What do Storm Troopers, and your household vacuum have to do with each other? Storm Trooper costume armor was made (and can be made) using Vacuum Forming.

What is vacuume forming? This…

Isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve seen all week? But wait! There’s more! Vacuum forming can be done for small things, or HUGE things. Plastic hunting boats are made by vacuum forming a sheet of plastic into the hull. I first saw these about 8 years ago, and at the time, the only DIY one I had seen was large, and would cost $500+ to build. But! My wife and I are going to build a construction toy table (a table for playing with legos / erectors / and k’nex). And, we need some special sized bins, that I’m having a hard time finding for cheap. Then, I remembered vacuum forming, and did a quick search. Low and behold! You can build one for about $20! Using your oven to heat the plastic instead of a special heating element. Yay!!!!

Here’s some more machines for your viewing pleasure.

From all the video’s I’ve watched, and websites I’ve read, people have successfully vacuum formed lots of plastics. My guess is almost any plastic, but the ones I have read about are ABS, PVC, Acrylic, Poly(something or other).

So, here’s a few videos that show some home made vacuum formers. A thorough build is shown in the last video, which is from make magazine video, although I HATE their staples… CHEAP! I prefer this one:

I received an email from “change.org” (see below) that was titled “Action Alert!” and talked about how we need to Tell Obama to push for fixing climate change so that another Hurricane Katrina doesn’t happen. I was appalled. I thought there was no evidence to substantiate what they wrote at all… I even put together this graph, and wrote this post about how their was no evidence. Then, right before clicking post, I played with the graph, and realized, CRAP, there does appear to be a slight correlation. Because I hate how some poeple only cite the stuff in their favor, I decided to post this anyways. But… I still have yet to see any evidence or proof that Carbon capping is the way to fix the problem. Not saying there isn’t any, but I havn’t seen it.
I used the following sites to get this information.

Hurricanes per year came from the NOAA, it is actually Atlantic hurricanes per year.
Temperature Deviation From The Average over the last century came from NASA here.

Because I want to be fair, I explored the data, and tried to find a correlation. I added the column “Average Cyclonic Energy per Hurricane” to the graph by dividing the Accumulated cyclonic energy on the NOAA’s site by the number of hurricanes.

Acculumated Cyclonic Energy is defined on the NOAA’s site as: An index that combines the numbers of systems, how long they existed and how intense they became. It is calculated by squaring the maximum sustained surface wind in the system every six hours and summing it up for the season. It is expressed in 104 kt2.

Tell Obama that One Hurricane Katrina Was Enough

Dear Joey,

Four years ago this Saturday, Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans with devastating force. None of us will ever forget the heartbreaking images of residents fighting for their lives while their iconic city drowned and our leaders failed to act.

President Bush’s short-term failures compounded the suffering along the Gulf Coast in those fateful days. But his dismal failure to lead on global warming has made extreme weather events like Katrina more likely in the future.

We can’t settle for a world where Katrina becomes the “new normal” of our weather patterns. Our new President has an opportunity to succeed where the last one failed.

Tell President Obama to lead on climate change by pushing for a strong clean energy and climate bill this year >

President Obama led boldly when he pushed through Congress an economic recovery bill that included $87 billion in clean energy investments.

We need that same leadership from him when senators go back to Washington this fall and start working again on energy and climate.

Tell the President to lead by pushing the Senate for a strong clean energy bill >

As we remember the victims of Hurricane Katrina this week, let’s work tirelessly to prevent a future where disasters like Katrina become the norm. A strong clean energy bill is critical to preventing such a future, but we need our President to lead Congress where it needs to go. Tell President Obama to push Congress for bold action today.

Thanks for lending your voice,

- The Change.org Team in partnership with 1Sky

Dallan at work showed me this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrk6vsb77xk

Just how much can a Toyota PU take?  Being submerged?  Fire?  Dropped?

So, if you haven’t heard, two satellites collided a few weeks ago. What is interesting to note, is exactly how much energy was involved… When you think of these satellites colliding, you may imagine two cars just kind of running into each other at a stoplight… This is not the case. Imagine the damage inflicted when you shoot something with a high power hunting rifle…

Note, I do not agree with this video’s creators message, that banning guns will stop the bullets.  But the slow motion footage, is SWEET!

It will pretty much go through anything short of 1/2″ steel. Now, Scale that up, so the bullet weighs about 1,000 lbs, instead of a few ounces… That would be a pretty devastating weapon right? But we aren’t through yet, now, increase the speed of this VW van sized projectile by a factor of about 20… Yup… 20 times the velocity of a speeding bullet… Now crash two of these hypersonic VW’s together at right angles… And you get something like this:

Which, quite frankly, (all the negative consequences aside) is pretty freakin awesome.  Atleast it makes for a cool video.

How about compared to the Army’s High Energy Kinetic Rounds (Depleted Uranium Sabots)?  They weigh about 41 lbs (24 times less) and travel about 4000MPH (about 1/5th the speed of the satellites that collided).

This is the simple, yet hard secret to financial success: SNL: Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford

“We’ve even taken out loans to help make payments.”

“If you don’t have any money, you should not buy anything.”

“There’s a whole section here on How to buy expensive things with money you’ve saved”

“And where do you get this ‘saved money’?”

So…  My wife forwarded this list to me.  It presents an old issue in a different perspective through humor.

Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.

~ Thomas Jefferson

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
3. Colt: The original point and click interface.
4. Gun control is not about guns; it’s about control.
5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
8. If you don’t know your rights, you don’t have any.
9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
10. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.
11. What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do you not understand?
12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.
13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.
15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
16. You don’t shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer.
20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.
23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don’t make more.
24. When you remove the people’s right to bear arms, you create slaves.
25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

Bill Cosby…  Need I say more?  Here are some of his best skits:

Drugs

Drinking

Dentists

Parents

Noah

Ah, Sesame Street.   Right up there with Mr. Rogers there is nothing like this great show.  Here are a few favorites I found on YouTube.

Bert and Ernie Go fishing…  This is a classic.

C is for Cookie

Yip yip aliens meet the radio.

Johnny Cash and Biff Sing Five Feet High

Misc Celebrities Sing the Alphabet Song (Including Capt Picard in Civies…)

Rubber Ducky Song

Minorities weren’t quite as fast to grab a pitch fork when this was broadcast…