Green Acroyear figure from the Micronauts Home Page.

Back in the late 70s, I had a few of the Micronaut toys. Until today, I had forgotten how many I had, and couldn’t find them on the net because I kept thinking they were called “Microbots,” which is a different toy altogether. Today, the neurons fired in the proper sequence, I remembered the correct name, and hit The Google.

The Micronauts Homepage
Inner Space Online
MicroHeritage Micronauts

Rummaging through the sites, I remembered the toys I had: the Acroyear (I) figure, the Mobile Exploration Lab, Crater Cruncher, and Hydra vehicles. My dream was to have the Battle Cruiser and the Micropolis Megacity.

Because all the parts used connectors that were the same size across the toys, you could build new things by taking bits of one toy and putting them on another. These combinations made it easy to come up with new ways of imaging how to play with the toys. To me this was better than Lego’s because instead of being generic blocks, the were bits and pieces that were shaped like things (and yeah, I never got into the Lego play sets, either). You could take rocket nozzles off one toy and put them on another, propellers off another, and so on, and build something completely new.

I wish the Micronauts would come back in to production. They were the best toys ever!

I think I’m not liking the blog format any more. I get ticked off about stuff, usually crap I see on the news or TV, and write a rant, and that’s it. Nothing to do with Science. I think that stuff needs to go, or be quarantined from the science stuff.

So, I think I’m gonna reboot Scispot again, switch to a CMS like Joomla! that will make it easier to organize stuff and not look like a blog, too. Then put all my rants in a separate part of the site.

So look for a reboot soon!

Finally, at long last, my new iMac Core Duo arrived yesterday morning. You’re not surprised that I’m just now writing about it are you? You knew that I’d be head-over-heels with it, and spending time playing with it rather than writing something up for the blog, didn’t you?

Let me tell you, this thing screams. I cannot get over how fast it is. So far I’ve only been using Universal Binary apps, except for Microsoft Office. And it runs quite nicely, thank you, under Rosetta. Of course, I had a six-year-old G4, and most recently that decrepit 200MHz Pentium I with Windows XP as a comparison, but the only people who have any right to complain about the iMac Core Duo are people doing very, very intensive work in PowerPC-only apps, like creative pros.

Anyway, I’ve got lots to do, like getting mySQL running properly so I can start doing some more web development. So I might be incommunicado a bit longer. You can see what I’m working on at SRI.

From the looks of things, I’m not the only person to order the shiny new iMac Core Duo since its announcement was made week before last.

What’s that? An iMac order? Yep! After five months in hell, running Windows on an ancient 200MHz Pentium 1, a replacement for my dearly departed PowerMac G4 is finally on its way. At last, the money was there for me to get a new computer, and luckily it was enough to skip a Mac mini and get the new iMac. I called the Apple Store and placed my order with a wonderfully cheerful and helpful sales associate named Laurie. Then the waiting began.

LIke any good geek who has just ordered a new Mac, I immediately checked for my confirmation email, then started hammering the Apple site checking my order’s status. At first, everything looked great. My copy of iWork 06 shipped. Then my copy of Microsoft Office shipped. I was certain that I’d get that little email saying that the iMac had shipped in just a few more hours.

The next morning, the Apple Store version of the “Dear John” letter appeared.

(more…)

Well, your’s truly has been completely wrapped up for the last two months writing a database and getting a website up and running. That’s why it has been so quiet around here.

I still haven’t gotten a new Mac yet, but my savings are building up so that I hope to get one soon. I’m really getting tired of this crappy PC. I did score a sweet, brand new, LCD monitor for just $30 a few weeks ago. It’s an NEC MultiSync LCD1735NXM. The picture is pretty good on my cobbled-together PC, and I’m sure it will look marvellous on a new Mac. It has VGA and DVI inputs, so I’ll just need to pick up a DVI cable to hook it to my new Mac mini. I can’t wait!

