Recently in Personal Technology Category

This last weekend, I bought a Surefire G2 Nitrolon high-output flashlight at a Reno gun show, about $35. It's a very good alternative to the more expensive, earlier metal version, the Surefire 6P. For those of my friends who are getting into defensive pistolcraft for the first time - and who have budget constraints - I recommend this lightweight version.

Some friends of a friend started a geographically-oriented business review site, Yelp.com, with an apparent emphasis on restaurant reviews (but an ontology supporting very many more categories.)

I've joined on her recommendation, and have been surprised to discover just how useful it's been already: I've found some nearby places I'd never considered before, and am now using to drive some of my purchases at local specialty shops.

Now, whether Yelp is another Next Big Thing remains to be seen. It's a closed system, with no apparent provision for RSS syndication of the content we the users add to the review base, and relatedly, no leveraging of microformat standards such as hReview, a serious issue (thanks to Mike Linksvayer for pointing me to this recently.)

Yelp seems to have purchased a GIS-oriented business database, and coded some Google Maps integration into their interface. Rather nice, but entirely US-oriented, with no indication they're ready to scale into the English-speaking markets of Tokyo (big expat and traveller population) and other locales.

Speaking of which, I just tried inviting a good friend, an American living in Panama who could be a productive member of the Yelp community, and he sent me back this, reprinted with his permission:

'Hi Russell,

These morons ask for a zip code and won't accept my sign-up without one. I see this sort of shit all the time. When are US geeks going to get a clue the the US is not the world and that not everyone who has internet also has a "zip" code? So Thanks, but no thanks. I won't sign up with jingoistic idiots. Please feel free to pass along my exact words, if it pleases you.

Regards,
Sandy'

Wow. Well, he does have a point. I see this as one of those "We weren't planning to be so successful" scaling issues. Can't count the number of times I've seen this. I think the Yelpers really should have generalized their GIS integration to allow world-wide registration, from the very beginning. I have lots of friends in Europe, Asia, and South America who won't be able to join due to this and related issues. Maybe agitating in the Yelp forums about this might help; I've noticed they do tend to pay attention to issues of interface (e.g. marking businesses as closed or moved) so they may listen. Of course, they may be planning some kind of world-market rollout, but it would help if they advertised that somewhere prominent.

In the meantime, I'm going to use the hell out of it until and unless it ceases to be interesting. It's a much more convenient place for me to bulk-load all those pictures of food and storefronts I take in my travels, more so than the Movable Type blogging interface I'm using here, and since most of my reviews are locale-specific, it's probably a better place for my rants and raves about local businesses (and ones I visit in other cities.)

Just minutes after I'd complained in my latest blog posting about the lack of taxonomies for doing business reviews, Mike Linksvayer leaves a comment to the contrary:

In-blog reviews, no hacking required beyond copy and paste.

In the fullness of time these will be aggregated by someone for viewing in the context of similar reviews. On the other hand, reviews posted at review sites may be similarly aggregated.

Yesterday, I visited Ramen Rama in Cupertino, California, with my longtime friend Suzu. Here's another of what Brian Micklethwait refers to as a "Billion Monkeys" moment:

Some other tech industry friends of Suzu have started a company called Yelp, whose product is a business reviews website, where Suzu and I have reviewed the ramen shop. I've not populated this blog with restaurant review entries to my satisfaction, since the blog format is not granular enough (without hacking) to support a taxonomy for star ratings and such, so I'm going to experiment with posting my reviews on Yelp and pointing to them from here. Putting my own reviews in the context of others' should add value to the opinions.

I had an offer to get some free stick time in a friend's friend's luxury (pressurized cabin, an aisle between the seats, etc.) airplane for a trip he and the other guy were making to CES in Las Vegas, but I'm getting ready for school on Monday, so I declined. I'm taking in some of the show's highlights by way of reportage, and just saw this on one of the gadget/gimmick blogs:

"Radar Scope sees through walls"

Fascinating, and a bit terrifying at the same time. It's a handheld device for detecting people on the other side of a (presumably radiolucent) wall. The display device looks milspec/ruggedized, and the printed matter pitches to military application, but I'm quite sure they're being pitched to police departments too. I wonder, what are the relevant U.S. laws with respect to using this device in warrantless searches? I believe SCOTUS has already ruled that "standoff" search techniques are not covered under the 4th Amendment.

I'm rested now and recovered from last weekend's attendance at the 4-day tactical shotgun course at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute near Las Vegas, Nevada. I surprised myself by making Distinguished Graduate, so I'm now qualified to come back to attend the 4 Day Advanced Tactical Shotgun course. On the second day of training, Greg Carroll snapped this pic of me after the two of us had done our respective runs through the outdoor canyon "clean the hostage takers out" simulator exercise:

The (visible) firearm is my Benelli M1 Super 90, with a nylon tactical sling and a GG&G M3 Tactical Illuminator mounting rail in the 2 o'clock position on the foreend, not the 10 o'clock position GG&G recommends on their website (experience in a previous course having shown me that, as a right-handed longgunner, the 10 o'clock position allows the light to bump on.)

I'd last done a tactical shotgun course about 4 years ago, and so I was quite interested to see how training doctrine had changed in respect of that weapon at Front Sight. The men in the evolution I attended - those 13 in the class who were there for the full 4 days - were all at least previous attendees at another weapon systems class (e.g. defensive handgun, practical rifle) so the class was run at a slightly accelerated pace befitting the audience. Attendees were about evenly divided between cops, active duty military (a Marine heading back to Iraq soon) and private citizens, all of whom were treated exactly the same by the instructional staff, the excellent Chuck Burnett and John Pierson.

One difference I noticed was the much heavier emphasis on incorporating movement, keeping the fight dynamic, and training that way to the limited extent allowed in the "square range environment." I was particularly pleased that, after the Monday (4th day) afternoon skills test, and the "load and go" indoor tactical simulator, I was allowed to do several rounds of 2-man team shooting on the move, with my new friend David L. Loads of fun, and I was pleased to find that a walking skill I'd been cultivating the last few years, walking fast with very short tank-tread heel/toe action to keep the hips and shoulders on level planes, allowed me to get good hits moving both forward and backward, without muzzle bob.

