Wil McCarthy's Blog, page 3

crown moulding

Mathish sort of question:



Do you know how to calculate the bevel and miter angles on a compound miter

saw for outside and inside crown moulding corners involving cathedral ceilings?

I know how to do the ones for flat ceilings, using the flat miter angle of the

walls and the spring angle slope of the moulding, but can't figure out how to

incorporate the slope of the ceiling. The formulas I use for 90deg cormers under

flat ceilings:



miter = arctan(tan(flatmiter) * cos(slopes...

When in Rome...

Last summer Cathy forced me to join a health club, which has been good

for me. The track, the weight machines, the inclined situp boards...

Since the weather turned cold, though, I've been paying particular

attention to the hot tub, sauna, and steam room, with occasional breaks

in the lap pool to cool off. It's not a bad way to spend a few hours,

and makes me feel like a good Roman. Or Swede.



I also finally got a set of studded snow tires for my Prius. BIG

differenc...

Queendom in embryo?

http://www.matangitonga.to/article/fe...



Well, I'll believe it when it happens, but it's still nice to imagine...

Dances with Ewoks

I suppose I'm in the minority on this, but while I enjoyed the spectacle

of AVATAR, I found the plot kind of ridiculously smarmy.





--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

Map of U.S. population change, 2000-2009

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/200...



It's not my imagination; the population really is growing fast.



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

More patents

In the past several weeks I've received Notices of Allowance on several

pending patents. I've actually lost track of how many have popped -- an

interesting milestone -- but at this point there are three issued

patents and something like three or four others about to issue. Of

course, not all of them have my name first; invention is very much a

team sport.



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, ...

Happening on the DL ...

http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/m...



It's barely a footnote in these articles on synthetic life, but there

are serious researchers, at Harvard and other places, who think they may

be able to produce self-replicating artificial ribosomes before the end

of 2010, and then start tailoring them for industrial applicati...

Map of inverted mortgages

Looks a lot like the other economic maps I've been posting. I'm not

sure how geographically concentrated the "typical" recession is, but

this one seems to light up California, Nevada, Florida and Michigan on

every possible metric.



http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/doc...



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

SyFy

Well, this is disappointing but not unexpected: after multiple mergers,

rebrandings and format changes in the past 2 years, the SyFy site, aka

scifi.com, aka Sci Fi Wire, has decided to let its monthly columnists

go. Myself included.



I've been doing Lab Notes for over a decade now, so I have mixed

feelings about this. On the one hand, change is good. That's a long

time to be doing the same thing, and with the format changes and the

extreme busy-ness of running a busi...

bald bears

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/world...



Here's an article about a mystery disease that makes female bears go

bald. Without their fur, they are extremely strange looking creatures,

resembling the Michigan "dogman" and other reported oddities. Gray

aliens? Sasquatch?



I'm thinking this has significant cryptozoological implications.



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

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