square wheeled bicycle and more
Today I found lots of interesting links so instead of picking just one, I’m including all of them.
Stan Wagon has developed a bicycle with square wheels, but it provides a smooth ride. How? By creating a road with a rather odd shape.
Pictures of toilets from around the world. I used a few strange ones in Spain, but some of these are shocking. The seatless ones being especially unpleasant to think about.
The story of how the sysadmin of a small Internet café in Dublin successfully caught a 419 scammer in the act. (via /.) There is more information about the 419 scam here in case you haven’t heard of it.
Who do you want quarterbacking the nation? I don’t see how the ability to catch or throw a football has anything to do with being president, but I found the picture (and subsequent comments) particularly amusing.
NEC has developed an organic battery that recharges in 30 seconds to its full charge. Man, if that’s real, I need to get me one of those. Imagine how useful it would be for laptops, cell phones, palm pilots and any portable media player.
I’d seen a couple of those links yesterday, too. The square-wheeled bike was kind of nifty, but mostly a geometry gimmick rather than something useful, since you’d need the funky-shaped road for it to work.
I saw the 30 second charge battery on Slashdot, and the discussion there was interesting. They were conjecturing that if you could charge it that fast, you could probably discharge it just as fast. If it holds enough power to be useful for any length of time, discharging it all at once would create a HUGE burst of energy. It’d probably pop like a firecracker if you shorted it!
It’s a sad moment when you have to stare at what you believe to be a toilet and wonder how it’s to be used. Some of these appear to require great leg strength.
I found many seatless toilets while in Europe. My that was unpleasant.
Asian toilets, by far are the most entertaining. It’s like they just don’t give a damn who sees them doing their “business”. I was once in a tiled room in Korea occupied with the floor variety of toilet. No privacy, no curtain, and more importantly to paperwork, if you get my meaning. Just a garden hose coming out of the wall, and if you noticed, I used the singular form of the word “hose”. If you have issues with doing your business in public restrooms, then Asia will screw you up for life. I thought it was kinda fun though.
I don’t think I’d fare very well in Asia. I prefer to have my privacy.