I'm at a level of membership at Front Sight that allows me to take any firearms course free for the rest of my life, much like some golf club memberships. So, I get to take these courses again and again, which allows me not only to revisit, revive, and refine my skills, but also to work out equipment issues. I've discovered I really don't like the Lyman TacStar SideSaddle mounted on the left side of the receiver: it catches on my clothing, when loaded it dampens recoil (and hence reliability) on this recoil-operated weapon, and with the standard provided cross-receiver screw, was coming loose even though I'd installed it properly and Lock-Tited it. I guess a couple of thousand rounds will do that to the Lock-Tite. That, and I'm leery of over-tightening that screw for fear of impeding bolt travel. Oh, and there's the issue of potentially "egging out" the screw holes on the aluminum receiver. My friend David assures me that, should I care to keep the SideSaddle, I can send the weapon to a gunsmith who specializes in Class 3 firearms with aluminum receivers, experienced in setting up weapons to resist receiver failure, but I'm going to switch to keeping my slug rounds on a belt carrier anyway.

Nor am I going to solve the "problem" of having extra ammo by changing out the tube magazine from a 5 to an 8 round capacity. This is my home invasion repellant device... if I can't solve The Problem with what's available in that weapon, then I'm in a very serious situation indeed. I'm more and more preferring lighter, more maneuverable weapons the more I train, with as few bells and whistles as I can get away with. I've heard more than one long arms instructor over the years comment on how students will arrive at a course with their all-singing, all-dancing Space Gun rigs, everything mounted everywhere, only to find themselves quickly shedding equipment after the first day... especially when training in the 105 F degree desert heat. Heh.

Recommendation: check out Estate Cartridge's low-recoil 12-gauge 9-pellet 00 SWAT loads. I've used this buckshot at a previous shotgun course, and had made the decision to attend this most recent course with too little lead time to order more of the same for this class. So, I had a mere few dozen of them to use at various times during this course, instead using a mix of Winchester and Federal buckshot for most exercises. No comparison. At half the price of Federal, the Estate-branded cartridges gave outstandingly tight and nicely distributed (e.g. no annular "donuts of death") patterns, turning heads on the firing line and eliciting a number of "what are you shooting, man?" enquiries.

I had the pleasure of remaking the acquaintance of at least one old friend, who was taking a course on an adjacent range. Additionally, I was happy to have a couple of libertarian friends, longtime (but previously untrained) gunowners, take the full 4 Day Defensive Handgun course on the same weekend. Both men, Alan and Chris, came away from the experience very much more competent than when they arrived.

...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!

I bought a 40GB iPod about 8 months ago, and have worked that thing like a prom date, using it in my car, at the gym, at school (both for listening & for recording lectures) and simply for walking around. A couple of days ago, I was greeted with the "sad iPod" icon which indicated the unit's hard drive had failed. Though I'd bought the unit at a discount at the campus bookstore, I called the local Apple Store and told them my situation. I was told to come in, they'd have a replacement waiting for me, no charge, covered under the unit's 1-year standard warranty.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with Apple when I've had an issue with their equipment and/or operating system. I bought an AppleCare contract with my new dual G5 a few months ago, and have found that my calls are answered promptly, and the technicians will hang onto the phone doggedly until any problems are run to ground. At least in my own case - I can't speak for others - I'd rate Apple as having a superb culture of customer service all around.

I needed to my online investment bank's customer service center, which was given on its website in the form of "800-555-CALL", one of those supposedly helpful mnemonic phone numbers with letters corresponding to digits. Well, my Treo 650 smartphone has a QWERTY keyboard with a digit keypad superimposed on the left side of the board, no 3-letter-to-single-digit DTMF tonepad overlay. I had to dig an old phone out of my "sell on eBay" box to puzzle out my bank's phone number, since they didn't provide a digits-only version of that number.

My Bujinkan teacher Dale Seago mentioned this a few days ago:

Some VERY good pages on Japanese armor which give a clearer understanding of why armored fighting methods are the way they are; also sections on historic Japanese clothing & accessories, the design and layout of Japanese estates during the Heian period, etc.

For those with a bent toward Humphreyesque "cultural detective work", there's an essay on "Rape as the First Act of Romance in Heian Japan" which makes it pretty clear that the feudal Japanese viewed some things quite differently from the way we do in our society today... (Whaddaya mean I should wait 'til the 3rd date?!?)

Walking past a newsstand near my office yesterday, I saw the banner headline "Tube Bosses Buy Parts on eBay". The accompanying story told us, in faintly mocking tones, how engineers working on the London Underground system have resorted to using the online auction firm because the parts they need are so old that they cannot get the pieces they need from regular stock.

Now it may at first appear a terrible thing that our metro systems are so old that the folk running them have to resort to an online auction set up by those vulgar American geeks from their Silicon Valley offices to get the stuff they need. But (drums roll!) I have a certain admiration for the Tube staff who had the entrepreneurial savvy to make use of the amazingly successful eBay platform. If the power of the internet can make my journey to work a bit smoother, I ain't complaining.

Johnathan Pearce

Here's a term I'd not expected to hear: "cosmetic neurology" (via John Venlet).

I bought a used speargun and scuba regulator assembly at a very good bargain price from a really cool Korean guy who's an incredibly experienced freediver and spear fisherman. Here's a nifty little device he cooked up for managing gear, "diver down" flag, and temporary stowage of fish (as well as for paddling out to kelp forest, of course):

If you only encrypt important things, even without decrypting the message the simple fact it's encrypted means its important. This is information that you have given freely to whomever it is that is watching: "Pay Attention, This One Is Important."

I cannot stop the buggers from knowing everything about me if they decide I'm a target. But I can throw chaff. Encrypt everything.

As PGP's developer Phil Zimmerman said, "PGP is for small secrets."

Curt Howland

Just a few minutes ago, I tore open a pouch of Oregon Freeze Dry's Mountain House brand "Freeze Dried ~ Precooked Scrambled Eggs with Real Bacon" I'd purchased over 5 years, to see how they taste. Quite palatable, though the "Real Bacon," even with 8 minutes of steeping in boiling water, still tastes like bacon bits. Of course, 5 years is actually a rather short time to store this type of food. I expect a package of the same food to taste the same 5 or 10 years hence.

A few days ago, I finished reading Henry Petroski's "The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are," a breezy exposition on the origins of things most people take for granted, usually considered not worth wondering about. In a similar vein, and coincidentally well-timed, Curt Howland forwarded me yesterday a pointer to an essay lauding one artifact in particular, "In Praise of the Oh-So-Dependable Cardboard Box," by Russell Roberts.

