Fun With Sodium Acetate

Sodium Acetate is the main constituent in pocket hand warmers.

Heating crystals of Sodium Acetate Trihydrate to 100^°C, mixing them with water and cooling causes them to form a super-saturated liquid that is somewhat unstable.

A simple touch of a finger is all it takes to cause the liquid to crystallise, in quite a spectacular manner.

Amazing Multi-Layer Mural

This is a video of artist Lewis Lavoie creating a large mural from a number of smaller ones.

It reminds me of Salvador Dali's portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

Can Can

I have no idea whether there's some kind of trickery going on here, but these videos I found via Neatorama are pretty impressive.

You Want Me To Do What?!

I'm quite amazed that I've not heard of this game show a long time ago. Apparently, it has run for over 4000 episodes across 50 series since 1982.

Called Countdown, it works like this ... the contestants have to concoct a calculation whose answer is a given randomly generated three digit number, using another six numbers of various sizes.

In this episode, the guy on the right comes up with a pretty impressive calculation.

The Life Of Riley

There was a segment in last night's news about Australia's oldest living person, a lady named Olive Riley, who just turned 108.

I was chuffed to read today ... on AppScout, of all places ... that Olive has a blog!

Admittedly, it appears that someone else maintains her site, but Olive's voice is definitely there, in every post.

Wonderful!

I hope I'm lucky enough to have someone to help me keep up with the latest technology when I'm old and infirm ... a couple of years from now :-).

Tipsy Text

Watching Spicks 'n' Specks this evening, I was amazed to hear about Modern Drunkard magazine ...

... amazed and just slightly annoyed that, as the quintessential member of its apparent demographic, I have yet to receive my complimentary subscription!

Non-Newtonian Fluids

The viscosity of a Non-Newtonian fluid increases under stress, effectively turning it into a solid. This makes it possible to walk (quickly) on the surface of such a liquid.

I found this nice demonstration of its properties via Crooked Brains. The liquid, in this case, is a mixture of corn starch and water.

International Cephalopod Awareness Day

I was quite embarrassed to discover that I had completely missed International Cephalopod Awareness Day, which was on October 8th.

To redress this terrible oversight, here's an amazing video showing why octopuses and sharks should not be made to share the same tank ... don't worry, no cephalopods were harmed during the making of this film :-).

Amazing Animated Graffiti

At the end of a long journey this morning, following many links, I arrived at the Wooster Collective, which is a blog about street art.

It included this wonderful animation, done by repeatedly drawing over the same wall, using what appears to be charcoal. Truly amazing!

Do go and take a look at the blog, because there are many wonderful pieces there.

Ways To Consume Time #735

Thanks to Dump Trumpet for pointing out this fantastic URL.

It allows you to watch a stream of all images as they're uploaded to Blogger accounts.

Absolutely amazing!

They've even included a slider that allows you to vary the speed with which the images are presented.

Clicking on an image navigates to the page on which it was posted, making this a fun way to find interesting blogs.

Scent Of A Woman

No, I'm not talking about the 1992 flick for which Al Pacino won his only Oscar.

This company is selling a product called "Vulva", which it says is essentially "fanny in a bottle" ... as the term is used outside the United States, of course; what sort of deviant would buy a vial full of farts!?

There's a promotional video on this page if you click the "Enter" button ... how appropriate :-). The voice-over is quite humourous.

While more artistic than obscene, it's probably NSFW ... depending on where you happen to work, I guess!

Steve Irwin Parenting Products* ...

... brings you the bullet-proof baby stroller. We can only hope this is a joke!

Thanks to Spluch.

* It's actually "Bulletproof Baby", but a Steve Irwin crack just seemed appropriate, somehow :-).

Big Mac

My 24" 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo Extreme iMac, with 750GB disk upgrade, arrived today (well, yesterday, I guess, given the time).

The 20" Dell wide screen looks tiny sitting beside it, but you can never have too much desktop space, so it's welcome to stay.

The Great "Gadsby"

Thanks to Random Good Stuff for making me aware of Gadsby, by Ernest Vincent Wright.

The entire 52 chapter novel, containing over 50,000 words, does not contain a single instance of the letter 'E'!

Thanks also to Google, whereby I discovered that this is an example of a lipogram.

Life On The Edge

This is a truly amazing balancing act. Watch it right to the end, because it just becomes more and more impressive.

I'm All Cut Up About This

You may have seen Penn and Teller's "outing" of the old trick where the magician puts someone in a box and then proceeds to split them into various pieces.

Well, I really want them to explain this one!

Now, That's A Cake Hole !!

Thanks to Spluch for this video of a man with a very, very, very big mouth!

Holy Card Flipping, Batman!

This is essentially a ten minute advertisement for Samsung, but it's pretty damned impressive.

If you don't have the patience to watch it all, do skip to the end, because the last couple of minutes are pretty amazing.

The Power Of The Masses

My mate Dave sent me this YouTube link. It's not for the squeamish, but trust me, everything works out OK in the end.

Fast Talking

Random Good Stuff has a post of two videos related to people who can speak incredibly quickly.

One is a vaguely scientific analysis of a woman's ability to speak so quickly ... for example, she can recite the Gettysburg Address in under 30 seconds.

The other, which I reproduce here, is just a video of a guy doing so. What he says is rather boring, except at the end, where he reels off the names of all the Best Picture Oscar winners, up to whenever this footage was taken. If nothing else, he's definitely very, very quick!