Tools

Uranium ore for sale on Amazon.com

Uranium ore for sale on Amazon.com

Two used units, anyway. You need to move quickly if you want the cheap one for $23.99:

Cracked casing. Has caused dog to grow third pair of legs. Still adorable. Good product.

Because after that one’s gone, the price jumps up to $2500:

Found this in some old abandoned village while on vacation. Older, Russian model (PU239)? Please inquire about shipping. Not responsible for damage due to radiation or explosions.

Or you could just visit the manufacturer’s website and buy it there.

And no, it’s not a joke, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the reviews on Amazon. The 168 reviews are, in fact, the best reason to check out the listing. Highlights include:

So glad I don’t have to buy this from Libyans in parking lots at the mall anymore.
I bought this to power a home-made submarine that I use to look for prehistoric-era life forms in land-locked lakes around my home town in Alaska. At first I wasn’t sure if this item would (or could) arrive via mail, but I was glad to see it showed up with no problems. Well, almost no problems.

Great Product, Poor Packaging
I purchased this product 4.47 Billion Years ago and when I opened it today, it was half empty.

I bought it for my cat
I bought this for my cat and put it with a flask containing poison, in a sealed box. Do you think he likes it ? I’ve not opened the box yet.

Exorcising Billy Mays with the TV-B-Gone

Exorcising Billy Mays with the TV-B-Gone

Last week I was stranded in a waiting room. The old magazines didn’t really bug me, but listening to infomercials did. However, what really bothered me the most was when Billy Mays tried to sell me from the beyond the grave. Right then, I made a solemn vow not to endure that sales pitch ever again.
Fortunately for me, Maker Faire Rhode Island was just a few days away. I knew that I would be able to get my hands on a TV-B-Gone kit and build it at the soldering workshop. Maker Faire RI was a blast, and towards the end of the evening I settled down with the iron and got to work.

3D printing in glass

The Solheim Rapid Prototyping lab at the University of Washington was in the news last March for developing a new 3D printing process that uses ceramic powder as an inexpensive alternative to the pricier substrates that are currently the de facto standard for powder-bed processes. Well they’ve done it again, this time with 20 micron glass powder, which is formed into an object by layerwise application of a liquid binder. When the part is complete, it can be sintered in a kiln to produce a continuous glass part. The official UW online press release includes a telling quote from lab co-director Mark Ganter: “It became clear that if we could get a material into powder form at about 20 microns we could print just about anything.”