I’ve heard said that coal is to the US what oil is to Saudi Arabia. An item in my Electric Co-ops monthly magazine reminded me of this. It states that they are building a new coal fired power plant and moving away from “high priced” natural gas.
Another interesting note is that “environmental safeguards account for fully one third the” $1.4 billion cost.
Interesting documentary on Hitler’s home movies. “Now, leading edge lip reading software has enabled German experts to re-voice these films and provide us with a chilling insight into Hitlers private world.”
One thing revealed in the documentary that I did not know was the fact that there were no recordings of Hitler’s normal speaking voice until the discovery of a secret recording of Hitler speaking with the king of Finland. This is the only recording of his normal speaking voice, all others are his public speaking rants.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s first incarnation of the search engine Google was called BackRub, “named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website.” Would the brand be as popular with that name?
This little movie illustrates the fantasy that is fashion photography. The old adage, “Don’t believe everything you read,” should be expanded to include “see and hear.”
On this site, you suggest a favorite song or artist, and it builds a radio station based on the style of music. You can help refine the station to your liking by giving a thumbs up or down to selected music it plays. Very smart.
BTW, it’s free.
Although the pictures on my HDTV are really good, especially compared to analog, they can be compressed up to almost 68 to 1. Since most broadcasters are sending up to 3 channels in their allotted bandwidth, picture quality has to take a hit. I’ve been wondering what an uncompressed picture would look like!
Further info on this subject.
http://broadcastengineering.com/digital_handbook/broadcasting_hdtv_data_multiplexing_5/
As opposed to a typical DVD movie, which is compressed about 10 to 1.
I always wanted to know why the Advanced Television Committee went with such an odd aspect ratio for the new digital television standard. Turns out one guy, Dr. Kerns Powers, discovered that this ratio would cover all of the existing formats of film, from super wide screen 2.35 down to TV and old film size of 1.33.
Check out these entertaining and informational instructional videos from Craig Syverson, the videogrunt. Highly recommended.
UPDATE 6/2018: As with most TGTBT claims, this company has long been defunct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn
The Steorn company claims to have developed a limitless free energy technology. They state on their web site they “…have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy.” They are a little evasive about how it actually works and also say that no scientists they have approached would go on record as saying the technology works. The web site says that the technology evolved during the development of “micro generators.” My hunch is that this nano technology may seem to provide the energy at the molecular level but has yet to see a feasible way to expand it’s energy production to a level needed to power something. Or I could be completely wrong, anyway you can explore it yourself if you find this…something of interest.
While visiting the NC Transportation Museum, I noticed a display about shipping containers. Malcom McLean, a North Carolina native, is credited as the inventor of the idea to ship goods in containers that can be easily transfered to other modes of transportation. This one development revolutionized the World economy. Read his fascinating story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_McLean
You can also find some interesting uses for these containers, such as building homes and shelters. Just google “shipping container homes.”
Here’s a guy whose attached a camera to his RC airplane. But he’s also devised a goggle that lets him move the camera by positioning his head. Really cool. Discovered on Google video.