I'm reminded of an essay I read in the summer of 1990, a copy of which was given me by its author, Phil Salin, at a house party in Palo Alto, before leaving for my 1st work assignment in Europe. The essay, "The Ecology of Decisions, or 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Kitchens,'" opened my eyes to what Petroski often refers to as the "artifactual intelligence" encoded in the seemingly mundane, the things we don't consider.

Phil's work, by the way, is maintained on the web by friends who deeply care about him: he succumbed to stomach cancer sometime around 1993, and is presently in cryostasis at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. I didn't have the chance to personally thank Phil for his strong influence on my thinking, but I hope to have that chance someday.

Saw this commented on by someone on a mailing list I frequent: the "Quantum Sleeper: the safest rest you've ever had." It's one of the strangest things I've seen in recent times, a bed cum saferoom, very coffinlike. I'm not sure I like it... why not keep a shotgun by the bed instead?

An excellent essay by Eric Raymond, "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun: What Bearing Weapons Teaches About the Good Life." (Thanks to Steve Pegram.)

To believe one is incompetent to bear arms is... to live in corroding and almost always needless fear of the self — in fact, to affirm oneself a moral coward. A state further from the dignity of a free man would be rather hard to imagine. It is as a way of exorcising this demon, of reclaiming for ourselves the dignity and courage and ethical self-confidence of free (wo)men that the bearing of personal arms, is, ultimately, most important.

This is the final ethical lesson of bearing arms: that right choices are possible, and the ordinary judgement of ordinary (wo)men is sufficient to make them.

My friend Anton complains about the lack of comments on his blog:

In two months and a bit since opening comments, this blog received just eight, of which half were mere applause; and Blogger makes handling comments a bit of a nuisance. So I've turned commenting back off; and incorporated the four substantive comments as addenda to the original posts, which is what I do anyway when someone bothers to write to me.

It's because Blogger makes handling comments a pain in the ass that most of us don't bother, Anton, and nobody I know will submit comments by a separate channel (email in another software client) for possible posting at your convenience later. That's not how users expect the mechanism of a blog to work. You can continue to bitch about what other people will or won't do, complaining publicly about it, or you can take the actions necessary to actually induce people to leave comments: set yourself up using a genuine blogging system.

I never hear good news emanating from that cesspit of a state, New Jersey. Apparently, they're proposing yet another outrageous law, in this case the first tax on a medical procedure in American history:

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Wayne R. Bryant and Democratic Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, imposes a 6 percent tax on certain cosmetic medical procedures that are directed at improving the patient's appearance and that do not promote the proper function of the body or prevent or treat illness or disease.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Steve Pegram passed along a detailed and fascinating online version of a military report generated last summer, "SOLDIER WEAPONS ASSESSMENT TEAM REPORT 6-03". Much of the report is rather dry, given the nature of such a document, but scattered throughout are a great many little observational gems such as this:

...soldiers rank reliability and durability as key weapon characteristics and are not willing to trade them for anything – to include weight. Similarly, soldiers do not consider the weapon as part of their load, but rather as an enabler. They are willing to carry the weight if the weapon or device increases his lethality. This is best illustrated by soldiers purchasing their own magnified optics and the strong desire to carry an additional sidearm or shotgun for defensive and offensive purposes. Lethality is more important to the soldier than any other consideration or factor.

Here's empirical verification of the usefulness of white lights in combat, a point which I've had driven home by anecdotes from trainers at every school I've attended:

Several soldiers were observed with flashlights taped to their weapons and some using the Weapon Flashlight Mount. But all soldiers described using the tactical light for temporary target incapacitation.

The New Scientist reported yesterday that experimental progress in growing replacement teeth in situ has been made... yet another reason to pressure the federal government into repealing all its vile, stupid laws against stem cell research.

This is nasty and upsetting news from Steve Pegram: "Rocket Hobbyists Dropping Hobby" due to hamfisted, jackbooted regulation by the goons of the BATF. Just when we're seeing the spirit of innovation in rocketry and space travel rekindled, the government is working to snuff that spirit. This crap needs to be fought... which seems to be happening by default, since many rocket hobbyists have chosen to ignore F-Troop anyway.

Brian Smith informs us that Bushmaster now markets an AR-10 semiclone that accepts FN-FAL magazines (both inch and metric). This is fairly interesting to me, since I've been mulling over picking up a carbine in .308 caliber since I encountered the Springfield Armory SOCOM 16 in a gun store a few weeks ago.

This is getting even more interesting: Eric Pavao sends along yet another piece (Popular Science) on the SpaceShipOne flight, this one intimating that Burt Rutan has a lot more up his sleeve:

After winning the X-Prize, Rutan will quickly move on to other challenges. During press conferences leading up to Monday's flights, he dropped hints about "going to orbit sooner than you think," an apparent allusion to the Tier 3 orbital space-vehicle program that he is reportedly involved in. The SpaceShipOne program is known as Tier 1, and Tier 2 would probably be a tour-bus-like version of the same concept, a vehicle capable of carrying up to 10 passengers on suborbital space flights. Under his contract with Allen, Rutan is required to deliver data on how much such a vehicle would cost to build and fly. Mojave Aerospace--a new company jointly owned by Allen and Rutan and disclosed this week--will own the rights to SpaceShipOne technology and would oversee future franchising and commercialization efforts for the system. Details will remain secret, said the cagey Rutan, "until we're ready to push something out of the door."

I'm sure this is old news now, but I just found out that the ultralightweight carbon-fiber Carbon 15 rifle is now a Bushmaster offering. I've had the opportunity to handle one of these 4-pound carbines in training, and found it rather pleasant. I'd be interested in knowing how rugged they actually are.

Today's the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I'm reminded that a couple of weeks ago, a couple of friends of mine and I went shooting at a rifle range in northern California, taking a number of weapons including an M1 Garand rifle which probably saw action in WWII. Here, my friend Andy Chen, a brand new shooter (and 18 y/o college classmate), fires my other friend's Garand:

This was Andy's first time out shooting... and on steel reactive targets set out at 100 meters - after having been briefed on safety and weapon operation - he kept up with us two trained, experienced shooters, at least on the sandbag rests. He's spent his high school years reading military history, and knows an incredible amount of factual data on weapons history. He's also used to playing first-person shooter games - in which I've never been interested, thinking them useless for training - causing me to start to re-think my opinions of twitch games.

