IronMan Movie Trailer

Complete with a Black Sabbath tune. I'm not always sure about Ozzie, but he sounds cool as back ground to a comic book hero.

Styrofoam-Plate Speaker

Hi-Fidelity homemade loud speaker. It should go good with the amp.

Making a Tiny Robot

I think this will be our first project. A tiny robot, made with the head of a tooth brush.

I'm using the blog as a favorites folder, for potential fun with Isaac and Denise. This is one central location I can save between work and home.

Crackerbox Amp

Great stuff on the MAKE subscription. Isaac and I have to give this one a try with his little guitar. A homemade amp.

Online Gaming

Must remeber to show Isaac this cool new gaming site. Someone wrote a Nintendo emulator to their classic 8-bit games. You can now play them online with some help from Java.

Update: Homemade Metal Detector

Turns out the guys from MAKE, think this simple metal detector video is a fake. The reasoning is fairly complicated, anybody know an electrical engineer?

Seems like the calculator's internal clock (the only thing in the device which would produce a frequency) oscillates at about 450 kHz, where the radio is tuned to broadcast 1610 kHz. The engineers think the two devices would rarely produce a reliable Radio Frequency Interference (RFI).

Even proving the video a fake would make a good science project.

Historical Documents Research

One of my new projects is creating a site to archive historical documents of the Harris County Court. While doing research for the possible user interface designs on such a web site, I found this document on the national archives, and thought it might be interesting.

Apparently, Elvis became interested in joining the war on drugs in America. He delivered this letter personally to president Nixon in hopes becoming a federal agent. While this is just the first page of the document, it seems like there is more here.

Homemade Metal Detector

Isaac was interested in getting a metal detector after seeing some guy at the basket court with one. I found this article describing how to make your own with a radio and a calculator.

On this MAKE blog, they discuss the project in greater detail, creating your own BFO (beat frequency oscillator). Sounds like a good science fair project.

SM3 Launch Video

Not sure about the background music, something about waking up the beast. However, this is a video showing some slow motion shots of an SM3 missle being fired. While this missle was not designed to shoot down potentially dangerous satellites, it best use of this powerful technology I can think of.

Overnight Space News

Quite a bit going on in space last night, I suppose this is not at all unusual, however, I have pictures this time. At 2226 EST the USS Lake Erie fired a modified tacticle missle and hit a dying satellite traveling at over 17,000 mph at an altitude of 133 nautical miles. Now that is certainly a good shot.

The picture shows another good shot, the stages of the lunar eclipse last night. Unfortunately, it was raining in Houston, but there are great pictures in Flickr.

Update: Check out this video of the USS Lake Erie launch. the audio is a little sparse but amazing video.

Hey Jude - Like You've Never Heard It Before

Interesting New FM Widget

Check it out on the left <-----------. Interested to see if it works for you guys.

Total Lunar Eclipse - February 20

In case the kids were looking for an excuse to stay up late tomorrow night, there's meant to be a total lunar eclipse beginning at 8:43 PM EST until 12:30 AM EST. Since my lovely wife is out of town this week, maybe I can talk Leo into staying up late with me, and taking pictures.

NASA has a great reference to the eclipse.

Information Technology

An interesting article from the New York Times blog regarding future engineering challenges, describes medicine as an information technology. They also comment that, once we move away from fossil fuels, energy will become an information technology.

This certainly made me rethink my definition of the phrase, "information technology." Here's a wikipedia's definition. Once you get past a simple concept of computer software and hardware; and expand into networks (nueral, social, data) and data management. The new definitions from the engineers begin to make more sense.

Speaking of wikipedia and a child's use of information technology, this was the main resource for Isaac's recent research assignment on the platypus. I think he also referenced an encyclopedia just for old time's sake.

Isaac's First Domino Win

IsaacDominoWin
Originally uploaded by mhughen.

We thought we would record Isaac's first unassisted domino win. We even kept the score card.

I thought I was going to catch him in the last game, but he scored a 35 on one play. Watch out Grandma!

Baby You Save Me - Happy Valentine's Day Lover

Here are the chords to our wedding song, I cry everytime I hear it because of how lucky I am.

I know I don't tell you nearly enough
I couldn't live one day without your love

Kenny Chesney

New Subscription to Consider: Page 99 Test

The author of this blog has an interesting theory,

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be
revealed to you." --Ford Madox Ford

It certainly is interesting to read the author analyzing there own work this way. Also seems a good method to promote more diverse reading.

Sorry, I haven't posted in a while, busy at the new job learning. Hopefully I can get some pictures up soon.