Entries from March 2008 ↓

Ok, tomorrow is April 1, right?

I had no snow in my back yard when I left for work this morning… and it is still coming down, three hours later.

This next one I just thought looked cool… it’s the rear fender of my Jeep after I got home.

Ok, the title has nothing to do with this story, except that was the first thing that came to mind when reading a story on Gizmodo that mentioned both pigs, and Spider-Man. (wouldn’t that the be first thing to pop in to your head?)

Anyways, this guy cut about a half inch off the tip of a finger, including almost the entire nail. His brother gave him some powder that is basically made from part of a pig bladder, and his finger… grew back (like the Lizard…. that’s the Spidey reference).

I could try and explain the whole thing, but the CBS News videos do a much better job. All I can add is… wow.

Medicine’s Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs [cbsnews.com]

I am a bit of a geek. Yea, big shock there. I bought my first digital camera over seven years ago, a camera from before they even measured the quality in mega-pixels. I have a few shots of when my niece and nephew were first born using that camera.There were better ones out there, and it was not long before I upgraded to an 2 mega-pixel HP camera. A camera the same niece and nephew now use as a toy.

I am on my fourth digital camera, an 8 mega-pixel Kodak. Over the last 7-8 years I have taken thousands of photos. Many of which I still have, despite loosing way too many to a hard-drive crash a few years back.

For at least a few years now, I have been looking for an online gallery to use to show off my photos, and in the process Of course being the geek that I am, I want to host my own gallery, not rely on a third party like Flickr. I have looked at dozens and actually tried out about a dozen. I finally have found the one I am sticking with.

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History of the Fork

The fork actually has a very long history, even being mentioned in the Old Testament: “And the priests’ custom with the people was, that when any man offered sacrifice, the priests’ servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand, And he struck it into the pot … all that the fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself” (1 Sam. 2:13-14) So while this claw-like fork was a fairly common cooking and fire keeping utensil and even popped up now and then on the table through the Middle Ages and beyond, the fork as an eating utensil was far from being a common item.

Forks did appear as a way to eat your meal at the table as early as the fourth century, having been introduced there from the East. But even then, it was only occasionally and at elegant dinner parties. To the west the fork remained an oddity, or worse. In the eleventh century, a Byzantine princess created a stir in Venice. The princess came to marry the future Doge, Domenico Selvo, and at one of the celebrations in her honor she dared to refuse to eat with her hands. Instead, she had one of her eunuchs cut her food into little pieces she was able to eat with a golden fork. The socialites of the era proclaimed it to be total decadence and when the princess died shortly after of some wasting disease, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia denounced her with the passage: “Of the Venetian Doge’s wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away.”

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Easter is just a couple days from now, so you may not get these done in time for Sunday, but with the way these can turn out you may want to keep them around all year long.

With a normal egg, a hot-glue gun, and some various paints, you can have your own ‘Dragon Egg’. DadCanDo.com has a PDF instruction file you can download, but the process is pretty basic. Put holes in the ends of the egg and blow out the insides… clean an dry. But before painting, “draw” on the veining using hot glue.

The site also has a page on how to make the stands as well as some other slick looking projects that I am only starting to dive in to.

Dragon’s Egg [dadcando.com]

This is from Morristown, the home base of our paintball team, and also the home of Shooter’s Roundup and Rendezvous. While down there in 2002, I woke early Saturday morning and went for walk. It was a crisp, late August morning and as I walked around a bend in the road I came upon the following scene.

No, that is not a real buffalo - it is a 3-D target used as part of the atl-atl and bow demonstrations, but hey… it was still a great sight to behold.

photos.upmykilt.net