It’s a computer game… in a favicon.

Check it out here.

Seriously, that’s amazing.

The foam that falls off the space shuttle isn’t all that different than the foam you might get from Lowes or Home Depot. It’s light stuff. How the heck could it break the heat shield tiles on the Space Shuttle Columbia?

This is especially surprising when you think of the fact that even if you took a hammer to those tiles, you wouldn’t produce enough force to really damage them. During take-off, the foam was regularly coming loose from the left bipod holding the shuttle to the huge external fuel tank. Because of the aerodynamic qualities of the foam, if you were to drop a foam piece about the size of a suitcase (that’s the size of the chunk that hit Columbia), from that bipod mid launch, then it’d slow down prettty dang fast. When the shuttle hit the foam, it’d hit at about 540mph. Interestingly, if a bolt happened to have come off instead of the foam, it wouldn’t have slowed down fast enough to have done as much damage as the foam. A bolt would have been less of a threat to the wing than that foam because it would have traveled with the shuttle for a little bit, instead of hitting the brakes like the foam did.

Tricky foam. you’re so counter intuitive.

A robot built to take on guitar hero.

read more here.

To create the perfect weekend juxtaposition, on Sunday afternoon after getting all riled up at Roller Derby, I went to watch Polo with a couple friends in Greenwich. It was really unique.

Polo in Greenwich and Roller Derby in Holyoke are pretty much complete polar opposites. On one side we have women with fishnets and tattoos bashing into one another, and on the other side we have men on horses striking a small ball with a long mallet. And if it’s not evident by the players themselves, it’s evident by the spectators.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I’d never been to see anything like Polo before. Crystal happened to be going with some peers and, since you pay by the car load, it only made sense to fill it up. They had an extra seat, and I grabbed it.

Horses are awesome.

It was actually pretty intense. The horses were very very fast. And when the players raced by, going near 30 miles per hour, the ground thundered. It actually rumbled.

Polo fields are huge. You can fit nine football fields onto a polo field. So it’s a bit hard to get a feel of all the action. I think each team only has four players out on the field at a time. And they nail that ball like it’s going out of style. I was pretty impressed.

At ‘halftime’ they invite the crowds to come out onto the field to stomp divets in the grass. Here’s a picture of me putting a big chunk of grass back in its place.

Know your place grass. Know your place.

The polo match lasted a couple hours. We showed up a bit late, but still got to see plenty of horse riding action. It was a fun trip to wealthy-ville.

I dare say, Pete and Crystal, you look dashing. Just dashing.

Thanks for inviting me Pete&Crystal!!
(feel free to check out some of Pete’s photos here.)

I took the night off last night to play some guitar, get some chores done, and cook some food. The night was a success.

Especially tasty was a quick banana bread that I whipped up. I had no idea Banana bread was so easy! Throw your ingredients into a mixer and then Bang. Bread. Outside of the one hour bake time, it’s really quick. This particular banana bread had flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, two eggs, a stick of butter, two mashed bananas, and a 1/4 cup of orange juice. The orange juice caught me a little off guard, but it added a really nice flavor.

The recipe called for nuts too, but I have mixed feelings about nuts in bread. To me, adding nuts to bread kind of seems immoral.