Big Dave’s Blog

DORmino Eco Mouse Gets Its Juice From Laptop Itself! – Ecofriend

This wouldn’t help me because I use my trustee MacBook Pro with an external monitor and keyboard most of the time, but I could see how it could work — especially with aluminum laptops like the MacBook Pros. The aluminum transits heat out of the case very well. Why not use it? I would certainly prefer that over feeding my keyboard and mouse batteries every few weeks.

Speaking of which, my mouse batteries are low. Time to go down to the stash ( I buy in bulk) and get some more. Between the computers and the kids, I go through a lot of batteries…

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace

Photo: Courtesy of US Coast Guard

These guys use some smarts instead of heavy machinery to salvage ships in trouble. When you get offered $30M to save one ship and hold out for more, that extra savings makes for a nice profit. No tugs or cranes are used. Instead, all the equipment is can be put on a plane to the closest airport and a speedboat can get them to the ship fast. Their Dutch competitors can take days or weeks to get a salvage ship with cranes, etc. to the site.

Why is this cool to me? The guys at Titan build an on-the-fly digital replica of the ship in trouble. Then, they use the software to figure out an ingenious way to fix it. It’s a tricky task. If you get the calculations wrong, you end up sinking the ship. Get them right, and you save the ship without lots of heavy equipment and collect 10-70% of the ship’s value. Also, I spent some time after college driving Nissans off these ships in preparation for dealer lots. If you haven’t been up close to or inside a car container ship, let me tell you they are huge.

What a use of technology! Phone rings: “Cold weather or warm, mate?” They’re off…

The only downer is that one man died saving this ship. Unfortunately, technology can’t account for the dangers of moving around on a 60 degree tilt.

Wireless: Google May Buy a Balloon Company to Build Huge Wireless Networks

OK, I’m intrigued. The balloons only last a day or so, and then they come down. This is my problem. Exactly where do these things come down? If Google wants to put up bunches of these things every day, that means bunches of 6 pound transmitters come down on my head. Kind of a minor kink, don’t you think? Now, if they can solve the gravity problem, then you can cover the entire country with 370 $1500 balloons instead of 22,000 cell towers. I bet the towers are a little more money, and not having towers everywhere would sure make the countryside look a little nicer.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on this one.