An older gentleman at an adjacent shooting stall took some time to discuss the Garand with Andy, pointing out that he had ordered his own Garand (which he was also shooting) from the U.S. federal government's Civilian Marksmanship Program, which I've heard about over the years, though I'd bought my own past two Garands from commercial sources.

I'm encouraging Andy to join a local CMP-affiliated club and shoot a match this summer, so that he can be eligible to buy at least a "rack grade" rifle for as low as $350... shipped Fedex directly to his door (yes, they do that)! I don't see Garands selling at gun shows for less than around $800 nowadays. Here's a very detailed and interesting account, with photos, of the experiences of two CMP participants in the purchase and shooting of their own CMP Garands.

It's especially worth noting, for California residents, that a Garand is "Kalifornia legal", making it an excellent rifle to keep locked in the trunk of one's car... just in case. Also note that a number of companies (such as Smith Enterprises) do "tanker conversions" to shorten the overall length, and one can convert the weapon to .308 caliber.

Eric Pavao passes on this fantastic news: SpaceShipOne will be making its first historic flight from Mojave in less than 3 weeks:

Mojave, CA: A privately-developed rocket plane will launch into history on June 21 on a mission to become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle. Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan have teamed to create the program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave the earth's atmosphere.

Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan have teamed to create a manned space program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave the earth's atmosphere. SpaceShipOne will rocket to 100 kilometers (62 miles) into sub-orbital space above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center, a commercial airport in the California desert. If successful, it will demonstrate that the space frontier is finally open to private enterprise. This event could be the breakthrough that will enable space access for future generations.

I remember the odious BBC television licensing fee from my days in London long ago, but had thought the fee had been repealed. Not so, reports UK-resident Australian Monica White:

For those of you who don’t live in the UK, you may be interested in the phenomenon that is the TV License – I was truly surprised by it a year ago. Essentially, if you have a TV or receiving equipment, you are obliged to pay the government £121 per year to view the BBC channels.

Don’t watch the BBC? I’m afraid that TV Licensing doesn’t believe you. EVERYONE who owns an operational set must watch the BBC. They're compelled to. There’s something in the water.

TV Licensing ‘Enquiry Officers’ also seem to get a hoot out of slapping £1000 fines onto anyone within spitting distance.

I imagine respirocytes as minuscule objects consisting of roughly 18 billion atoms arranged in small balls about a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter. Each respirocyte is a tiny pressurized gas tank equipped with small pumps. Respirocytes are nanobots that move with the blood. In the body's periphery, they release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. In the lungs, they do the opposite, recharging themselves with oxygen. The exchange of gases is regulated by minute sensors. Though the respirocytes are modeled on red blood corpuscles, they transport oxygen two hundred times more efficiently than the natural item. A small syringe-full of respirocytes could carry as much oxygen as your entire bloodstream.

Robert A. Freitas Jr
28 July 2000

My friend Steve Pegram passed this on to me a few days ago with the comment "First I've heard of these. Handy, if they work as advertised." I agree.

"The Only EPA Registered Purification Tablets on the Market - effective against Cryptosporidium, Giardia, bacteria, and viruses."

The only disinfection system effective against viruses, bacteria, cryptosporidium, and Giardia
Fresh tasting water - no unpleasant taste
Easy to use tablets
The same proven technology that is used in municipal water supplies
Lightweight and compact - ideal for traveling, lightweight backpacking, and emergency use
Purification Method: Chlorine Dioxide Tablets

Output: 1 tablet treats 1 quart (1 liter) of water

Capacity: 30 tablets

An old friend of mine, whose judgment I strongly respect, recently stated that the services he received at Kronos Optimal Health Centre were "...worth every penny!" Eventually, I plan to avail myself of those services too.

I crashed late last night, and woke early this morning, and am ready to do it all again today: the Foresight SAG continues.

In the last 2 days, I've seen two of these incredibly interesting van conversions on the streets near home: the Quigley-Sportsmobile 4WD Vehicle. I would much rather have one of these than a Hummer H2.

Do you really think that innovation will come to a grinding halt without the FBI confiscating computers and spying on P2P networks? Please.

This whole DMCA bs isn't about protecting intellectual property. It's about the recording, movie, and software industries believing that for the time being it's more cost effective to manipulate legislation than to cut prices enough that consumers will opt for paid distribution channels.

Here's a hint-- how many people do you know who pirate books via photocopy? That's right, not many. Why? Because most books (certain textbooks and tech manuals being the exception) are priced such that it is simply not worth the effort to stand there and photocopy them. Technologies change. Media corporations that can't/won't keep up will go out of business and good riddance.

Alex Bokov

I'll be attending all 3 days of the 14-16 May 2004 Foresight Senior Associates Gathering in Palo Alto, California. I very highly recommend this event to anyone interested in molecular nanotechnology. If you're not intimately familiar with nanotechnology, but want to learn, I enthusiastically recommend the 8-hour "Fundamentals of Nanotechnology" tutorial session on Friday: I'll be attending myself to dust off and deepen my own understanding.

Mark Miller informs me via Orkut that K. Eric Drexler now has a personal nanotechnology website, e-drexler.com.

I took this shot two hours ago. These are the digital and tape audio recorders of a number of students in our chemistry lecture section:

Look familiar? Anyone else remember that running sight gag from the 1985 Val Kilmer flick "Real Genius"? As one writer describes the scene (yay Google, saved a bit of typing on my part):

Do you remember the scene in the movie "Real Genius" that showed students at the beginning of a university semester sitting in a large lecture room listening to the professor? As the semester wore on, one-by-one each student left a tape recorder on their seat. The scene ended with the professor's recorder pontificating to a room full of other recorders.

I found a screenshot of that scene, which looks amazingly like our chem lecture hall, down to the same phenolic resin desktop:

Whoa. Life converges on art. Fortunately, ours is a very dynamic professor... most of the students are simply trying to capture his superb lectures for replay later. As a matter of fact, on most days the professor records his own lectures with studio-quality equipment for posting on his personal website. If only more of the good ones did that, we'd have more "Feynman Lectures on Physics" preserved for posterity.

Charlie Acker recommends DBAN ("Darik's Boot and Nuke") as a way to render a computer's hard drive tabula rasa.

Anyone ought to be able to sell any kind of gun they choose, anywhere they want. Anyone who chooses to, young, old, male, female, black, white, or green, or any shade between, ought to be able to walk into any store selling guns, pick one out, purchase it with the appropriate ammunition, load it, put in their pocket and walk out, no questions asked.

