jeffbell

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• Commented on Zabihah.com and Halal Dining
  For variety there is Fatima's in Cupertino that is halal Chinese food....
• Commented on Steel velcro that supports 35 tons/square meter
  Keep in mind that it's 35 tonnes/m^2 in shear, but 7 tonnes perpendicular. That's 10 lbf/in^n, which seems pretty close to what normal velcro gets. The big win is in the temperature range. What I would like to know is...
• Commented on Prank: humans "on display" at zoo
  At the Monterey Bay Aquarium there is a similar notation for the models of scuba divers that are hanging next to the whale models. It tells how scuba divers are the least well adapted of marine mammals, and typically go...
• Commented on HOWTO make a cheap ECG with an old PC sound-card
  Mitch Rohde designed and built an ECG module for the game boy system. The idea was to produce low cost medical equipment for the third world. Patent number 5876351, but I'm not sure if it's going to make it to...
• Commented on Video snapshot: "Topless rights" protest hosted by Raëlian UFO clone sex cult
  For those who are wondering, this is Venice Beach in California. No canals, in spite of the alien issues....
• Commented on Van Halen had good reason to ban brown M&Ms in their concert rider.
  Also on the list is herring in sour cream. They must be for the Dutch members of the band. I have to wonder who needs the Schlitz and the large tube of KY....
• Commented on The Amazing Unseen Hitler Films
  Airtight bags filled with inert gas you say? (glances over at the balloons and the helium tank)...
• Commented on British fraud cop quits job, buys huge database of stolen identities, charges fees to people who want to know if their details are in the database
  In other news, your PIN is on this page http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/pin.htm...
• Commented on Game uses fun as incentive to solve hard chip-design problems
  After playing with it for a while, it turns out I was missing something. If you turn on the checkbox at the bottom you can see which input contribute to that term. Also, the darker the circle, the fewer undecided...
• Commented on Game uses fun as incentive to solve hard chip-design problems
  For those who aren't familiar with it, 3sat is a product of sums boolean expression where each of the terms is the OR of 3 variables or inverses of the variables. For example F(A,B,C,D) = (A+B+C)(!A+C+D)(!B+!C+D) Your task is to...
• Commented on How a one-hour meeting can ruin a maker's day
  I used to have a boss who held a daily status meeting for a few months. Before you scoff, it was actually pretty good. It had a 15 minute time limit, and was over sooner if there was nothing left...
• Commented on Devices for storing your baby
  Remember that this was before air conditioning. I used to live on the 4th floor of a Boston brownstone, and in the summer I would sleep on the balcony. It was at least 10 degrees cooler than inside....
• Commented on Heather McDougal on black widow spiders
  From what I've read, the majority of black widow bites used to happen in outhouses....
• Commented on Kids on boneshaker bikes -- photoset
  There are tricks that you can do with the old bikes that you couldn't do with the modern ones. All of the weight is on the front wheel, making them almost like unicycles with a training wheel. At a bike...
• Commented on Making the bed -- authority, parenting, play and work
  A close friend whose native language was French often mixed up the translations of "faire". It would come out as "Do the bed" and "Make the dishes"....
• Commented on Slow motion video of grid of magnets lining up after being disturbed
  If you follow the link, there is a video at 1200hz as well....
• Commented on Electric Mountain Rotten Apple Gang
  The music is a bit rough, but a lot of that is because we are listening through a camcorder microphone in the outdoors....
• Commented on Trough of No Value: the period when objects aren't new and aren't collectible
  I have to disagree that things never have negative value. I can offer my garage as proof. I would really like to get at those bike tools underneath the kids shoes that are stacked on top, but my wife thinks...
• Commented on Mystery maple syrup stink of New York revealed
  You can fenugreek leaves in Indian markets, called "methi". It's good in spinach. At my house, it's usually going to rain if I smell garlic in the morning. It means the winds are from Gilroy....
• Commented on Charts: 2
  I've got a math question. Assuming no medical advances, what is the relation between chart 1 and chart 2? Is is a convolution? Or a derivative? Expectation? -Jeff...
• Commented on High-res cockpit view of space shuttle
  May favorite part has always been the hex keypad....
• Commented on Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs
  Any bets as to what the new item will be at the Infinite Loop salad bar?...
• Commented on Pre-chewed pencils
  Whenever I have to do some writing I end up sitting there chewing on a pencil for half an hour before much of anything gets written down. Just think of the time saved....
• Commented on Make your own Alka Seltzer for a fraction of the cost
  Dear #6, Gutta percha is what you use for root canals, transoceanic cables and golf balls. -Jeff...
• Commented on Europa Film Treasures
  Be aware that for the most popular films you must be under 18....
• Commented on NY Times on "beautification software"
  It seems that the inverse of this software would be doing characetures....
• Commented on Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans
  It would make a very interesting case if one were to get busted for downloading a song that was already paid for....
• Commented on A visit with the Los Angeles Carnivorous Plant Society
  My brother ordered a venus fly trap by mail. It was doing OK until he left it on the back porch and a rabbit ate it....
• Commented on All Your Base rubber-stamp
  Too bad they mispelled "yuor"....
• Commented on Satellite launches for Google hi-res imaging; can we track humans by shadows?
  I was told by a CIA employee that under good conditions they could tell if your watch had a TIMEX in the middle. And this was back in the early 80s....