May 2009 archive

May 28 2009

Say ‘Hello’ to my little friend

Bold Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax)

Yesterday afternoon when I got home, there was a visitor waiting for me. My wife had informed me of his presence prior to my arrival, so I was not unprepared. This is commonly called a Bold Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax). They are easily identified both by their relatively large size (13 to 20 mm long) …

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May 28 2009

O, Hai Internets!

Welcome to Relatively Unrelated! I’ve just gotten things started with my WordPress installation, installing related plugins, etc., so there isn’t much here yet. I’ll be transferring a couple posts here later today from my temporary blog location. My apologies for not having a good theme set up yet, but that’s what this weekend is for. …

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May 27 2009

Minimalist jet-powered flight

In my previous post I mentioned Yves Rossy. Most of you probably haven’t heard of him. As the video below shows, he takes a somewhat different approach than the base-jumpers. Yves developed and built a system comprising a back pack with rigid carbon-fiber wings with a span of about 2.4 meters (7.9 ft), powered by …

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May 26 2009

Did you ever want to fly?

Did you ever want to fly? No, not in a plane, or a balloon, or a dirigible. I mean really fly. I watched this video and thought that this is as close as a person can get right now to really being able to fly (though Yves Rossy comes pretty close too). httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9hh6F6blBs