N Y B B L E M O N T H L Y N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2010.07.14 Issue No. 221
With quite a lot of free time on my hands, I went about reformatting the home laptop. Got an old T41 that has a faulty LCD screen. Installed
Windows7 on it and hooked it up to the LCD TV. Not able to get any output on the TV. After downloading and installing all the proper video drivers, I managed to use the TV as a secondary extended display. Configured the TV as the primary display, but Win7 won't let me save the settings. Bummer. Can't even change the resolution from the default 640x480. To fix this, I reinstalled Win7 with the laptop already connected to the TV. This way, Win7 picked up the TV as the primary display.
Been pretty impressed with Win7 so far. The T41 used to run XP Pro; has no problems running Win7. Seems be more responsive, too. Or maybe that's because I'm actually using Tiny7 instead of the real full-install Win7. Give it a try.
Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Mac lovers about it. Thanks.
P.S. Sorry about the spam that was sent to the mailing list. It's ok, the list wasn't hacked and no one's email address was "stolen". Just a simple case of address spoofing. Not really much I can do, as it's up to Yahoo! to catch fake addresses.
_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Electronic License Plates
* New Material Stores High Energy
* That's a Hella Big Number
* Air-Purifying Concrete
* Zero-Gravity Radiation Suit
* Solar-Powered Lightbulb
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh
_________ELECTRONIC LICENSE PLATES_________
Need money? Sell ads! The California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles. The move is intended as a moneymaker for a state facing a $19 billion deficit.
The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light. The license plate number would remain visible at all times in some section of the screen. In emergencies, the plates could be used to broadcast Amber Alerts or traffic information. At least one company, San Francisco-based Smart Plate, is developing a digital electronic license plate but has not yet reached the production stage.
The bill's author, Democratic Sen. Curren Price of Los Angeles, said that the devices would also cut costs by streamlining the distribution, activation and registration of license plates.
_________NEW MATERIAL STORES HIGH ENERGY________
Researchers from
Washington State University (WSU) have created a never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy using extreme pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet.
The researchers created the material in a diamond anvil cell – a small, two-inch by three-inch-diameter device capable of producing extremely high pressures in a small space. The cell contained xenon difluoride (XeF2), a white crystal used to etch silicon conductors, squeezed between two small diamond anvils.
At a million atmospheres, the molecules were forced to make tightly bound three-dimensional metallic "network structures". As a result, the huge amount of mechanical energy of compression was stored as chemical energy in the molecules' bonds. Basically, the experiment shows that it is possible to store mechanical energy into the chemical energy of a material with such strong chemical bonds.
_________THAT'S A HELLA BIG NUMBER________
What do you call 10 to the 27th power? If a 20-year-old UC Davis student gets his way, it's gonna be a hella big number.
You see, Austin Sendek is trying to get scientists from Boise to Beijing to use the term 'hella' to denote the unimaginably huge, seldom-cited quantity of 10 to the 27th power. That's a million billion trillion. It started off as a humorous Facebook petition to the Consultative Committee on Units, a subdivision of the
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures. So far, it has 60,000 Facebook supporters, and Google has actually incorporated "hella" in its online calculator.
The committee's next meeting is on Septermber, but hella's chances is looking to be hella small.
_________AIR-PURIFYING CONCRETE_________
Aside from carbon emissions, fossil-fueled vehicles also produce nitrogen oxide. This reacts with chemicals produced by sunlight to form nitric acid – a major constituent of acid rain – and also reacts with sunlight, leading to the formation of ozone and smog. Commercial air-purifying concrete have been shown to reduce the concentration of nitrogen oxides by 25 to 45 percent. The air-purifying concrete contains titanium dioxide, a photocatalytic material that removes the nitrogen oxides from the air and converts them into harmless nitrate with the aid of sunlight. The nitrate is then rinsed away by rain.