To the extent that idea frightens you, the anti-gun terrorists have won.

Reginald Firehammer

I've discovered that a standard metal Slinky is not only a great tutoring tool for explaining concepts of physics such as both transverse and longitudinal wave motion, harmonics, and spring constants, but also for concepts of chemistry, namely chemical equilibrium. For those of you familiar with LeChatelier's Principle and reaction coordinate diagrams, do this: hold the ends of a metal Slinky in your hands at the same level. The activation energy for some fundamental step is represented by the high PE peak of the curve at the top. Reactants are in your left hand, products in your right. With you hands even, the enthalpy of reaction (delta H) is 0, and the Slinky oscillates around top dead center, representing an equally product-or-reactant favored reaction step. Drop your right hand, increasing negative enthalpy of reaction, and the Slinky drops quickly into the product side. Drop the left hand instead, increasing positive enthalpy of reaction, and the reaction moves toward reactants. Very cool: it's fun to watch the light of understanding in the eyes of your audience.

Yesterday I received a notification from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation telling me that my $250 dues paid on my suspension membership in tax year 2003 are up to 90% deductible, given their 501(c)3 status. Nice surprise!

I mentioned a few days ago that Sciscoop's Ricky Roberson had written on interesting piece reflecting on my earlier report of a day at the range with an Armalite AR-50. He asked some very general, open-ended questions about the motivational psychology of shooters. I just now noticed that a couple of days ago, someone named Dirk Koenig posted a long and spot-on followup comment, "An interest in Long-Range Shooting", with which I completely agree. An excerpt:

Ultimately, you're attempting to apply scientific repeatability to an endeavor which relies on human sensory input (or a small weather station) to determine nearly all of the factors, none of which are necessarily constant from shot to shot. (or from muzzle to target, for that matter) This is to say nothing of the skill of the shooter, which has to improve alongside the equipment which can get the bullet to a target farther and farther away and where being half a millimeter off in aim will cause a miss at 400 meters, provided all your estimates about wind direction and speed were right in the first place.

In reviewing all this, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But, like the sound of a golf ball draining into the hole after travelling 20 feet on the green, there are few sounds that warm a long-range shooters heart more than the muted CLANK of a round hitting a steel target that's a long way off...

A little over a week ago I was sitting in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, checking my email, when I discovered that Ricky Roberson (whom I'd misattributed earlier as "Ricky James") of SciScoop had written a rather lengthy post on his site entitled "The Toy That's Not For Christmas" expressing his fascination with my ownership of an Armalite AR-50 single-shot .50BMG. I'd mentioned my discovery of his blog a few days before, and he was apparently returning the favor, in spades.

Ricky expresses his apparently sincere and heartfelt belief that if guns are going to exist, then he'd rather be in the group who has access to guns:

...I do unfortunately see the need to kill humans upon occasion - preferably a selected few key enemies instead of massive indiscriminate "shock and awe." An Armalite AR-50 is the best tool out there as far as I'm concerned for accomplishing this grisly task, and if this fearsome rifle is going to exist, I want to be in the group of people who have access to this technology instead of belonging to the group that doesn't.

While I essentially agree with this sentiment, I should point out a few things. First, I don't think the AR-50 is the best tool for that "grisly task". There are better tools for sniper and countersniper work nowadays, e.g. the 300 Winchester Magnum, or the 300 Lapua. Both these and related types are in increasingly common use nowadays by people whose paid jobs require their use as tools. A 700 grain .50 caliber bullet, for long range antipersonnel work, is fast becoming an outmoded approach. The guns are heavy, the ammo bulky, and the ballistics, while impressive, aren't nearly as optimal as the new breed of .30 caliber wonderguns (two of which I just mentioned).

This was snapped a few days ago on the way up through northern California on the way to Oregon. In the background is the beautiful, 14,162 foot, potentially deadly volcano people around here call "Mt. Shasta". I have some of these shots from the way out to Oregon, and some taken under snowy conditions on the way back to California, taken yesterday on New Year's Eve... maybe I'll post them sometime, entitled "Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Shasta" under the artist name "The Cowboy Hokusai". Or maybe not.

In the lower right hand corner, in the foreground, is my trusty Valentine One radar and laser detector. Excepting a year I spent in Japan, I've used this thing in three different vehicles - and numerous rental cars - for five years, and am incredibly happy with it. I spent about $450 for it and its accessories, but I'm sure I've saved several times that price in speeding tickets I didn't receive.

On a recommendation of Michael Reed of Portland, I've decided to test the web-based email service ZipLip as an alternative to Hushmail, which I've found unsatisfactory over the last year due to scaling-related performance issues. According to ZipLip:

We are the fastest-growing secure email provider on the Web and strive each day to provide the best possible services for our users. With secure email, secure net storage, and secure file delivery, our goal is to provide the most comprehensive services for protecting your security, privacy, and email rights.

Have any of readers had experience with ZipLip? Your opinions are most welcome; please post them here.

It's great to get feedback on one's blog postings, especially when it results in the personal discovery of a great resource. Blog commenter Ricky James runs the compendious and incredibly interesting SciScoop: Exploring Tomorrow, which I strongly recommend telling all your friends about. So much to explore!

A member of one of my mailing lists de-lurked today to introduce himself. He runs an incredibly cool and useful website, "Technical Video Rental", which advertises a carefully selected library of tapes, DVDs, and books for the independent-operator machinist. This should be of particular interest to those in the Free Arms Project.

The Free Arms Project just opened today for business, spun off the smith2004-discuss Yahoo Groups mailing list:

"The Free Arms Project is committed to the development of a patentless, Open Source, Open Engineering personal defense weapon."

It'll be interesting to see where we take this. The Weapon Shops of Isher?

The following long article was submitted to me a few days ago by John Sebastian, a member of the Smith2004 discussion list. He had originally written it up as a response to someone joking about homebrew, a discussion which was itself spun off a thread about the benefits of resveratrol, a constituent of some red wines.

Here follows the version John mailed me for publication here, which I have editted only for grammar and spelling, not content. Enjoy at your own risk! By the way, it seems that there's not much in the way of actual cost savings in this technique, given the reported cost of the grape juice concentrate alone. "Two-Buck Chuck" is a perfectly adequate "10 dollar wine with a 2 dollar price tag", for those who have access to a Trader Joe's, but John's technique should still appeal to the Basement Chemist in some of us.