Monkey Boys

The world of North American Great Apes is still going—in fact, that’s the site and database I’ve been working on. The biggest name in bigfoot investigations, the BFRO, ended up pulling two controversial links on its site: a supposed set of photos of sasquatch that were pretty much obvious silhouettes of a person with a hooded jacket, and a video of a sasquatch taken in Sonoma California. That one’s been pretty much debunked, too.

The group I’ve been involved with, SRI is turning out to be even more skeptical and critical than I first thought, which is a good thing. People in the group have heard some weird things out in the woods, and insist on not pinning those sounds on a bigfoot. In other words, most people there seem to be of the “If I didn’t see a ’squatch do it, then I ain’t gonna say a ’squatch did it” camp. How refreshing.

Intelligent Falling

The Onion, one of my favorite sites, has taken on “Intelligent Design theory” with its scathing satire.

This article on Intelligent Falling lampoons ID proponents by changing the debate from evolution to the theory of gravity.

After all, we know that its just a “theory,” not a “fact.”

Happy New Year

This is a first for me—sitting home alone on New Year’s Eve. Why? An upper respiratory infection that’s been going around town. My nose is seriously challenging Niagra Falls for output volume. Unfortunately, it&rsqup;s making its way into my chest, too. The only way to get better? Local docs are saying, “bed rest!” Since I wanna get better, I will listen and not go out and get tipsy tonite. I think I’ll probably make a midnight call or two to special people, but that’s about it.

And to the great people who visit my site and leave meaningful comments, Happy New Year to you, too!

Yeah, it’s been quiet around SciSpot lately, hasn’t it? I’ve been a busy little beaver working on a project for some new friends at the Sasquatch Research Initiative.

What, has Woody gone completely insane? Has he forsaken science for credulity in things better left to the Weekly World News?

If you’ve read much of SciSpot, you know I have a soft spot for the big hairy hominid that supposedly lives in the Pacific Northwest. It has been something that has always intrigued me. Believe it or not, my work with SRI has been enlightening, to say the least. Not about Sasquatch, instead about myself. It’s amazing how I thought I was a tried-and-true skeptic, not prone to any type of romanticism at all. For me, UFOs, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster and the like were entertaining diversions for those times when I really like to get creeped out. Deep down, I knew that they were all pretty much silliness.

The Bigfoot phenomenon has me questioning a few things about myself, however. Don’t get me wrong — I’m still very skeptical about this. The rational part of me sees no way that Sasquatch can be anything other than a cultural phenomenon, a modern-day myth. Casts of footprints and films notwithstanding, all there is are fascinating, many times terrifying reports of encounters with gigantic, hairy beasts that walk upright, and whose faces look far too human. That skeptical part of me agrees with others who have said that these attributes reflect a subconsious yearning to return to the wild in us, and at the same time relfect a fear of returning to that state.

(more…)

My computer died last night, after just a little over six wonderful years together. I tried everything I could to resuscitate it, but it appeared that there was nothing that I could do. My PowerMac G4, whom I affectionately called ‘Grant,’ left this world at about 7:00PM, from what I believe is a bad Power Management Unit.

I thought it was a bad power supply, so I swapped in some ATX supplies from some old Gateway CPUs that I had lying in the closet, but no go. I thought that since they were only 200-watt supplies, that maybe I needed something a little heftier, so I got a 400-watt unit to day and performed a transplant. Still no good. Every time I hit the power button , the little red LED on the motherboard would glow dimly for a second, then go off. I took every board out of the PCI slots, took out all the memory except for a known good stick, I even disconnected every drive (there are three) in turn. Nothing.

So, tonight I bid adeiu to my trusted companion.

Grant, you took me all around the world. I trusted you to keep me safe on the Wild World Wide Web, and you did so admirably. With iTunes and our little buddy, the iPod, you helped me discover all kinds of new music. I explored all kinds of science with you, and I enjoyed showing you how to do new things, like model antennae and program PIC microprocessors.

(more…)