Posts from — March 2007

Remember Mister Miracle and his incredible super-detection + power-enhancing device: Mother Box?

Well, now an erstwhile gadget maker has built a prototype for Mother Box! It combines a wireless detection card with a microcontroller that produces a small heartbeat-like vibration when a wireless signal is detected. ping - ping - ping ! You’re walking into a hotspot, Sister!

Imagine the possibilities of combining this with other frequency & radiation detectors. We could have a very useful Mother Box warning system, mounted neatly on the shoulder. Just far enough away from your skull, and just high enough to have a multi-directional clear space to listen on. As the inventor points out, people (”meat” sic) absorb signals, so a receiver above the shoulder like an epaulet might work best.

**LINK**

In late August 2001, I boarded a plane at Hongqiao airport in Shanghai and flew to Urumqi. Riding in on the airport bus, I decided to jump off randomly in the center of the city and make my way by foot to the Hilton. Typically I would stay at a cheap guesthouse, but Dru Gladney said he was staying there that night and I wanted to talk to him about the possibility of creating a gazetteer of Uighur placenames.

What an interesting place Urumqi was! After checking in and failing to find Dru, I took a camera and a notebook and started wandering the streets. Walking south I eventually found a large botanical park, fronted by a very large nursery selling plants and clay pots of every description.

After wandering back through the center of the town to the Xinhua Bookstore, where I purchased my usual pile of maps and atlases, I decided to try a roast mutton stand that caught my eye earlier in the day. The place turned out to be well worth the extra hike, and I feasted on a platter of roast mutton and fresh baked Central Asian round-bread with sesame. The fellow outside carving the lamb carcasses and tending the grill was a good sport about letting me take his picture hard at work.

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kudos to Mr. Murphy, inventor of the electronic vehicle, eBug!

dvorak has done some homework for us on what we need to know in the 21st century. thanks dvo!

a fun filled flickr gallery of classic Vargo Statten covers, and many others.

really cool blog of artist’s desks, studios, and messes.