- Russell, editor

Sober Up and Die
or
Mom's Prison Wine
or
How to Make a Simple Cheap Wine that is Untaxed (Well, Mostly)

By John Sebastian

Yeah, yeah, I know: "loving spoonfuls" and all that. What makes it worse is that I'm often told that I'm a dead ringer for Jerry Garcia. No, I'm not that "the John Sebastian", I am this "the John Sebastian".

Well, it was the damn driver's license, it was also the cost, and - oh yeah - it was also the sulfates and other crap. Come to think of it, it was also just plain stubborn independence. It was also my wedding.

Huh?

Okay I'll make myself clear, or I'll try.

You see, I live in Tennessee, so every time I purchased beer or wine I had to show my ID. For a while I got away with showing my PADI Divers Card, but eventually all they would take was the old ball-and-chain driver's license. Call me sensitive, but at age forty-seven, I sort of figured it's my business whether I purchase beer and wine.

Eventually after tiring of trying to give civics lessons to the clerks at the grocery stores, I started brewing beer - Sebastian's All Malt - but that is another story. This story is about how to make a dirt cheap wine that is as tasty as anything you could want, indeed, a wine that you don't have to humble yourself by producing the state's slave ID to purchase, and a wine that is largely untaxed... thus even tastier.

I spent the weekend with friends in Monterey Bay, California scuba spearfishing. More on this later, but I figured I'd put up this picture right away. This was taken on Saturday when suiting up before a surf entry into the Bay from Del Monte Beach:

My good friend Franklin (AKA "The Big C.I.G.A.R.") is the one without his hood on. I'm the sweaty one on the right with all gear ready for entry (diving 34.9 percent enriched air/Nitrox, by the way). I could not wait to hit the 57 Fahrenheit degree water... I was boiling! More on this trip later.

I thought I was being clever over the last half year by avoiding buying the "cheap" laboratory safety visors from the campus bookstore. Today I gave in and bought a pair of "visorgogs" made by "Jones and Company" in East Providence, Rhode Island. $7. You see, until now, if I wanted to avoid completely fogging my goggles within minutes in the lab, I'd have to switch to a pair of expensive shooting glasses for relief. Yesterday was the last straw for me. Sitting at a bench in front of an analytical balance, I simply couldn't see anything. I asked around among the other students for a pair I could borrow, and was handed one of the "cheap" school pair... and wore it for 10 minutes with no fogging whatsoever. Yeah, my other goggles were actual goggles (the big problem, it turns out), supposedly vented, but the vents on these visorgogs actually worked for me.

I recommended them. By the way, I really did consider doing with my problem goggles what I usually do with a scuba mask - spread saliva in them as antifog - but there's no way I could have done that in the non-aquatic environment of the lab and gotten away with it. If I'd tried, there's no way the girls in my class would ever ask me for help ever again...

By the way, it seems that visorgogs are very popular amongst "ice bikers." Why am I surprised that such a hobby exists?

Yesterday I attended a barbeque party of extropian friends up at a buddy's dome house in the Santa Cruz mountains. Well after midnight, those of us still hanging around took our binoculars and did some stargazing, successfully finding M-31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) from memory, and Uranus using a copy of the software ephemeris XEphem from Clear Sky Institute, which I very highly recommend.

Thanks to L. Neil Smith for pointing out this article today on a possible life extending chemical found in northern red wines: resveratrol.

For those of you considering using melatonin to regulate sleep, do not buy those bottles with tablet sizes larger than 1 mg (milligram). Some time back, I bought a bottle of 3 mg tablets. Anytime (which was only occasionally) I took a tablet from that bottle, I felt slightly groggy the following day. Adjusting my dose back down to 1 mg fixed that problem perfectly. Everyone I've spoken with about this phenomenon - among those who occasionally use melatonin - has noticed the same set of effects: 1 mg seems to work well for small, average, and large (I'm a hair over 200 lbs) people. If 3 mg makes me feel groggy, who is that size tablet sold for anyway? If 1 mg doesn't do it for you, it's easy to ratchet up with another 1 mg tablet.

"Bad as they seem, experiencing withdrawal symptoms is really good news. The withdrawal process is usually completed within three days, and afterward you should feel better than ever—unless, of course, you re-addict yourself. If you cannot stay the course and progress through withdrawal, do it gradually by consuming progressively smaller amounts of an addictive food until you get to zero. The more severe your withdrawal symptoms, the more you stand to gain from abandoning the food that is causing them. A food that demands to be eaten daily is often a key to a disordered metabolism."

How to Do Atkins: What You Can Expect the First Week on Induction

Thanks to my friend Steve Pegram for passing along this incredibly interesting thread on the AR15.com Forums: "USMC after-action gear assessment". Pay particular attention to the reports on the adequacy of 5.56mm vs 7.62mm carbine/rifle ammunition, and the spectacular satisfaction of operators with their M16 & (especially) M4 carbines.

Especially interesting is a point I've known all along: a lot of issue military gear quickly gets replaced with individually selected commercial "sporting goods" equivalents, e.g. Panoptx goggles replacing the awful issue crap.

Another interesting point: the M9 pistol still sucks. It should be replaced with the Glock or whatever the individual soldier wishes to otherwise carry.

At last night's dojo training, I showed this knife to Russell Whitaker. If you visit the Northerner.com site, you can see they have a few others as well.

The Suomi people would call this knife a puukko. The people themselves live in Finland and the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, and a bit of Russia. (BTW, there is a Tornedalen dialect of Finnish or Suomi spoken by about 30,000 people in Sweden.)

For comparison, here's a pic of another traditional Suomi-style knife with the sheath made from reindeer antler and leather, and yet another using both curly birch and reindeer horn for the sheath. These sheaths, by the way (mine included) are made with a small drain hole on the back side at the bottom, in case water should get into the sheath. Deep pouch-type sheaths are the norm throughout Scandinavia (not just in the Suomi country), to avoid loss of the knife.

Being made without finger guards, the overall design of Suomi knives favors "pulling" or draw cuts (important if you're out in the cold with numb fingers or wearing mittens, etc.), but the size and shape of the Tornedals knife handle also makes it easy to brace into the palm of your hand if you need to use a pushing motion.

I don't know whether the blade of my Tornedals knife is carbon or some sort of stainless steel, but either way it takes an incredible edge. I tried to test the edge last night by shaving a little hair off my arm, but it was hard to measure my success because the hair appeared to be leaping off in terror before the blade could quite reach it.

