Is this not nifty?

You can make your own here. There are scads of backgrounds and you can move the text around and all sorts of cool stuff. I love the internets...

It's That Time Again...

Time for the wonderful world of the Ig Nobel Prizes! The 2012 Winners have been announced, and a splendid lot they are. Answering those nagging scientific questions such as...
-How to make the Eiffel tower appear smaller
-The brain activity of dead fish
-A new use for old crappy Russian ammo (I mean, you wouldn't want to shoot that stuff!)
-Solving the mystery of houses that cause green hair
-Why you always spill coffee when you walk
and, very importantly,
-How to prevent explosions during colonoscopies. (I will be forwarding this to my gastroenterologist.)

We live in exciting scientific times, folks.

Growing Up is Optional

One of the difficulties in being a kid is you have great ideas (let's build a giant water cannon!) but low capital. Then when you have money and resources, most people have ossified Sensawunda organs and don't *want* to build giant water cannons. You may not believe me, but it's true.

However.

There are a few folks that escape the curse of Growing Up and have a LOT of fun. Exhibit A, Preston Boomer of the delightfully named Bonny Doon, CA.  Mr. Boomer has built the world's best mad scientist playground on his property.  A castle (with water cannon and a portcullis), a guillotine (locked up for safety unless chopping watermelons), a giant pipe organ, a mad science lab, an engine room that provides pressurized water for all water warfare devices on the property, AND underground catacombs that connect everything.

I wonder if he does consulting on the side ...

Yet another book!

I am very happy to report that my second book is now available.More details at my writing blog. There have been those who have expressed dismay at the speed of new releases -- never fear!  These are books I wrote some time ago.  I just released them close together to maximize marketing effect.  Next year I only plan to release three books (a SF trilogy) and maybe a few short stories.  The pesky day job interferes with my massive writing plans.

This book features a very useful snowtiger, ancient evil human-devouring creatures, and lots of carefully researched battles!

And thanks again!

To all the noble readers who posted reviews on Amazon, *completely* unprompted by me!  Really, that warms the cockles of my cold, cinderlike heart ...  (yes, I have a heart.  I'm not saying it's original issue or anything, though.)  Reviews are crucial to reassuring the timid buyer.  I can say "this book won't give you cooties, please, just read the sample and see!" all I want, but everyone knows the author is biased.  So again, thanks!

Thank You!

If the Amazon servers are to be believed, I've already sold 11 copies of my book!  You guys are the best invisible friends a blogger could hope for...

Now, go out and tell all *your* invisible friends about the book!  Have loud conversations about it in public places!  Buttonhole strangers in elevators!  Woohooo!

For a Monster's a Monster, No Matter How Small!

Some warped individual is rewriting Lovecraft's Call of Cthulu in the style of Dr. Seuss.  You're never too young to have the piss scared out of you.  Check out the comments, too -- someone got a clip of the cutest little Elder Godling in action!

Exactly as I Predicted

via Instapundit, the latest development in carbon nanotechnology.  Nested graphene wires inside nanotubes.  I made the prediction several years ago that C60 and carbon nanotubes would be the LEGO blocks of nanotechnology.  Carbon naturally wants to form graphene, and buckyballs, and nanotubes.  You just have to tweak a few environmental conditions to get more of one than the other.  And because it is so (comparatively) easy to do, you can play with more combinations of things to get the eentsy-weentsy (scientific term) electronic devices we can use.  The more we play with carbon, the more we'll learn how to do the same things with compounds that don't want to make neat shapes all on their own.  At this rate we'll have wearable supercomputers.  Maybe even jet packs!

Military Innovation

It's just not enough to have bigger and badder boomsticks than the other guy.  Oh no.  You've got to make sure the guys wielding the bigger, badder boomsticks are vibrating with caffeine.  Dear Readers, I give you the new, improved First Strike Rations!  Reportedly they have been approved, but none have been sighted in the wild.  I am suspicious.  Maybe we are not ready for caffeinated chocolate pudding?

The Sun has a bad hair day

A recent solar filament, caught by the SDO satellite. The massive twisty magnetic fields which you can't see, except for how they snare and drag a gobbet of the sun's surface, are AMAZING. Electromagnetics is a complex field, and the physics of the Sun is at extremes where minor terms in very long equations become very, very significant. A photon can take as long as 170,000 years to get to the surface of the Sun. Just thinking about Solar physics makes me gibber and flap my hands.

Close up video here. (via Watt's up with That)