established in 1836. To date, this spellbinding shop has survived two serious floods and three truck crashes, and boasts a counter-top decorated with keys and pre-decimal coins, an ornate National Cash Register and an enchanting chiming clock.

    tags: cumbria

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 06/16/2013

  • The Saro Cloud was a British passenger amphibian flying boat designed and built by Saunders-Roe as the A.19 and later produced as the A.29[1] for the Royal Air Force for pilot and navigator training.

    tags: Flying boat

  • The delightful brochure of the 1911-1912 Moisant Aviation School, with its handsome, gold embossed cover pictured here, features an airplane (possibly the one John built while in France – reported to be named the “Raven” or “Crow”) flown by French-trained aviator, John Moisant, flying past the Statue of Liberty. The brochure, with its glowing, somewhat overblown descriptive commentary about the Moisant school, started this writer on a quest to explore the short but zestful aviation career of pioneer flyer, Matilde Moisant, the second woman pilot to receive licensing by the Aero Club of America. Matilde is depicted in the brochure as a student pilot and you just know there’s a story lurking when she has the same name as the school. Material reprinted and quoted here is the result of researching documents, books and publications in my possession. Aviators of 1911 were a hardy lot, eagerly taking to the air to savor the new realm of man amongst the clouds. These flyers didn’t consider themselves pioneers but were merely jumping on the bandwagon of adventure, hoping to make a living by exhibiting the wonders of flight to the uninitiated throughout the world. Read on and experience an era that can never be sampled again by man (or woman).

    tags: aviator aviation history

  • This site charts the history of the Sunderland Flying Boat factory that once stood on the shores of Windermere in the heart of the English Lake District, and the nearby settlement specially constructed to house the factory workers and their families, known as Calgarth Estate.

    It contains historical documents and photographs of the factory and the estate and features the voices of the people who worked and lived in this remarkable community.

    tags: Flying boat LakeDistrict

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Daily Blog 06/15/2013

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Daily Blog 06/14/2013

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Daily Blog 06/02/2013

  • Suspended spaces are an inevitable component of the cityscape: paradoxically, as pockets of inactivity they are a byproduct of a dynamic, changing urban environment. Stalled transitions between the past and the future, suspended spaces demonstrate what can happen when plans meet a hostile reality, but also how we can, at least on occasion, find innovative interim uses for the resulting land. Some suspended spaces are gems; others are eyesores, but they are a fascinating and important part of our city’s story. Take the tour, discover your own suspended spaces and add them to the map.

    tags: manchester cities abandoned

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 05/19/2013

  • tags: bicycle

  • In the United States, a farm-to-market road or ranch-to-market road (sometimes farm road or ranch road for short) is a state road or county road which traditionally served to connect rural or agricultural areas to market towns. These routes serve as a better quality road, usually a highway, which allows farmers and ranchers to transport their products to market towns and/or distribution centers.

    Specifically, in the state of Texas, the terms Farm to Market Road and Ranch to Market Road indicate roadways that are part of the state’s system of secondary and connecting routes, built and maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). This system was established in 1949 as a project to provide access to rural areas. The system consists primarily of paved, two-lane roads. Generally, roads found west of US 281 (or Interstate 35 in some locations) are designated Ranch to Market Roads, while those located east of US 281 are designated Farm to Market Roads, though there are exceptions to this naming system, such as RM 2588 in Henderson County in East Texas or FM 1215 in Reeves County West Texas.[1] Some segments are even expressways, including a segment of FM 1764 (the Emmett F. Lowry Expressway between Interstate 45 and Texas City, Texas).

    tags: road texs

  • The Hawaii Clipper, originally named Hawaiian Clipper, made her maiden flight in March 1936; in May 1936, she was officially christened by Patricia Kennedy at Pearl Harbor, using a coconut instead of traditional champagne bottle:

    tags: mystery hawaii aeroplane

  • tags: mystery hawaii 1930s aeroplane

  • The PanAm Clippers were flying boats–passenger planes–that flew from mainland U.S. to China. Because of the Clippers’ (and all boats at that time) limited range, the Clippers hopped from island base to island base, much like a toad hopping rocks: Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Guam, Philippines, Macao, and China mainland.

    On July 28, 1938, the Hawaii Clipper took off from Guam with six passengers and nine crew. Destination: Manila.

    tags: mystery hawaii aeroplane reference 1930s

  • It’s a beautiful seaplane abandoned between the sea and the desert of Saudi Arabia and it’s been left there for almost 50 years. The plane is a PBY-5A Catalina, a military American seaplane from the 1930’s. It’s is located on a beach off the Strait of Tiran on the Saudi Arabia side of the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba.

    tags: abandoned aeroplane

  • Sydney’s Homebush Bay is home to many a broken and forgotten ship, but at least one of those derelict boats still houses a bit of life. The SS Ayrfield, long decommissioned, has a mangrove forest growing from its corpse.

    tags: forest nature abandoned

  • Here is the second step of this facade project. Here you can see the process of making many facade details such as cornice, moldings and windows. I used 1 and 2 mm thick grey cardboard for the facade and styrene profiles for the windows.

    tags: models architecture

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 05/17/2013

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Daily Blog 05/16/2013

  • The austerity programmes administered by western governments in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis were, of course, intended as a remedy, a tough but necessary course of treatment to relieve the symptoms of debts and deficits and to cure recession. But if, David Stuckler says, austerity had been run like a clinical trial, “It would have been discontinued. The evidence of its deadly side-effects – of the profound effects of economic choices on health – is overwhelming.”

    tags: austerity politics

  • A man in Sweden has died after trying to have sex with a hornet’s nest on his farm outside Ystad.

    The 35-year-old, known only as Hasse, had 146 sting marks on his body, including 54 to his genitals, News Sweden said.

    tags: sweden sex bizarre

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 05/15/2013

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Daily Blog 05/09/2013

  • Today, however, in a world where our reservoirs of wealth are as deep and enormous as all the mighty rivers of the world combined, our politicians, financial institutions and megalithic industries tell us we can no longer afford these human rights that men sacrificed their lives for: the freedom to live with dignity in a compassionate society. We are told by those in charge that we can no longer live with luxuries like healthcare, proper state funded pensions, decent wages, trade unions and most aspects of our social safety network.

    tags: britain cameron politics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.