Before school this morning, Billy put together the track below for Martin to play with during the day. Martin had fun playing with except for one small problem. If you look at the layout, once you go into the circle at the top, you can’t get out without backing up. Whenever he would drive his train into the circle, he’d get upset with it and insist that it was broken because he couldn’t get his train out.

My sister-in-law sent us a link of her, my brother, and my nephews doing this elf dance thing. I caved in and did one for us too. Geez.

Click to watch:

Very funny start to the Saturday Night Live season.

This was a fun little distraction.

Go to the Simpsons Movie Site to create your own.

After seeing the computer works animation, I was reminded of a video of a dancing banana that Billy use to love watching at my parents house. It drove them nuts.

It even has it’s own Wikipedia entry if you are interested in it’s history.

I’ve been kind of down the last couple of days because things in my daily life have not been going as smooth as I would like. After watching the news this morning and seeing the growing devastation from Hurricane Katrina, I don’t have anything to whine about. With that in mind, the link below is to my favorite Bloom County cartoon and seems fitting.

Bloom County (found at The Official Berkley Breathed Website)

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops [ibooks] turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

That quote was from a CNN article. And another:

“This is total, total chaos,” said Latoya Jones, 19, who lost one of her flip-flops in the ordeal and later limped around on the sizzling blacktop with one foot bare.

All this happened in Henrico County. Oh the humanity!!!

Here are some more links.

• an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch
• a video at the local NBC affiliate

Update: Oh, jeez! We were slashdotted.

From http://www.floobydust.com/turbo-encabulator/.

The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry

For a number of years now, work has been proceeding to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a machine that would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal grammeters. Such a machine is the “turbo-encabulator.” Basically, the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced by the medial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive directance.

The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in direct line with the pentametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbline was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-0-delta type placed in panendermic semiboiloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremie pipe to the differential gridlespring on the “up” end of the grammeters.

Forty-one manestically spaced grouting brushes were arranged to feed into the rotor slipstream a mixture of high S-value phenylhydrobenzamine and 5% remanative tetryliodohexamine. Both of these liquids have specific pericosities given by P=2.5Cn^6.7 where n is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition and C is Chlomondeley’s annular grillage coefficient. Initially, n was measured with the aid of metaploar refractive pilfrometer (for a description of this ingenious instrument, see Reference 1), but up to the present, nothing has been found to equal the transcendental hopper dadoscope (2).

Electrical engineers will appreciate the difficulty of nubing together a regurgitative purwell and a supramitive wennelsprock. Indeed, this proved to be a stumbling block to further development until, in 1942, it was found that the use of anhydrous nangling pins enabled a kryptonastic boiling shim to the tankered.

The early attempts to construct a sufficiently robust spiral decommutator failed largely because of a lack of appreciation of the large quasi-piestic stresses in the gremlin studs; the latter were specially designed to hold the roffit bars to the spamshaft. When, however, it was discovered that wending could be prevented by a simple addition to the living sockets, almost perfect running was secured.

The operating point is maintained as near as possible to the h.f. rem peak by constantly fromaging the bitumogenous spandrels. This is a distinct advance on the standard nivel-sheave in that no dramcock oil is required after the phase detractors have been remissed.

Undoubtedly, the turbo-encabulator has now reached a very high level of technical development. It has been successfully used for operating nofer trunnions. In addition, whenever a barescent skor motion is required, it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.

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References

1. Rumpelvestein, L.E., Z. Elektro-technistatisch-Donnerblitz vii.
2. Oriceddubg of the Peruvian Academy of Skatological Sciences, June 1914.

For more than 50 years the Arthur D. Little Industrial Bulletin has endeavored to interpret scientific information in terms that the lay person could understand. “The turbo-encabulator in industry” is the contribution of J.H. Quick, graduate member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London, England, and was first published in the Institution’s Students’ Quarterly Journal vol 15 no. 58 p. 22 in December 1944.

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Editor’s note: over the years, many firms have manufactured turbo-encabulators. While they are quite commonplace now, we often forget that they were once a specialty item. A representative example of a turbo-encabulator from the 1960s can be seen in this General Electric data sheet.

Unfortunately the scan is from a poor-quality original. I’m looking for a better copy, and for data sheets from other manufacturers. Please email me if you have any materials that could be made available.

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Turbo-Encabulator FAQ
Q: Can I use a Fourier or Laplace transformer to power my vintage Turbo-encabulator?
— Don Stauffer
A: If you use a Fourier transformer, be sure you’re discrete about it.

Fast Fourier transformers may seem appealing, but tend to leave grease spots where you set them on the bench.

Laplace transformers are best, but remember that you’ll need a dual VanBergen power coupling if your TE was made before 1932. (Between 1932 and 1937, some units had helically-polarized inputs; lotsa luck finding the beam power input tubes for those.)

If you haven’t powered your unit up yet, be sure to check the calibration on the conversion screens. They may not be compatible with the pitch of the modern power grid, and I don’t have to tell you what THAT means!
— Eric Wilner

Q: What’s a wennelsprock?
— Bill S.
A: It’s a lot like a Finnegan pin, except for where it attaches to the molly sprocket, it uses a plain bearing instead of a ball bearing. This reduces creatisfration to below 37 RMQ’s.
— Carl Byrns