As of July 28th, I am an employee of Microsoft! My title is Developer Community Champion and I give presentations around the southeast about .NET programming and architecture. This job and company are way cool.

There are some really cool science demonstrations you can do at home found at scitoys.com. They even have links to how to order the parts.

Be sure to check out the Gauss rifle

Can someone explain why we don’t go around saying “Merry December 25th!” or “What are you getting your sweetheart for 14th of February”? Yet we constantly refer to Independence day by its calendar date. What a strange thing.

The week of April 21-27 is National TV-TURNOFF WEEK. Turn off the toob for a week and do something good for your brain!

OK, this has to be one of the dumbest ideas I’ve read about in a while. Renaming “french” fries to “freedom” fries in several House cafeterias. The name doesn’t even come from France, it’s from the culinary term “frenching” which means to slice into strips.

I bet these people don’t stop consuming products that are actually made in France like Perrier or wine! I bet they don’t stop french kissing their spouses! How stupid. What a waste of time. I want my tax money back.

These people are as dumb as Lane Meyer’s mother in Better Off Dead:

Here’s some things to remind you of home. “Franch” fries. “Franch” bread. “Franch” dressing. And to drink, “Peru”!

This is a video taken in 6000 feet of water. An undersea robot is sawing a 3mm wide slit (1/10th of an inch) in a pipeline. The pressure inside the pipeline is 0 psi, while the pressure outside is 2700 psi, or 1.3 tons per square inch. Then a crab comes along…

I guess losing the Columbia reminds many Gunters of the Challenger accident, which occured while most of us were in college. I’m interested in sharing thoughts from both then and now.

In January of 1986, I was a co-op working for IBM in Boca Raton, Florida. As it was pre-Internet (as it is now), we heard via the buzz spreading through the office that the Challenger had exploded on liftoff. We all went out to the parking lot and could see the long streak of white against the blue, blue sky. For the rest of the day, all we could do was check the radio to see if there was more information, but most of us had to wait until we got home to watch it on the evening news. Sometime during that week, the word came out for everyone to drive with their lights on during the day, to honor the fallen crew (which might have been a “Florida” thing because the accident happened there).

Saturday’s initial information came via an NPR special broadcast, while I drove with my wife and 3 kids (none of whom existed to me in 1986) to the grocery store.

Different time, different place, different life really, but the same feelings of loss. Godspeed.

-Glen

How Gunter© is this? Here’s a couple that made a time-lapse video out of their project to assemble a Lego Star Destroyer. Very cool.

Does anyone have this lego kit?

Here’s a very cool video on how the animators on Lord of the Rings transformed the performance of Andy Serkis into Gollum.

Occupation: Adventurer, circa 1982