Thursday, April 05, 2007

5 toothpicks and a drop of water

There are five toothpicks broken in the middle but not snapped, the two halves remain attached. the wood fibres in this attached section have been compressed due to the bending action. As the wood absorbs the small amount of water, the fibres start to expand. Very hot water should enable this to happen more quickly. Use a hot spoon to add the water.

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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Philips Lumileds announces Luxeon Rebel

Philips Lumileds has recently unveiled the fact that its Luxeon Rebel power LED is available. Featuring a foot print area that is more than three quarters smaller than other surface mount power LEDs (3mm x 4.5mm), the Luxeon Rebel power LED offers light output and efficacy performance that makes it the undisputed leader in lumens/mm2, lumens/Watt and lumens/dollar categories. The Luxeon Rebel also holds the distinction of being the first power LED to offer a guaranteed minimum performance as it was engineered for operation between 305 and 1,000mA. (source: DigiTimes)
Philips Lumileds announces Luxeon Rebel

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FlickrCash at NY Tech Meetup April 3, 2007

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Panasonic's HDC-SD3 and HDC-DX3 bring the H.264

Posted Apr 3rd 2007 7:46AM by Thomas Ricker (Engadget) Filed under: Digital Cameras, HDTV

You know that pair of Panasonic 3CCD AVCHD camcorders recently announced for the US? Yeah, the HDC-SD1 and HDC-DX1. Well, you might want to give a tug on your wallet reins cowboy 'cause Panny just announced their HDC-SD3 and HDC-DX3 (pictured) HD camcorders. Besides bringing new desktop software to the show, these 1080i (1920 x 1080 now achieved without any tricks) recorders are fully H.264 capable for superior image quality. Like the pair before them, the SD3 and DX3 are feature identical except for the fact that the SD3 records to SDHC cards (4GB card in the box) while the DX3 records to 8-cm DVDs. Expect both cams to pop in Japan on April 25th: the HDC-SD3 should go for ¥150,000 ($1,269) while the HDC-DX3 will demand a tad less at ¥140,000 or about $1,185 by the time they arrive in the US after a few month lag.

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Radio Shack Sued For Throwing Away Customer Information

from TechDirt by Mike We've had plenty of stories about companies and gov't agencies losing laptops or hard drives potentially revealing a a ton of private info, but apparently Radio Shack decided to go a more low tech route in exposing customer private info. The amusingly named Witty Nickname writes in to let us know that the Texas Attorney General has sued Radio Shack after it discovered that a store was simply throwing out paper records that included customer names, social security numbers and credit cards. All you had to do was walk by and pull some of the paperwork out of the company's trash bins and you could have all you needed for identity theft or credit card fraud. Of course, this raises another question: why was Radio Shack recording SSNs and credit cards in the first place?

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