Misc

High Voltage is Amazing

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

High Voltage is both amazing and really scary. I used to work in a machine shop and one day the electricians were working on the breaker panel. It wasn’t really “High” voltage, 480v if I remember correctly, but it was the breaker panel, so there was a huge amperage potential there.

Anyway, one of the electricians couldn’t get one of the breaker covers to close properly. So he stuck his screwdriver into the edge of the door to assist.

The next thing I heard was the unmistakable sound of a huge electric arc. This sound is VERY scary. Watch this video with the sound turned way up and you will understand.

The whole breaker panel was going up in flames. Flames and smoke were pouring out of the top and all the lights went out.

They had to call the power company to disconnect the power and the firemen to put out the fire. Needless to say, work was closed for a few days.

The electrician was a very lucky man. He came away from the experience with nothing worse than flash burns on his face.

The reason for this post today is a series of photos that JWZ put up today. Some nice pics of an arc on the power pole outside where he lives.

One of the comments has a link in it to More Arcs n’ Sparks, a site with some more scary (and fascinating) electrical photos and videos. The exploding transformer is amazing.

Computers

Another Wiki Attack Attempt

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

So all of a sudden I realized that my web site was loading really slowly. So I hopped on my server to discover that the load average was 55 and climbing!

Top showed me that the top processes were python, and lots of threads. The only thing that runs under python on my server is my Wiki.

So I stopped the Apache server and started looking in the logs.

4586 lines of some asshole trying to edit my Wiki pages. Nice going jack off.

70.85.45.132 – – [23/Jul/2005:15:08:02 -0500] “GET /?action=edit HTTP/1.1” 200 472 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)”

It looks like he’s been hammering on me since Saturday! It looks like first he spidered the wiki to find all the pages, then he started walking though the list to try and find any that were open for editing.

Since the last time I got hacked I set my Wiki to only allow logged in users to edit it, he’s not going to find any pages, but it’s making the server do a check for each one and running the load up.

So I grabbed the IP address, added a new rule to my firewall and blocked him.

Then I sent a copy of the log file lines and his IP address to abuse@theplanet.com (his ISP.) Doubt that I’ll hear anything about it from them.

Buh-Bye!

This Old House

I love castles

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

A series of photos of Gosford Castle in Northern Ireland. One of the largest castles ever built in Ireland in the unique style of Normandic revival, which sadly has lain empty for nearly ten years now. It is slowly but surely turning into a ruin.

Flickr Image Gallery

Wish I had billions of dollars. I’d restore this gem.

Motorcycles

An interview about commuting on my motorcycle

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I got an email from the Ride to Work Day people (as you may have if you are on their mailing list) about the Ride to Work Day on Wednesday (you know, the one where you wussed out because it was raining.)

Anyway, they had this bit in it:

A journalist sent Ride to Work a request looking for individual commuting stories for a book he is currently working on. If you are interested in helping him, please answer the questions below and then send your reply to ’email address’

So I did. Read on for the Q and A session.Continue reading →

Motorcycles

Minnesota Statutes – Revisited

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

So now that I have a sidecar (see: The Sidecar Project) I wanted to see if there were any Minnesota Statutes that applied especially to sidecars.

The statutes are available on line here, but there is no easy to use search function…

Google to the rescue! You can specify a site for Google to search, like this:

site:http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/stats/

So, to find all the sections relevant to sidecars, do this search at Google:

sidecar site:http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/stats/

Viola!

Someone else was asking about the maximum number of lights that you can have on a motorcycle (maybe my neighbor?) when we were talking about adding lights to the sidecar. I thought it would be cool to add some auxiliary lights on the sidecar. (You can’t have too much light driving at night.)

So the relevant statutes are:

169.64 Subd. 1 talks about light intensity. (As a side note, Subd. 4 states that motorcycles may have “blue dot” tail lights… Hrm)

169.56 talks about Auxiliary lights.

The way I read it, Subd. 1 says I can have two “Spot Lights”, Subd. 2 says I can have two “Fog Lights”, Subd. 3 says I can have two “Low Beam Lights” and Subd. 4 says I can have two “Driving Lights”. As far as I can tell, that means that I can have eight auxiliary lights on my bike!

However, 169.63 (b) states that you can’t have more then four lights lit at any time while you are on the highway, including the headlight(s).

WWW

The Interactive Nolli Map Website

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

The Interactive Nolli Map Website

This is a very cool digitized map of Rome from 1748. Lots of information here.

The 1748 Map of Rome, by Giambattista Nolli is widely regarded by scholars as one of the most important historical documents of the city ever created. This project is a collaborative exploration of the exquisite Nolli engraving, through its historic significance and contemporary application.

The Nolli Web Site presents the 1748 Nolli map of Rome as a dynamic, interactive, hands-on tool. The public now has access to cataloged information about the map in both written and graphical form. The map not only provides rich information, but it has the ability to be updated with new data over time to embrace expanding knowledge.