Geeks Grow Up

A celebration in L.A. last week marking the 30th anniversary of Star Wars (no bloody I, II, III, IV, V, or VI) featured a display of hand-made, life-sized, remote-controlled and operating R2-D2s (and other Artoo units).


One Artoo unit serves Starbucks and another has an actual hologram of Princess Leia.

The exhibition was put on by the Official R2 Builders Club. I can't imagine how or where these guys get parts to build these, but they'll probably tell you they got power converters from Tashi station.

I guess I was qui-i-i-ite the amateur when I built my R2-D2 from this kit in 1979:


I thought I was pretty clever when I added lights and a speaker inside my 6" model. I always wished I could have made it remote-controlled.

I wonder if any of the guys who built these life-sized versions started out with the same plastic one I built.

BTW, I also built the C-3PO model. (And I made the eyes light up. Ha.)

Scappleface: No Substitute Fertilizer for Freedom

Thank you, soldiers.

As the United States marks Memorial Day, recognizing those who sacrificed their lives in service to the country, scientists worldwide admit they are likely years away from discovering a “fertilizer for freedom” as effective as the blood of American troops.
...

“Where diplomacy falters, and negotiations fail, where evil reigns, and fear makes men’s arms hang limp, yet hope rises and moves in measure with the beating of American hearts. The soil of barren lands seems to cry out for this peerless nutrient. And we continue to marvel that volunteers still step forward to pledge their own blood for a cause whose accomplishment might await their last drop of devotion.”

Breakpoint: Through the Back Door

Doctors in the U.K. are engaging in a "moral revolt":

Isn’t this remarkable? The very group that has the most to gain from abortions is turning away from them. They know better than anyone else exactly what an abortion is -- and they want nothing to do with it. And because they are the ones most directly involved, they are having even more impact than the government could ever dream of having.

Nerds in Paradise

A co-worker and I were just getting nostalgic over our old stereos and record players, and it reminded me of a story from my grade school years that still sends me into snickering fits.

Picture a Saturday afternoon sometime in the '70s, my brother and I in our unfinished basement bedrooms. One of the "walls" of my room was the back of my brother's component stereo system, the wires within reach of my bed.

My dad kept boxes of electronic salvage, one of which was filled with old speakers, mostly from tube radios. He never used them, but I made all sorts of projects with them. One afternoon, my brother and I had a wild inspiration for some fun: blowing them up.

We started out small - a 2" speaker from an old transistor radio. We hooked it up to my brother's 30-watt receiver, put on some song with a good bass line, then slowly cranked up the volume. The speaker smoked and died about 1/3-way up the dial. After a few of these we got bored and had to up the ante.

We moved up to a larger old 9" oval speaker that probably sounded decent in its day, but its cone was now brittle and cracked. Our song selection was "YMCA," starting with the volume almost all the way up. Before the song started, the cone vibrated into an indiscernable blur from the tape noise alone. When the first drumbeat struck, it died a spectacular death in a puff of dust and a spray of shattered cone fragments.

After we picked ourselves up off the floor, we tried one more, an 8" round speaker with a huge magnet, possibly a contribution by my other brother from one of his car stereos. The song: "Disco Inferno," at full volume. The speaker shook and buzzed and floated across the tabletop until the cone actually started on fire, then finally went silent.

Before throwing away the remains of our raucous experiments, we salvaged the speaker magnets. (Stick two large ones together and you can hardly pry them apart.) We joked about erasing each other's tapes with them, and years later I threatened to set one on top of my brother's computer.

Yes, it was weird, the sort of story that makes my wife shake her head and look worriedly toward our son.

But it was good, nerdy fun while it lasted. Which reminds me, did you know electrolytic capactiors explode when you connect them to 120V AC?