07.04.09
nvidia driver rodeo
I came up with this term to describe the sport of installing an nVidia driver and attempting to stay with that version as long as possible before you have to upgrade or downgrade to play a different game.
04.16.08
prepaid phone
The thing that sucks about a prepaid phone is that every wrong number costs me a quarter. Every call for “Pedro” or “Jorge” or “Louis” or “Manny” (I field their calls on a regular basis). Every collections agency looking for one of those guys. Every time someone’s phone accidentally dials me from their pocket, it’s a quarter out of my pocket.
02.15.08
orbital mechanics
Probably the third time I’ve come across this kind of question this month. Is that normal?
From a boingboing comment thread, this excellent explanation by Guysmiley:
To increase orbital altitude, you need to increase rotational velocity, that is velocity at the tangent to “down”.
Simply pushing an object “up” will not increase it’s orbital altitude. It will only increase its eccentricity.
If you think about it, you can’t just go straight up and say “yay, I’m in orbit!”. The hard part about getting into orbit is getting going fast enough to fall at the Earth and miss.
09.27.07
Corny Plastic Junk
OK, this one started with a link to this image.
Cheeky, sure. But then someone linked to this article about corn based plastics, which can biodegrade in a landfill in about a month.
Neat, sure, but it’s a little more expensive than oil based plastics. Here’s a choice quote:
PLA is slightly more expensive than petroleum-based plastic, but that may soon change. Last year, the demand for Cargill Dow’s plastic products rose 60 percent over nine months, the Farm Industry News reported, attributing the rise to the jump in oil prices to near $55 a barrel. Fields said the higher price for corn-based plastic has all but disappeared. “As oil prices continue to rise, it makes technology that had been dismissed more feasible,” Fields said.
But wait… this article is from 2005. Oil costs a lot more now. What happened to this stuff, and why isn’t it all over store shelves?