Posts by Gus

NASA: Satellite which will end man-made CO2 debate in orbit at last

Third time lucky ...

... but if this one had failed then the conspiracy theorists would have had a field day!

LOHAN seeks X-Plane bod for simulating relationship

Solidoworks to X-Plane

I've checked some of the X-plane forums and although you can use Solidworks files as a basis for the representation of what LOHAN looks like, the actual physics of the plane must be created in Planemaker which defines the aerodynamic properties of the plane.

Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

Automated till hell ...

... which begins with "Please remove the last item from the bag" then "Please put the last item in the bag" and descends quickly into the the seventh circle of hell, the Key Master pressing several buttons while telling me that this always happens. If "this always happens" why the fuck do they not fix them? I never use this machines now because they invariably take longer than queuing at a normal till.

Dixons preps home 3D printer for plastic-piping punters

Well I would like one ...

... so I could print out my own parts to make the Rubik's cube type puzzles I design using SketchUp. Currently I use Shapeways and they charge $1.40 per cubic centimeter, so the costs quickly escalate - my latest design is going to cost me nearly £280. As to the printer material, as it uses ABS or PLA, and these are readily available from several suppliers, I don't see any problems obtaining this for many years.

Review: Beagleboard Beaglebone Black

Pi Power Supplies

The only issue I had setting up the pi was using a USB cable which was too thin. When I activated the Ethernet port to download software it did not work because of the voltage drop along the cable. I think it should definitely have a separate power input.

Culture jammers connect Lego clones with 3D printer files

Poor quality stl files

I have looked at the stl files provided using NetFabb and most of them have issues (non-manifold solids, orphan line segments, zero thickness surfaces etc.) which would mean they would probably not be 3D printable without some work to tidy them up. This is rather disappointing.

World Health Organization: Mobile phone cancer risk 'possible'

Einstein was right

Cancers are caused by mutant strands of DNA. Electromagnetic radiation can't create mutant strands of DNA unless the frequency is at or higher than the blue limit of the visible spectrum, the near-ultraviolet. The frequency of cell phone radiation is about 1 million times too low. Albert Einstein discovered this in 1905 and received the Nobel Prize in physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1921. The wost mobile phone radiation can do is cause a slight localised heating of the brain, which the flow of blood is very efficient at moderating. Go outside on a sunny day without a hat on and your brain will be heated to a much greater extent. Mobile phone radiation can not cause cancer. If it did, where is the correlation between the huge increase in mobile phones and the vast increase in brain cancer? There is none!

Hey kids, wanna build your own Vulture 1?

Conversion of 3D files

I've converted the 3D files provided by ElReg to Google SketchUp format for those of you interested. Just search for "paper space plane" in Google warehouse if you want to download the model.