{"id":2287,"date":"2004-09-26T17:43:14","date_gmt":"2004-09-27T00:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/09\/26\/2287.html"},"modified":"2004-09-26T17:43:14","modified_gmt":"2004-09-27T00:43:14","slug":"items-rocket-ships-mechanical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/09\/26\/items-rocket-ships-mechanical\/","title":{"rendered":"Items: Rocket ships, mechanical pong, liquid-free alcohol, lockpicking, clocks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It's been a while since I've posted a URL sweep.  I've been collecting URLs, but I don't want to just dump them all at you at once; I'm gonna try to limit my postings of them to no more than 5 at a time, in general.<\/p>\n<p>Today's loose theme: technology.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.projectrho.com\/rocket\/\">So You Wanna Build A Rocket?: Atomic Rocketships of the Space Patrol<\/a>\" provides some back-of-envelope approaches for creating vaguely scientifically accurate rocketships for sfnal purposes.  A bunch of straightforward equations and explanations, a bunch of cool old sf art and newer diagrams, commentary on topics ranging from engines to artificial gravity to war in space to FTL.  Excerpt from the preliminary notes: \"Robinson's Second Law of space combat is that for every kilogram of handwavium you remove from a setting, you add about 10 cubic meters of impossible to maintain plumbing.\"  (Thanks, <a href=\"http:\/\/mumpsimus.blogspot.com\/\">Matt<\/a>!)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cyberniklas.de\/pongmechanik\/\">Pongmechanik<\/a> is a mechanical version of Pong.  The computer control is built entirely out of relays; the ball and paddles are dragged around by strings attached to the computer and controlled by joysticks; the ball makes satisfying thunking noises when it hits things.  There's a 7-minute video (in German, with English subtitles) that explains how the whole thing works.<\/li>\n<li>Apparently there's a new kind of <a href=\"http:\/\/slate.msn.com\/id\/2106393\">inhalable alcohol<\/a>: \"Alcohol Without Liquid,\" or AWOL, delivered in inhalers.<\/li>\n<li>I assume y'all saw that you can use an ordinary ballpoint pen to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kryptonitelock.com\/inetisscripts\/abtinetis.exe\/templateform@public?tn=urgent_update\">pick some kinds of locks<\/a>, including some kinds of Kryptonite locks?  See <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bikebiz.co.uk\/daily-news\/article.php?id=4637\">BikeBiz.com article<\/a> for some videos of this in action.  It's unclear to me whether this technique works on Kensington (and similar) laptop locks; I wrote to Kensington about it the other day but haven't heard back.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com\">Internet House of Clocks<\/a> has some cool photos and descriptions of clocks.  It's not clear to me whether it's entirely fictional or not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I&#8217;ve posted a URL sweep. I&#8217;ve been collecting URLs, but I don&#8217;t want to just&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}