I gave a kids science demo at Balticon today. "Magnets, motors and more" It went really well. The little kids liked sticking magnets together and making compasses wiggle. The middle-school boys liked my tabletop railgun (velocity <1 m/s, but lots of pretty sparks). Everybody liked the big coil of wire connected to a battery, which made a ( Read more... )

I got to hear a concert by the FuMP (Funny Music Project) featuring Rob Balder, Worm Quartet, Possible Oscar, SuddenDeath, and The Great Luke Ski. Pretty good filksinging (filkrapping?), except for Luke Ski, who was downright incredible with his Lord of the Rings / Eminem mashup "Stealing Like a Hobbit". The guy rocks. I got his CD, the first ( Read more... )

I went to Balticon this evening. The opening ceremonies were lousy, so I ducked out, wandered around, and eventually found the con suite where the guests of honor, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were holding court. I've been a fan of Niven and Pournelle's science fiction* for years, ever since I first read Lucifer's Hammer and Legacy of HeorotI ( Read more... )

1) Baltimore "The City that Reads". They take the slogan seriously at Balticon, and donate lots of money to the Reading Is Fundamental program. Lots of book donations as well ( Read more... )

I went to Balticon this weekend, and found my opinions on it have mellowed since last yearPart of it was being less stressed for time. They switched hotels out of downtown Baltimore, drastically reducing parking nastiness. I had the luxury of taking nearly a whole weekend off, and didn't have to rush ( Read more... )

I got a call from my friend Mike in Pennsylvania this weekend; he mentioned he had some ideas for magnetic accelerators, based on some old discussions we had about this "gauss rifle" design from sci-toys.com ( Read more... )

We've spent the last day and a half at work learning how to make better powerpoint presentations, which sounds hideously dull but was actually pretty cool. I'm definitely going to use some of the ideas at DVAA and Balticon this month ( Read more... )