I'm moving.... eventually!

You should probably read this post listening to Billy Joel's "Movin' Out".  Have a youtube link for ease of access:

Ok, now that you've got the proper soundtrack, I have some news to announce   This will no longer be the primary portal to the blog.  This particular website may or may not still exist in some fashion, but I will start directing traffic elsewhere.

I'm still writing, mind you, because writing is important.  It's a skill I want to be gooder at.  And, hopefully, I can still make people laugh with words and teach them a little bit about this weird universe we live in and/or point and laugh at stupid people doing stupid shit.

But, guys, I do a lot more than just write boring old English.  I can write in Java and Python and Common Lisp.  And I want to start sharing that too.  You see, I have some cool/weird ideas for webapps that I'd like to start writing and hosting for people to try.  All of the source code will be open, obviously, and some of it would be stand-alone programs that you'd download.  Other parts would be web applications and I want a place to host those.

And I'd like to start a side blog that's devoted to nothing but computer science/software engineering.  Instead of trying to be funny/sarcastic/a giant asshole, I'd write more technically for assistance in using things like Apache Tomcat, or the Google Web Toolkit or Python or how to cron a script.  This was actually my original intent with this blog, but then I thought no one would read that, and I wanted to be read.

Now I've realized that I might as well just write what I want to write, and if I want to be read, I'll stop fucking around and write for Cracked.

All of this really should be under one umbrella, and as you might have guessed, most web hosting services don't allow the degree of customization that I'd be looking for.  So, I want to host this eventual website out of my house, and build it myself.  I'll also be able to get some free CS-sideblog posts out of the adventures I'm going to have making all the planned software tech I want to use play nice in the sandbox with each other.

What does this mean for you, dear reader?

Not a whole lot.  If all goes as planned, Blogger will still be hosting a variant of this blog, as I still like to pretend that someone will stumble upon this and like it and make me Internet famous.  However, it'll get a lot more computer science-y, which I will balance out with a banner of a unicorn.

The transition probably won't happen for a few months.  Why?  Because my dorm's firewall is a cast iron bitch to work around, and my attempts to set up a router to bypass it have not gone well (fun fact: you can't stick shitrail on 32kb of memory.  Like, nothing.  It might as well not even exist).

Yay for getting my own webzone!  Also, yay for copping out a post to talk about this instead!

DIY Technology!

A lot can happen in a garage.  Its a very capable space, able to do a lot besides holding a car and the dead bodies. Garages are a combination of a storage space, workbench space and light up a joint space.  What more can you possibly ask from a room?

Great things have happened in garages.  Google was pretty much started up in one.  However, just because you own a garage doesn't mean great things will happen.  Only you hold the keys to putting that wonderous space to good use.  Only you can do awesome things in your garage.

And no, having a terabyte of porn in paper form doesn't count as awesome.  It does mean you probably don't need that double or queen size bed, though

"But," I'm imaging you crying, "how?  How can I do amazing things in my garage?  What do I do?"

Welcome to the dojo, young one.  Come, sit and you shall learn what awesome can done in a garage.  You'll want to loose any and all regard for personal safety and develop some sort of untreated antisocial personality disorder before we continue.  I figure that shouldn't be to hard.  No rush.  I'll wait.

Done?  Sweet.  Lets start with lightning.  Or namely, a tesla coil.

For those of you who don't know, tesla coils are those cool things you see in science fiction movies that shoot lightning bolts.  Except they totally aren't science fiction, but still totally shoot lightning bolts.  By lining up a pair of coils, and wiring one up to a voltage generator and a capacitance, you can shoot sparks between the coils.  Make the frequencies of the resistances on the coils match, and you can get the voltage to skyrocket between the gap.

For everyone whose eyes just glazed over at that last sentence, it looks like this:

Thor just peed his his pants a little bit

As proof that awesomeness can be distributed, Dr. Electric (He calls himself that.  I make it a policy to not antagonize future super villains.) has the circuit diagrams for free on the web.  As you might have guessed, however, the parts required to spew lighting several feet in all directions does cost more than a recent graduate from an arts college can pay for, so here's a version made out of shit someone found dumpster diving.  Its still pretty formidable, getting up to 250,000 volts, which is approximately 100 times more voltage than your household current.

Plus, you liberal arts majors get practice in dumpster diving, an invaluable skill to you post graduation.

But what if lighting isn't quite your element?  I get it, I get it, you're more of a fire person.  Fire is also very, very cool.  Now, these next set of questions are for all you budding young arsonists out there.  What is cooler than fire?  The correct answer is flame throwers.  What are cooler than flame throwers?

Ok, the technically correct answer here is dragons.  But wrist mounted flamethrowers come pretty close.

10 bucks on this kid being behind the California wildfires

In what is a civil lawsuit just waiting to happen, there are several models of DIY wrist mounted flamethrowers out there on the web.  Which is fantastic, because the US department of defense in 1978 basically said, "You know what, screw flamethrowers.  Water boarding is cool, but flamethrowers?  That shit's horrific.  We're not using those anymore."  Which is doubly fantastic as there is no ban on actually owning a flame thrower in the US, with a few states requiring a permit.

This blog would be nothing if I don't become your enabler in doing something even the US military thinks is downright inhumane.  You can thank me someday if we ever meet.

I think you'll melt your own face off first, but don't let that stop you.

Ok, ok, wrist mounted flame throwers and lightning spewing towers are pretty cool, but you want to go bigger.  You've got better plans than these child toys.  You've got a destiny.  You want something that if it goes wrong, it won't just ruin your life, but ruin the lives of everyone in your neighborhood.

You want a nuclear fusion reactor.

The goddamn sun.  In your garage.

Now, mind you, this is sort of a "because I fucking can" type project.  Fusion reactors don't actually generate more power than they require to hit critical mass, but you can say you made something hit critical mass.  What more do you want from your DIY project?

Plus, this one comes with helpful warnings like, "Don't touch any exposed wires because you'll die".  Even better, if you push the reactor enough, the x-rays will give you cancer right through stainless steel, so you'll want some lead protection for this.  Unless, of course, lung cancer sounds like an attractive option at that point.

And what could possibly go wrong?  I mean its not like boy scouts don't try this and end up giving their entire neighborhood a nice healthy dose of radiation or anything.  Yay, cancer for everyone!