Last fall in the municipality of Hengelo, the Netherlands, researchers at the
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) resurfaced around 1,000 square meters of the busy Castorweg Road with air-purifying concrete paving stones from paving stone manufacturer Struyk Verwo Infra, while another area of 1,000 square meters was surfaced with normal paving stones. The researchers carried out three air-purity measurements on the Castorweg last spring, at heights of between a half and one-and-a-half meters. Over the area paved with air-purifying concrete the NOx content was found to 25 to 45 per cent lower than that over the area paved with normal concrete.
Although the stones themselves are 50 per cent more expensive than normal concrete stones, the total road-building costs are only ten percent higher.
_________ZERO-GRAVITY RADIATION SUIT_________
Physicians are supposed to wear a lead apron during medical scans or image-guided surgeries involving radiation. It is back-breakingly heavy and doesn't cover the body completely. In particular, there's a big armhole in the apron, so the whole head and face are exposed.
To get around this, Dr. Chet Rees, an interventional radiologist at the Baylor University Medical Center, invented what he calls the "zero gravity" suit. It looks like a space suit, but is really a thick lead gown, suspended from the ceiling of an operating room. "It's much bigger and the lead is thicker, and it has an acrylic face shield which is actually impregnated with lead, so this is actually a shield, too, which shields your entire face," Dr. Rees said.
He hopes many hospitals will invest in his zero gravity suit — or other technology to protect physicians exposed to potentially dangerous amounts of radiation over a lifetime.
_________SOLAR-POWERED LIGHTBULB_________
No, it's not a joke. A Hong Kong-based company has introduced what it bills as the world's only solar-powered lightbulb with the hope of reaching millions of people with little or no access to electricity.
The Nokero N100 solar LED lightbulb is meant to replace kerosene lamps as a lighting source in the developing world. The N100 solar bulb is about the size of a standard incandescent bulb and has four small solar panels in its rainproof plastic housing. Five LEDs and a replaceable NiMH battery inside provide up to four hours of light when the device is fully charged. People hang it outside during the day and then turn it on at night. Weather, seasons, and latitude can affect charging times. Nokero asserts that one day of charging in the sun can provide about two hours of light, though charging near the equator can provide more.
The LEDs are meant to last 50,000 to 100,000 hours, and the solar panels are rated to last 10 years. The life of the N100 is basically 5 to 10 years. Though the device's lumen rating is unclear, the company says the N100 is five times brighter than kerosene lamps and uses only 1/200th the energy. The cost? A single bulb is $15; a case of 48 costs $480. The company offers a "significant" discount when buying a thousand or more.
_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Media Player Classic Home Cinema
Family Shield from OpenDNS
Prank Dialer
Where is my cellphone?
_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
I've heard references to the element of surprise. I checked my periodic table and can't find it. What am I doing wrong?
_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
My wife has been my closest friend, my closest advisor. And ... she's not somebody who looks to the limelight, or even is wild about me being in politics. And that's a good reality check on me. When I go home, she wants me to be a good father and a good husband. And everything else is secondary to that.
~ Barack Obama
_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
How quickly do landfills break down?
Most landfilled trash retains its original weight, volume, and form for 40 years.
Source: Arcamax Trivia
_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A curve approaches a tangent in a bar and asks, "Hey buddy, you look like you're in prime condition. You heading my way?" The tangent replies "Woah man, I'm a straight line!"
That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.
If you like your Japanese anime with:
What can I say? There's nothing to dislike about this animated movie. There's nothing special about it either. Story about a Viking boy who doesn't enjoy killing dragons. One day, he befriends a mythical dragon called the Night Fury. This one's got a damaged tail fin, so he fixes an artificial one for him. Coupled with a saddle, they take to the skies and have fun all day. Yay! Then his Dad, the village chief, discovers the lair of the dragons. Against his son's advice, he takes on the dragon king, and the humans are annihilated. The little boy gets on the Night Fury, and together with his playmates and their dragon pets, they kill off the gigantic dragon king. Just like that.