I'd also recommend checking out the Scandinavian & Lapp knives from various makers here (scroll down the main page).

Y'know, with just a knife like this and a good tomahawk, such as the Rogers' Rangers Field Grade Spike Tomahawk from American Tomahawk Co., I'd feel very well equipped for any situation I might run into in the boonies.

Damn, just wish I had that 'hawk... :-)

Just now rec'd from a friend:

Sone interesting information on materials that are used to induce clotting when applied to wounds. Neither seems to be available for sale to the general public yet. Both have FDA approval, but most/all production is headed to the military. Expected initial prices are around $20 per package.

Relevant links:

• Fox News article
  
• Z-Medica, the developer of QuikClot™
  
• HemCon, Inc.
  

Daniel J. Boone reports on another reason why, as a lawyer, he isn't a member of the ABA: this pile of festering compost, a recommendation to regulate what they call "pirate" WiFi.

Gabriel Syme reporting from London: "PayPal falls short of Patriot Act".

When I attended the Front Sight firearms academy in Nevada last September, I was struck by the sheer range of what Ignatius Piazza's firm is offering: not just teaching on firearms, but everything about personal safety, right down to avoiding car accidents. What struck me was that in the States, there is more awareness among Joe Public about the need to take responsibility for one's own safety, and this doesn't just include learning how to use a firearm. Even the recent drive by the government to get folk to stock up on duct tape and water, even though it was mocked in certain quarters, bespoke of a certain attitude in the American culture - "We can get through this".

What bothers me is how different this is in Britain. I admit my views are impressionistic and not based on loads of facts, but I just don't get the feeling that learning about survival really bothers the average Briton. Call it our traditional reserve, coolness in the face of danger, or whatever. Even if those cliches about Britons are true (and I have my doubts) I think there is a much greater willingness on the part of Britons to think that well, safety is the State's job, not mine. Maybe 60 years of the Welfare State have contributed to this weakening of civic responsibility.

Of course, I may be proven gloriously wrong if disaster does strike this little island. I hope so.

Jack W. Boone has some interesting things to say about personal responsibility and survival:

The overseers won't protect us. They never could, they never will. Whether the problem is earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, or terrorist attack, we are, and must be, responsible for our own survival. I find the popular TV show "Law and Order" instructive. It almost always begins with the discovery of a dead body, after which the overseers find and punish the perpetrator(s). Great, but it doesn't do me much good if I represent the "body".

So everyone is, in the long run, responsible for his own (and his family's) life. Dial 911 and your death will be professionally investigated, when they get time.

I'm really in the mood to think about these things recently, especially after having attended an Alcor Life Extension Foundation Northern California meeting yesterday...

The Liberty Belles issue this challenge:

Which would you choose?

I'd meant to post this a week ago, but I just now recovered the digital camera I left at the Bujinkan Stockton dojo in my post-training fatigue.

Those of you who didn't make Dale Seago's Guns 'N Blades seminar at the Bujinkan Stockton dojo last weekend missed a training event worth travelling for.

As had been advertised in the original announcement, and at the request of the Stockton dojo, Dale spent some time talking about the care and maintenance of Western-style blades. Pictured above, Dale speaks about the differences in sharpening techniques between blades with conventional bevelled edges, e.g. most pocket knives, regardless of expense, and the relatively less common convex edge on a blade such as the custom Bowie pictured with Dale here.

I first posted my appeal for help for Ronald Dixon two weeks ago, and have to my happy surprise become a bit of a clearinghouse for information on ways to help Mr. Dixon. Here's one posted as a comment by user "Steve", which really caught my eye: a free email-to-fax gateway service which anyone can use to fax the Brooklyn DA!

Further to my earlier posting, Steve Pegram has another mapping software recommendation, ExpertGPS. I've not tried this or the other yet. Feedback, as always, is most welcome here.

Forwarded with permission by Steve Pegram on behalf of a friend of his, who has asked to remain anonymous. - ed

"Go here and download USAPhotoMaps.

It is free and is one of the absolutely slickest little GPS map display programs I have come across. It does NOT have a lot of features (like route planning or any of those fancy functions) but it will give you a taste of what is possible and you will see what satellite imagery maps look like and you can also display USGS topo maps of your chosen area. What it does is download aerial photos (satellite imagery) and USGS topo maps from Terraserver and creates a scrollable, zoomable, GPS enabled moving map with your position located by a dot in the center of the screen.

Find out what your GPS coordinates are and load them into the set-up screen. On command, (if you are connected to the internet) the screen will automatically download and fill up with your choice of A) 1-meter satellite imagery or B) USGS topo map imagery centered on the coordinates you entered. Once downloaded, you can instantly swap out the overlayed satellite imagery with the topo map.

You do NOT need a GPS receiver to make this work. Also, even on a dial-up internet access, the process is not too painful if you are not too greedy and try to slurp up too big of an area. You can shut off the download anytime you like just by clicking on STOP DOWNLOADING.

Again, this is one of the slickest, cutest and easiest to use GPS moving map display software programs I have yet come across and best of all it is FREE.

Daniel J. Boone writes about a site I wish I'd paid attention to earlier: Doing Freedom. Talk about some controversial articles: take "Improvised Claymores" as a good example!

I'm one of those who knee-jerkingly assumed "Daniel J. Boone" was the nom-de-plume of the proprietor of Nolo Consentire, but nope, it's indeed his real name. Sorry about that, Daniel. Would have added the apology on your blog, but no commenting facility seems to have been implemented there yet. Daniel: try migrating to Moveable Type. I'd be glad to help: really.

Daniel's an "outlawyer", like comrades Duncan Frissell and Sandy Sandfort. He explains to those of you who might be wordering what this means:

You are wondering "How, in the name of Thor's middle chariot goat, can this joker be an anarchist and a lawyer at the same time?"

He quotes Duncan's "How to Break the Law" by way of succinct explanation:

There are even anarchist lawyers. As an anarchist law student once said when asked by his friends how an he could be a lawyer, "My father is a physician, but that doesn't mean that he believes in disease."

This article reminds me of a piece by Duncan I read sometime around 1990 or 1992, with a name that went something like "How to Make Yourself Judgement Proof". I couldn't find an archived copy of that article as I remember it, but I did find a piece quoting some material a guy culled from Duncan's Usenet posts on the subject, I'm assuming from old cypherpunks and/or sci.crypt posts.

