Yeah, Slashdot picked this up already, but it’s still worth posting. Gizmodo has a set of 3 videos that show the workings of the Lego factory. They also have a tour of the secret Lego vault.
This video shows something that very few people have had the opportunity to witness: the inside of the Lego factory, with no barriers or secrets. I filmed every step in the creation of the brick. From the raw granulate stored in massive silos to the molding machines to the gigantic storage cathedrals to the decoration and packaging warehouses, you will be able to see absolutely everything, including the most guarded secret of the company: the brick molds themselves.
Click HERE to read the full story and watch the videos.
Click HERE to watch the tour of the Lego secret vault.
One more thing to add to my list of things to learn on the bass 
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… guess who lost?
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Here’s another great Marcus Miller clip. You’ve gotta love the organ work. Props to Josh Brahm for the link.
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It’s been said that managing engineers is like trying to herd cats: we’re independent, suspicious, and we only do things because we want to. I was reminded this week about a great ad that aired during the SuperBowl a few years back… all about cat herding. Enjoy!
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This is for all you Office Space fans (me included)…
… and here’s the classic scene that inspired this poster:
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There was an interesting article this last Friday at the New Scientist about how the contents of encrypted VOIP conversations could still be deduced via traffic analysis. The short version is that many spoken words have a signature to them even when they are encrypted. This signature is related to the size of the data packets used to represent the sound data. Many phonemes in a word have a distinct encoded data size… by analyzing the packet sizes you can deduce the phonemes and thus the spoken word.
This got me thinking I should write about the complex problem of securing a video stream. There are many aspects to securing a video stream: integrity, authenticity, and privacy being the most important. I’m not going to spend time talking about integrity and authenticity, because those are somewhat simpler problems to solve (integritiy = digital signatures, authenticity = digital certificates). The main focus of this post is about privacy; keeping an eavesdropper from deducing the contents of a video stream.
I saw this video about 6 months back and I was really impressed. The most interesting part to me is after the rocket clears the base… very surreal. As a side note, the Discovery channel is beginning a special this Sunday about the US space program called “When We Left The Earth”. I expect this video to be a part of it.
A few facts about this video:
- The stuff falling from the rocket is ice. The Saturn engines burned liquid hydrogen and oxygen, which is VERY cold.
- The engines generate a strong vacuum, which is why the ice and smoke are initially sucked down into the opening in the launch pad base.
- The short section of dark exhaust coming out of the nozzles (right before the exhaust fire gets bright) is due to the cool liquid hydrogen that is used to cool the nozzles.
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Okay, I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile. These guys are amazing… they play both guitar parts, the bass part, and percussion all using only 2 acoustic guitars. Thanks for the link Ray!
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I’m sad to say I wish I could do this
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And this:
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