Music from Lightning

From: , , , By Bevans on Friday, June 22, 2007

It's not an understatement for me to say that this is the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time. This is a Tesla coil (like one of those big metal balls that makes your hair stick up) that is being manipulated to produce crackling lightning at different pitches, resulting in actual music.

This first video is the most impressive light show, and features a few familiar songs. The second is TWO coils, doing an impressive rendition of the 1812 Overture.


Not related to The Sopranos in any way

From: , By Bevans on Monday, June 18, 2007


If you're like me, you went away from the series finale with a stunned look on your face. I think the first word I said was "buh?".

A lot of people have formed their own opinions of what really happened in the end. Some take the episode at face value, and just assume that life went on for Tony as usual. But some people tried to look deeper, and have come up with all sorts of theories about what really happened, and have determined that all signs point to death.

Show the world how you think the finale went down.

Tony Died/Tony Lived

Bye bye, old camper

From: , , By Bevans on Wednesday, June 06, 2007

For the past 15 years or so, my family and I have enjoyed going up to our permanent campsite east of Hinkley, where we have what is essentially a cabin: a large camper attached to an even larger, fully-enclosed porch that my dad, grandpa, uncle & I built.

We bought the camper used, and it was built in 1977. Needless to say, it was getting old. It had a lot of water damage, and was basically just worn out.

We have a much newer, a little bit smaller that we bought a couple years ago for travelling (yes, we owned two campers and five cars, for just 4 people) since our other one became a permanent fixture (not only was it attached to our porch, but it was also 37 feet long and we had nothing to pull it with). Therefore, we finally decided to get rid of the old one.

My dad somehow found someone to haul the thing away. He didn't sell it, he just said they could have it if they hauled it away. Once it was gone, he added another wall to the porch to enclose it fully, and now we just park our newer camper up there and take it where we want with our SUV.

Whoever it was that hauled it away owned a camper-selling business, and now they're trying to sell it for $2,000. They're never going to get that much, but I admire their chutzpah.

You can see it and some interior shots at http://www.oaklakerv.com/77YellowstoneFW.htm. It looks a lot nicer than it actually is. They haven't fixed it up or anything; it looks like they just took some photos as soon as it rolled onto the lot. They haven't even taken down our old shower curtain or knife rack or anything.

Definitely a fixer-upper. As in, needs a new ceiling, some new walls, some new shelves and benches, a fridge, and it still has orange shag carpeting in some areas (which looks even worse than the stuff Kev's parents used to have on their basement walls). And new tires. And the siding is all dented up from hail. But the structure is good.