By the way, in case there was further misunderstanding (which would be my fault, of course): I have nothing against writing in any name a person wishes. As a matter of fact, it's a great idea: Boston T. Party is a good non-de-plume, and Max More (hi old friend) is the result of a legal name change from a meaningless one given at birth to one reflecting Max's core extropian values.

This isn't something I do very often, but James Rogers' comments on a post I made a few days on the Leica Duovid binocular are sufficiently interesting that I'd like to point them out to readers. Of particular interest is the progress made as the result of the collaboration of Japanese and American companies relative to their European counterparts.

A friend of mine just today ordered a pair of Leica 8+12x42 Duovid hunting binoculars. Per the advertising blurb on the Leica website (English version, of course):

Leica heralds a new era in binoculars: The LEICA DUOVID 8 + 12 x 42 is the first highend binocular worldwide that features switchable magnification. That makes it an outstanding choice for use in hunting, because it provides brilliant images, both at great distances as well as in critical poor light situations.

In wide-open hunting grounds, observation must often be conducted over great distances. The12-power magnification is ideal for this purpose. The 8-power magnification, on the other hand, allows an excellent overview over the entire range - with an absolutely stable image, a large field of view and great depth of field. Outstanding ergonomics make vibration-free viewing possible even at high magnifications.

My friend has not received his binocs, so we don't yet have a review. These are pricey glasses, but I'm sure worth the cost. If anyone has had experience with these glasses, feel free to comment here. I've been a Steiner guy myself for the last couple of years, but can be convinced to switch.

I thought I'd lost the one I carry in my back pocket, but I found my Inova X5 Mini Spotlight under my car's driver seat... I really do need to look down there routinely.

I love this thing! It uses the same lithium ion batteries I use in my Surefire 6P and M3 tactical lights, but those batteries last 10 times as long in this unit. This means I can (and do) reserve my 6P solely for its intended use, and the Inova as a utility light. I just now measured mine at 2cm wide by a shade under 12cm long. Drop it in your pocket and forget about it.

And like the ASP Key Defender I reviewed a few weeks ago, it's made of durable machined aircraft aluminum. A bit shorter and thicker than the ASP, the Inova could make a fine little handheld impact weapon.

My thanks to friend Steve Pegram for pointing me to the Geocaching website. It looks like great fun, and an excellent way to learn and hone GPS land navigation skills. I might jump into the game myself sometime soon...

"Made for the ultimate outdoor enthusiast, Garmin's Rino 120 features the latest GPS technology, both FRS and GMRS 2-way radio frequencies, patented technology, a built-in basemap of North and South America, 8 MB of memory and much more."

I've been seeing the Garmin Rino 120 GPS Unit and 2-Way Radio advertised in some of the outdoors magazines I read, and am pretty impressed.

I've not gotten my hands on one, but the screenshots and list of features are mouth-watering, e.g.

• Voice scrambler for secure communications
  
• Vibration mode for "silent" calls to other Rino users
  
• Patented Peer-to-Peer Positioning lets you send your exact location to another Rino user within a 2-mile range
  
• Clear reception with a range of up to 2 miles using FRS, 5 miles with GMRS
  
• Each channel has 38 sub-audible squelch codes for semi-private conversations
  

I've not read the specs on the actual implementation of the claimed security features, but they're certainly worth investigating. If any readers have tried a Rino, please feel free to add your comments.

Oh, and do check out the Tactical Radio Communications series we've begun to syndicate on this website.

A few days ago, I mentioned that I'd be running a serialized version of the forthcoming book "Tactical Radio Communications" by my engineer friend Eric Cartman. Below is the first installment. Readers' feedback, as we post these, would be most welcome. - Editor

Introduction

"Radios can be a very effective tactical or strategic tool. One can coordinate and deploy groups of people, perform surveillance, summon help and keep in touch with others over long distances when other forms of communications are unavailable. However, if used unwisely, a radio can be a security breach, a tactical disaster waiting to happen and even a beacon the enemy uses to discover your location.

Currently available radio equipment runs the gamut of size, power output, frequency, features and cost. Everything from a 50 dollar hand held radio from Radio Shack to a 5000 dollar all band all mode transceiver with 1000 Watts of power can be yours. The introduction of unlicensed FRS (Family Service Radio) has led to an explosion of cheap hand held radios sold in any sporting goods store or catalog. Although these radios at first appear to be a great step forward from the old CB radio, there are several reasons you should avoid them.

To make a reasonable decision on what equipment to buy, you need to understand the basics of how radios and radio waves work. We won’t cover the theory of how radio works in great detail, as this is not really relevant to buying and using a radio. Rather we will cover the behavior of radios and radio waves as they relate to the real world of the radio user.

A posting on Samizdata today mentions the next wave of personal robot, post-AIBO, the Banryu or "Guard Dragon", a fire-sniffing quadraped. An excerpt from the English version of the Sanyo press release:

The robot also holds onboard a completely new "odor-sensor" developed jointly by tmsuk, Kanazawa Institute of Technology (Professor Nanto), and New Cosmos Electric Co., LTD. The developers believe that this is one of the first devices that can sense a particular odor with practical accuracy. With the sensor the robot will be able to detect "burnt scent" which is known to occur in the atmosphere preceding a fire.

and:

The robot is aimed to be used for several purposes including home-security defined loosely. The developers are in talks with the market leader, Sohgo Security Services Co., LTD., regarding provision of related services, technology and know-how.

Robotory has some additional background material, such as pics of the Type 1 which preceded the Banryu.

An engineer friend of mine who's working on a book on tactical radio communications has offered to run large parts of it here on Survival Arts. There's so much material, I'll be breaking it up on a near-daily basis over the course of several weeks.

Radios can be a very effective tactical or strategic tool. One can coordinate and deploy groups of people, perform surveillance, summon help and keep in touch with others over long distances when other forms of communications are unavailable. However, if used unwisely, a radio can be a security breach, a tactical disaster waiting to happen and even a beacon the enemy uses to discover your location.

Stay tuned.

I've found what looks like a neat tool which might travel well, the Personal Document Shredder from Sharper Image. I don't own one, but it looks like a useful tool for travellers, especially those travelling with papers. It does seem to be missing an important feature in any document shredder: cross-cut capability. However, that's a nice-to-have, not a deal killer: thin strips well-scattered are sometimes uneconomic to re-assemble.

If someone buys one of these little gadgets, please let me know and we might run your review as a Guest Writer here.