Month: August 2005

One summer day in France in 1826, Joseph Niepce took the world’s first photograph. It’s a photo of some farm buildings and the sky. It took an exposure time of 8 hours.

Fascinated with the craze for the newly-invented art of lithography which swept over France in 1813, he began his initial experiments by 1816. Unable to draw well, Ni�pce first placed engravings, made transparent, onto stones coated with light-sensitive varnish of his own composition. These experiments, together with his application of the then-popular optical instrument, the camera obscura, would eventually lead him to the invention of the new medium.

Hey, he was cheating. He was trying to create a lithograph without doing any drawing. Where would be be without lazy people?

Some Thoughts

Pandora is a music discovery service designed to help you find and enjoy music that you’ll love. It’s powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Just tell us one of your favorite songs or artists and we’ll launch a streaming station to explore that part of the music universe.

Hey, ten hours free, then $36 per year. I entered “Chicago” as the artist that I like. It started playing “Hard Habit to Break”, then played songs by “The Church”, “Exile” and “Jude Cole”. Next, I created a new station using “David Wilcox” as the artist. I think the ten hours is going to go fast.

The following is a “healthy food hot list” consisting of the 29 foods that will give you the biggest nutritional bang for you caloric buck, as well as decrease your risk for deadly illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

…If you’re not allergic to them.

A world map showing current sunlight and cloud cover.

There is also a Dawn and Dusk map.

When the CVS Camcorder first came to our attention, we quickly realized the potential for this very inexpensive and light weight device. ~ We elected to have the camera point out the side of the cone with a mirror to point the image down past the rocket body. This allowed us to mount the camera vertically in the rocket which means that none of the camera is exposed outside the housing.

There are a lot of people having fun out there. I’m going to try harder to increase my play time.

Video

The city is making us put in a sidewalk this year. Our house has been here since 1959, and now they decide it needs a front sidewalk. I think it’s time we finally get a snowblower.

A man by the name of Arthur Sicard who became frustrated by the difficulty of transporting milk from the farm to market developed the idea for the snowblower. The roots of the snowblower begin in the fields around his farm when he first saw a threshing machine. He realized that by utilizing the rotating blades used for threshing it was possible to build a similarly rotating blade, which would blow snow.

Vintage Snowblowers.

Safety Quiz

Here’s a look at snowblowers that cost around $1,000:

Ariens $799 $829 $1,119 $1,449 Help
Honda $??? $??? $??? $???
Husqvarna $769 $999 $1,099 $1,199 $1,299
NorthStar $769 $899 $999 $1,399
Poulan $849 $1,109 $1,289
Toro $999 $1,099 $1,349 $1,449 Help Tour

Honda even makes a Hybrid.

The world’s fastest, most powerful body upgrade

You can’t beat German engineering.

Iowa Chicks Knitting has a recent entry on the Iowa State Fair.

Here’s a link to a Knitting Chick with a Blog.