RSS Beanie

With weather being anything but conformable, everybody out here is wearing scarfs, gloves, balaclava, etc.. A day or two ago I saw a student walking down the sidewalk wearing this:

For a moment I had gotten all excited, seeing some random guy with the Mozilla Feed icon on his head, but soon enough I realized it was just a [North Face](http://www.thenorthface.com/opencms/opencms/tnf/gear.jsp?site=NA&model=AR6R&language=en) beanie. Ah well…

That’s my story for today. And I’ll leave you with this sorta interesting fact – that the “beanie” is more properly referred to as a [tuque](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuque).

Traffic Widget

Things have bee a little quiet here in my little corner of the blogosphere (though I assure you real life has been far more eventful). So today I thought I’d liven things up a bit with a post on the maintenance update I did for [Traffic](http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/macwarriors/projects/traffic/) a few weeks ago – Exciting!

First I updated the default quota to 2GB, (up from the 750MB, which cause all sorts of problems when listening to [SomaFM](http://somafm.com) for days). Then switched things over to using the [Apple classes](http://developer.apple.com/documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/Dashboard_ProgTopics/Articles/AppleClasses.html)). And, well, that was it. Enjoy the rest of your day.

As Seen at WWDC

A gigantic [Papier-mâché](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papier_mâché) [BNC Connector](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNC_connector) near the Marina. I have no idea from whence it came or what on earth it could conceivably be used for.

And before you ask – no, I did not find the [female](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_connector) connector.

Fun with Dust-Off…

Dust-off canister

No, not that kind of [fun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalant) – I’m talking about fun with endothermic reactions!

You see – Dust-Off isn’t really compressed air (pressurized Nitrogen is pretty boring) but is in fact liquid [difluoroethane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difluoroethane). So what happens when you release a liquid with a boiling point well below that of room temperature (-24.9 °C)?

Lets find out:
Calulations

You get a reaction that will absorb an awful lot of energy from it’s surroundings (you can freeze stuff).

Getting more to the point- around here, in the summer, I come across a fair bunch of house spiders and, while I don’t mind them outdoors, can’t have them wandering around indoors. The problem is that they can be pretty tough to catch (especially the small ones) and mashing them makes a mess (especially the big ones). However, with the help of the aforementioned fluorocarbon, dealing with insects is a breeze.

All you need to do is give the can a good shake, tilt sideways and aim and fire. If you do things correctly the nozzle (moistened by shaking) will produce a directed spray of very fine difluoroethane droplets that, due to the their large surface area, vaporize rapidly – making the immediate surroundings very cool.

Bonus: on a humid day, your very likely to see frost form from the spray!

It’s all about the Brackets, Baby!

Obj-C hands picture

With [C4\[1\]](http://rentzsch.com/c4/1preNotes) starting tomorrow (which I, sadly, won’t be at). It seems apropos that I put out my graphical rendering of Rentzsch’s Obj-C sign from C4[0]. There you are!

(more…)

The Crankflip Tee

As I mentioned [before](/2007/06/13/unicycle-madness/) I’m now a unicyclist of sorts and, as I should post about soon, I also have a fetish for unique, swanky tshirts- the combination of which brought me to, over the past month or so, immerse myself in the world of professional printing. The result of which I present to you now:

Unicycle Tshirt Picture

I’m calling it my Crankflip Tee, and it’s been my first hands-on experience with custom tees – how exciting!

Getting more to the point, now that I’ve completed the design I’m getting ready to get it professionally screen printed in a week or two. Since I’ve already had a few inquiries on the shirts from inside and outside the [unicyclist community](http://www.unicyclist.com/) I’ve set up a page for ordering them [here](http://tees.oofn.net).

Over the next few weeks I hope to get much wiser to the ways of low-volume, custom printing. If the experience proves itself to be worthwhile you can expect to see a few more designs to make their way onto quality, sweatshop-free cotton in the not too distant future.

» Continue on to [tees.oofn.net](http://tees.oofn.net)

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