Science Has Never Been So Awesome!

By Jimmy Rogers
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I just discovered this and all I can say is WOW!

tblofawesome_500

Click the image for a larger version.

Yes, you are reading that image correctly.  It’s a list of everything that is awesome, organized on the periodic table.  In fact each major type of awesome has its own property-based group.  Here are some highlights:

  • Bacon is the atomic equivalent of Hydrogen.
  • Group I is Awesome People.
  • Group II contains Explosions, several types.
  • Groups III-XII include ways to destroy your enemy if you live in a video game (who doesn’t?) – also includes some hypothetical spaces, just in case.
  • The Yellow group is a smattering of different things including Boobs, Sex, Space, and Lightning…could probably put together a movie based on that alone!
  • The Brown group is awesome foods like Ribs and Kool Aid.
  • The Blue group is a list of delicacies.
  • Group XVII is awesome things that can be defeated (Pirates, Zombies).
  • Group XVIII is awesome things that cannot (Ninjas).
  • The first “extra” row is awesome animals.
  • The last “extra” row is how to be awesome yourself.

If you have any questions, I’m afraid you’re just not awesome, but feel free to put them in the comments below.  Hopefully someone more awesome than you will be able to help.

[Dapperstache via io9]



Ask [GAS]: Which gadget is topping your Christmas list?

Even though I’m a geek, I’ve never really been a gadget maniac. But for the first time this year, I’ve found myself wishing someone would offer me one of those little netbooks, probably a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 or an Asus Eee PC.

Oh, I know my wife won’t be getting me this, which means I’ll give one to myself soon enough, but still, this is the thing that would make me the most happy. Why? Mostly because I don’t have a laptop, and when I’m out on the road, finding a secure way to manage this blog is an endless source of hassle. Also, having a mobile device connected to the Internet to carry around the house would be very convenient. You know, change a diaper–edit an e-mail. Do the dishes–post to the blog.

But what about you, dear readers? What would YOU like to receive this Christmas? Since this is mostly a technology blog, we’ll be sticking to things that relate to this particular field of interest, so go ahead and let us know about your techy dream items in the comments section!

New Panasonic Dish Washing Robot

Researchers at Panasonic have developed a new robot designed to rinse dishes before stacking them inside a dish washer. Check it out:

Our verdict? It looks like a useless piece of junk. I mean, have you seen how this thing rinses the dishes? It certainly won’t get food off the plates by simply dumping them in water for a few seconds. And in addition to that, it’s way too slow to be effective in a restaurant, where dishes would pile up to the ceiling in no time because the robot can’t keep up. I guess we’ll have to wait a few years until they develop a faster, more effective robot to do the task. Until then, keep on washing the dishes yourselves, my friends.

[Via Engadget]



“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” Posters Hit the Web

In case you weren’t aware of it, a G.I. Joe movie is currently in production and is expected to be released in August 2009. Yes, I’m talking about the 1980 series where everyone had guns, yet nobody ever died.

Directed by Stephen Sommers and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, “G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra” will tell the tale of the origin of the Cobra Organization and their never-ending fight with the forces of good, the G.I. Joes.

Even though posters of the movie were released back in June, no one had taken the time to scan them in decent quality until now. There’s four of them: Duke, Snake Eyes, Baroness, and Ripcord. Hit the more link to see them all.

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The Twelve Days of Electronic Freedom

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to get people into the holiday donation spirit with this ad, listing the things they fought for in 2008.

You can also find out more about each of these issues, many of which are obviously ongoing. Well, except for that happy dancing baby, who is pretty much okay for now. Whether you’re a programmer or a DJ or a remixer, there’s probably something of interest to you, even if you don’t agree with their positions.

Flight of the Conchords Season 2 Premieres Online

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The new season of the HBO series Flight of the Conchords (based on my favorite geeky band, New Zealand’s fifth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo) is kicking off on January 18. However, the first new episode has just been released at Funny or Die.

Unfortunately the video is only viewable in the United States, but HBO Canada will also be streaming it beginning December 23. For those of you elsewhere, I offer this, from the first season of the series:

Interestingly, Brett McKenzie was actually in Lord of the Rings (known by fans as Figwit–weird story, check out the fansite for that one).

If you haven’t checked out the band before, I highly recommend just doing a YouTube search for “Flight of the Conchords” since you can find nearly all of the music videos from the first season of the show, as well as live performances.

I have high hopes for the new season, though to be honest, I wasn’t completely crazy about this first episode. Probably because I didn’t particularly like any of the new songs… however, they did pull out “Angels,” which is an old favorite of mine.

Google Chrome needs polishing

Matt Cutts of Google posted yesterday about the ten things he doesn’t like about Chrome.  Coming from a Google employee, this seems like brave transparency — but Matt’s list is pretty much a collection of nits.  I use Google Chrome as my default browser, and in general I love it — especially its performance.  But I have a few more serious things about Google Chrome that I dislike:

  1. No RSS autodiscovery.  I consume all of my regular sites through feeds, and I like the fact that Firefox (and Opera, and Safari, and even IE7) provide a consistent way to at least find the feed URL for any site that includes an RSS autodiscovery link.  Firefox even lets you customize how to handle subscriptions — mine is set to feed it (pun intended) to FeedDemon — so subscribing to a feed I like is only one click away.  In Google Chrome, there is no button to subscribe, and if I load a URL that contains an RSS feed, it just displays as HTML (ignoring all the RSS tags).  I have to manually copy the URL and paste it into my feed reader.
  2. I know Matt said not to mention it, but lack of cross-platform support is a major deficit.  Eventually Google will get around to releasing versions for MacOS/X and Linux — but what about FreeBSD?
  3. Perhaps the biggest gaping hole is the lack of support for extensions — but hopefully that one will be remedied soon.
  4. Keyboard shortcuts don’t seem to work all the time.  I haven’t narrowed down exactly when, but sometimes Ctrl+T doesn’t open a new tab, and Ctrl+C sometimes doesn’t copy to the clipboard.  In the same contexts, I can select “New Tab” from the wrench menu or “Copy” from the context menu, and they work as expected.  This is a big one for a hater of Mus computerus like me.
  5. Chrome seems to give up on links faster than Firefox (it does everything faster, even fail).  I get a lot more page load failures that are remedied by F5.  It also gives up on linked stylesheets, resulting in an unformatted page until I refresh.  There should be some way to tweak the timeout.  Maybe there is, but I haven’t found it yet.

None of these are show-stoppers for me yet, but if/when I change my main workstation to FreeBSD then #2 will be.

How about you?  If you’ve used Chrome for any length of time, what bugs you about it?

Wednesday Geeky Pics: Science Projects

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

This week I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, so I’m thinking back to my days as a geek-in-progress for this set of pictures. Remember the exciting world of the science fair? I’m pretty sure that I did more, but the two projects that I remember most clearly are: (1) when I was ten or so, I got a bunch of potted violets and watered them with different liquids (water, coke, milk, juice)–the one with coke died right away and the one with milk smelled really bad, and (2) when I was in high school, I spliced together a video with subliminal messages intending to make people want to eat a certain color of M&M (conclusion: subliminal messages–or mine, anyway–don’t work).

So take a moment to remember your school days, and let it warm your heart to see cute kids getting excited about science. As always, these pictures were all released under a Creative Commons license. Click the links for details!

Balloon inflation:

science5

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