We chose to take part in the long standing tradition of the hot dog bar today in the Magicc Lab.  The first hot dog bar started in the spring of 2007 while at the INL, established with the de facto condiments: ketchup, mustard, relish, and Sour Kraut.  Later that year mayonaise was added to the condiment canon. This year, beyond the sheer joy of partaking of hot dog goodness, we also investigated the evolutionary history of the dog.   Look below to see the four major stages of hot dog evolution:

1. Emerging from the sea of primordial null dog soup, the basic frank emerged, exhibiting little taste or desirable texture.  These dogs have been given the name sawdust dog (SD), or just plain wiener.  This basic life form has survived deserved extinction for eons because of its low market price.
2. Slight evolution spawned the Oscar Meyer Beef frank, a $5/pack dog with barely noticeable improvements over the SD. It is expected – or at least hoped – that this branch will dwindle into extinction soon.
3. After steady evolution, the SD developed into the present day polish dog. The polish offshoot may optionally include a cheese core, but the basic idea is an infusion of more palatable spices into the same basic link.  Note the baboon buttox and lengthy arms that are crude predecessors to fully evolved bratwurst, below.
4. The Bratwurst represents the apex of evolution.  Full-bodied taste is carried by its well-developed bipedal frame.  Sporting a refined neck tie and a full smile, this dog looks as good as it tastes.  Other names include heaven-on-a-bun, or the King of Dogs. Some have suggested the name of this species be changed from Bratwurst to BratBest, to better reflect its palatability.

Hot Dog Evolution:

Link links:

Travis Millet, pictographer of the dogolution:

http://themilletfamily.blogspot.com/

The Crispy Dog, thanks to Jeff Kennington:

http://www.oakenweld.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=20

A friend stopped by yesterday mourning the loss of his MacBook Pro power  adapter.  Since he had already ordered a new one from Apple, I asked if we could try to resuscitate the “broken” one.    It turned out to be a simple fix:

• Chisel along the seam of the power adapter; this may be he hardest part – mainly because it seems so unreasonably hard to get the blasted thing open.  Keep on chiseling, it will give with time.
• Snip the old wires and solder on the new ones.

Did I really need to make this list? Bottom line: if your macbook adapter broke because you bent the cord to death, just pop it open and resolder.

Here we are, yet again, memory of memories, cross-country skiing in Rexburg.
 

On a snowy Sunday afternoon, we made our way to the “Duck Park” in Rexburg, ID.  When we arrived we found the ducks all gathered around a drainage pipe that had warmed up a portion of the lake enough to melt the ice.  There was limited space, and unfortunately the ducks had to share this cramped space with a dead comrade.  Shown below is the dead comrade, as well as the live ducks.

Shown below I am contemplating giving the dead comrade the kiss of life.

Above are the front, back, and top view of the recovered camera from the  Thor II launch, recovered nearly two years after launch.  This camera differs from that used on the Thor I launch in a number of ways, namely: the film type used was Advantix on ThorII, versus standard 35mm on ThorI. The most significant difference was simply the timing circuit. ThorI used a relatively simply 555 timer circuit, whereas ThorII had a loop running on a microprocessor. Clearly, the 555 method produced good results, as shown on the ThorI page, whereas only 4 relatively poor photographs were recovered from the ThorII camera.

This was inspired by the many fun pool games played in my current house, which we have dubbed “the Lion House.”  Done for my introductory graphics course, this game features a 3D color mode, as well as a Farm Animal Sound mode.  Implemented in Mac OS X using XCode 3.0/C++/OpenGL. Should compile on Windows and Linux with almost no work.  A video is shown below:

http://carson.oakenweld.com/lionHousePool.html

In this video, rez the dog demonstrates his helicopter catching ability. Rez can jump up and gently snag the tail of a helicopter, avoiding the dangerous blades, with a success rate of about 90%.  He typically jumps 2-3 feet in the air to make these kills.

http://carson.oakenweld.com/rezTheCopterCatcher.html