rjwoodhead - Slashdot User

Submission + - To Boldly Go Where No Mento Has Gone Before! (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

rjwoodhead

on Friday August 29, 2008 @08:06PM

rjwoodhead writes: "This last weekend, my entire family learned what it's like to float in freefall aboard G-Force One (recently featured on Mythbusters' Moon Hoax show). Being science-lovers, we decided to do some experiments, and wanted to do something original. So we decided to test whether the Diet Coke & Mentos reaction was affected by the lack of bubble convection in microgravity. The story of how the experiment evolved and how we talked Space Adventures into letting us fool around with sticky and corrosive cola and candy inside their nice clean airplane, as well as high-speed video of the results, can be found here."

Submission + - Slow-motion Robotic Combat Ballet (break.com)

Submitted by

rjwoodhead

on Thursday June 26, 2008 @08:58AM

rjwoodhead writes: "Earlier this month, my kids and I competed at RoboGames in San Francisco. In addition to our robot, we brought along a Casio Exilim EX-F1 camera and captured every fight at 300 frames per second. When played back at normal speed, the hits, spins and airtime looked positive balletic (not to mention ballistic!), so I cut together a music video, set to the "Waltz of the Flowers", from the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. Without further adieu, I present the Ballet of Destruction! Also available on YouTube, as are some other high-speed videos I've done, including Coke&Mentos at 1200 frames per second."

Comment VERO is pretty much useless (Score 2, Informative) 684

by rjwoodhead on Wednesday February 20, 2008 @06:49AM (#22486038) Attached to: Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database

Allow me to speak from experience - VERO is pretty much useless as a method for evil companies to enforce despotic control over the masses. In terms of furthering my nefarious plans for World Domination, it's been a total bust.

EBay hosts many auctions of bootlegs of many of the films (anime, samurai stuff) for which my company, AnimEigo, is the US licensor (turning you all into malleable Otaku will definitely get me closer to the aforementioned end-state of World Domination). At one point, we tried using VERO to cancel these auctions. It was a total waste of time.

1) After being VERO'd, the bootleg vendor would simply put up another auction. It was a game of whack-a-mole, and they had more time to play than I did. The time I wasted -- I could have spent it on the Orbital Mind Control Lasers.

2) The serious bootleg vendors would simply contest the VERO. At which point the rights-holder has to provide documentation that demonstrates that the property infringes their rights. And that, folks, takes time and money -- and I need that money, do you guys have any idea how expensive it is to build and maintain a Secret Lair?

So my advice to people who want to sell E-Meters is to contest the VERO; it requires only 10 minutes of your time filling out a form and faxing it off, and will cost the COS a considerable amount of money to take to the next step. Now, they may decide that it's worth it to them to do that, but hey, that's money they can't spend on other things - and keep in mind that for them, World Domination is a serious business, not just a hobby like it is for me.

The real point of VERO is to protect eBay from lawsuits by rights-holders.

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