Another road-trip movie with a twist. Three down-and-out buddies, plus one new guy take a trip to Kodiak Valley to relive their wild and free days. They take a dip in a hot tub, and after spilling an illegal Russian energy drink into the control panel, they end up in the 80's. They figure the only way to go back to the future, I mean, present is to redo all the past events. One of them has to get beaten up. One has to have sex with a groupie, weeping all throughout the act. And one of them will get stabbed in the face. Turns out it's not so important whether they preserve the future or not because all they need to do is hop into the tub and spill more Chernobly into the electronics. One of them stayed behind and with his knowledge of the future, became super wealthy. Because he's such a good buddy, he made sure his friends got their share, too.
Another one of Jacky Chan's ill-fated attempts to break into Hollywood. Old jokes, old stunts, old script; add in Billy Ray Cyrus - FAIL!
Another kiddie fantasy movie like Harry Potter. Just a guess, this feels like it was adapted from a book. Judging from the title, we'll be seeing more of Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman).
So Percy with his satyr sidekick Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) and love interest Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) goes around the country looking for teleporting pearls left behind by Persephone (Rosario Dawson). During their quest, they behead Medusa (Uma Thurman), slay the Hydra, and outsmart the Lotus-Eaters. But wait, there's more. They bribe the ferryman Charon to take them to the Underworld (underneath Beverly Hills), where they rescued Percy's Mom from the clutches of Hades, and emerged up top with the missing lightning bolt.
Sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland. That said, the title should've been Alice in Underland. Now a young adult, Alice, while avoiding her suitor and chasing a white rabbit, falls into the rabbit-hole again for more adventures. She ended up in Underland, which is under the tyrannical rule of the Red Queen a.k.a Queen of Hearts and her Knave Stayne. Meanwhile, the White Queen, who is the rightful ruler of Underland, is in search of Alice, who is foretold to be her champion on the day of reckoning.
This movie should've been called Mission: Impossible. The action sequences here simply defies belief. The A-Team must be living in a parallel world where the laws of physics are different. I mean, their amphibious plane gets shot down by drones, and they end up on a tank with parachutes. Face gets on the tank's artillery gun and shoots down the drones while the tank careens wildly in the air. With their parachutes torn, the tank drops like a stone. What does B.A. do? He calmly shouts out directions to Face where and when to fire the cannon. The resulting recoils rights the tank and sends it to a particular direction. The tank then crashes into a lake and the A-Team drives off with nary a scratch.
If this movie is a tabloid, the headline would've read "Virgin Can't Decide between Cold Vampire and Hot Werewolf".
Some choice quotes from the movie:
The wife's Toshiba laptop has been running slow for quite some time now. Through the years, the Tecra has been picking up different toolbars and adware as it navigates through the intertubes. IE doesn't work anymore, and sometimes Firefox hangs. Time for a fresh install.
Found a couple of Hanyu cassette tapes lying around and decided to convert them to mp3, as I'm sure they'll come in handy in the future.
The good thing with the x20 is that it can record straight to mp3. No wav-to-mp3 conversion required. High-quality setting produces 44.1kHz 128kbps CBR stereo mp3 files. Approximately 1MB for every minute of audio. Not bad.
This movie should've been called The Kung-Fu Kid. This remake is set in Beijing and you know that's not karate. In my opinion, Jaden Smith is too young for the role. The love angle doesn't feel right. Dre and Meiying are too young to be kissing in public. Instead of wax-on, wax-off we have jacket-on jacket-off.
Is it just me, or is there more and more secret agent movies coming out? This one has Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz performing crazy stunts on planes, cars, trains, motorcycles, etc. as they track down the boy genius Simon, who has invented a small portable perpetual energy battery called the Zephyr, before the bad guys can get to him.
It's been a week since I took paternity leave from work. I'm finding I have more free time, yet I'm also busy day and night.
