The Monterey Bay Aquarium – if you’ve never been or haven’t visited for awhile, I recommend you take the time to check it out. My daughter and I spent the day there and it was a fun learning experience for her (and me.)
Bat Ray in the touching pool
The highlights of the day were the touching pools with bat rays and various plants (like kelp) and animals (like starfish and sea cucumbers,) the sea otters at play, and the outer bay exhibit at feeding time for the tuna (this is a 3.8 million liter tank with a movie theater screen sized view.)
The exhibits are really well done and it’s easy to navigate, even with a three-year old on your shoulders. Check it out if you can.
Meatspace coordinates: N37.32.4 W122.30.9
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 1-0 Next up: Texas 9/9 5pm PST
Tune: Fuego by Alex Cuba Band
Technorati Tags: Aquarium | Monterey | Travel | Mike Harding Blog
As in the prior posts, the meta discussion and detailed discussion on phase change material, we’re going to delve into conductive clothing today. Conductive clothing is quite simply cloth with some sort of conductive material (most commonly a metal) woven into it as a thread.
A recent article describes a shirt with metal (stainless steel in this case) in the weave used as the principal monitoring device for heart patients; it is capable of acting as the sensor array for an electrocardiogram. If you’ve never experienced this, I can assure you that a shirt is preferrable to the adhesive sensors applied directly to the skin (especially if you’re hirsute like me…)
Another common use of conductive clothing is in the electric powerline maintenance business. These brave souls work with live high voltage powerlines (up to 800kV AC) to perform preventative maintenance and repairs as necessary. A clothing shell with conductive material coupled with other equipment allows the person to become charged with the current passing through the garment rather than the person.
An emerging use similar to the monitoring shirt mentioned above is the “smart shirt” by Sensatex. It’s a combination of conductive and nano technology where the shirt effectively becomes a system bus with multi-capable sensor arrays to track parameters like heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, caloric burn, body fat, and UV exposure.
“Smart Shirt”
Meatspace coordinates: N37.32.4 W122.30.9
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 1-0 Next up: Texas 9/9 5pm PST
Tune: Candy Shop by 50 cent & Olivia
Technorati Tags: Geek Chic | Sensors | Mike Harding Blog
If the Bucks play consistently like they did in the first quarter of this game, it will be a long season for their opponents. NIU didn’t give up and Garett Wolfe is the real deal, gashing the OSU D for 172 rushing and 114 receiving yards. Our D will have to show improvement for next week’s opponent, the University of Texas at home (Austin, Texas.)
Aside from a masterful performance by the offense overall and by Troy Smith in particular, there are two major concerns for next week’s game. Rushing defense and place kicking. Neither showed well today.
Congrats to the Scarlet and Gray on their first victory of the season.
Meatspace coordinates: N37.32.4 W122.30.9
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 1-0
Tune: Three Sunrises by U2
Technorati Tags: College Football | Ohio State University | Mike Harding Blog
In a mere 5 hours the Buckeyes will start the 2006 season. Wahoo!
Here’s a little light reading courtesy of the blog “Men of Scarlet and Gray” with a nifty little Carson knock-off, Tressnac The Magnificent! Enjoy. I got a real chuckle out of this one, of course I always enjoyed Carnac too…
See you on the other side of the game. GO BUCKS!
Meatspace coordinates: N37.32.4 W122.30.9
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 0-0
Tune: A Pirate Looks at Forty by Jimmy Buffet
Technorati Tags: College Football | Ohio State University | Mike Harding Blog
Last night saw the first D-IA college football games. There were a couple of good ones, a potential upsets (didn’t happen,) and a reminder that it’s early in the season.
First, hats off to the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks. For 3 quarters, they had the look of a I-AA team playing like a I-A team holding the Arizona State Sun Devils even at 14 a piece. But for two missed field goals, they could have been in the lead. This was one of those games where NAU was supposed to come in as cannon fodder so ASU could warm up for the real schedule. While the final score was 35-14 with ASU winning, the game was much much closer than the score indicates. Also, a tip of the hat to ASU – the team never gave up and did pull out the win.
Next, how ’bout those Rockets? University of Toledo Rockets that is. They traveled to Big 12 country to serve as a warm-up game for the Iowa State Cyclones. Didn’t quite work out the way it was scheduled for ISU with Toledo pushing them to 3 overtime periods and finally winning when UT couldn’t convert the 2 point try at the end. Look out MAC, I think Toledo will have something to say about the championship this year.
Finally, a glimpse at the SEC with “Ol’ Ballcoach” Spurrier and the Gamecocks of South Carolina taking on the Mississippi State Bulldogs. It was a sloppy, sloppy game with USC pulling off the shutout. Now, does that mean USC’s defense is really good or that MSU’s offense is really bad? Last year, MSU’s offense ranked 113th out of 119 teams…..I’ll go with bad offense. Meanwhile, MSU seems to have had some improvement on defense holding the Gamecocks to 15 points.
What do we take away from this? It’s early in the season and things are bound to be different than the preseason hype and expectations. There will be upsets, teams won’t perform as anticipated, there will be injuries, new stars will emerge most of us don’t know yet, and early on, the play will be sloppy (see Florida State vs. Miami 2005 edition, and I’ll bet 2006 edition.) I won’t be surprised if Northern Illinois tests Ohio State for 3 quarters tomorrow either – one things sure, they’re not going to simply lay down and quit (nor would we want the Huskies to do so.) The story tomorrow will be how the “green” OSU defense performs against a pretty talented offensive unit from NIU. Prediction: OSU 31-23 (OSU is favored by 18.)
Meatspace coordinates: N37.32.4 W122.30.9
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 0-0
Tune: Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson
Technorati Tags: College Football | Ohio State University | Northern Illinois University | Mike Harding Blog
