More Tapes, More Problems: The YTSW3 Aftermath

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on my latest Yeah They Still Work (YTSW) video on cassette tapes. Many people asked to see my collection, so here are some pics!

The motherload.  Not as organized as usual, but the tapes go two levels deep.

i always labeled my mixtapes with a number.  I added the date for later ones.  Here's close to the end of my mixtape era in 1999.

I also labeled the backs with Title and Artist. if I didn't know, I just guessed

I also had plenty of store bought tapes ... Don't Be Cruuuueeelll

I always loved the font choices for album covers. This one is particularly fancy, especially given Bobby Brown's content

I'm a huge fan of liner notes, and I miss them from most digital downloads.

And of course, you get amazing album art!

Yeah They Still Work 3: Cassette Tapes

This is the latest post in my Yeah They Still Work (YTSW) series, where I review my old tech that still works and brings me joy.  

Do you still have your cassette tapes? I grew up in a family of DJs so I was surrounded by vinyl records and cassette tapes. In fact, I didn't switch over to CDs until the late 90s. I still have a subset of my favorite tapes even though the majority of my music is now digital.

Check out YTSW 1 on the minidisc (post and video) and YTSW 2 on the Double Dribble Tiger handheld (post and video)

If you can't see the video below, click here.

Circuits Are For The Children

I went to college for electrical engineering, which means that I made a lot of things blow up and risked electrocuting myself on my daily basis. Unfortunately even though I grew up as a geek, college was the first time that i ever interacted with one of these devices.

Luckily, parents today have much greater choices to engage their children in the wonders of electronics.  Littlebits is an awesome device playground for young children that I wish I had as a kid. As a matter of fact, I'll likely order one and review here because it looks very cool, and much more user friendly then what I had to use ten years ago.

If you can't see the video below, click here.

Happy Birthday Carl Sagan!

Carl Sagan is a major reason why this blog exists. I've been into science as a kid, but I always envisioned it as a niche, nerdy thing.  Carl Sagan showed me that science can be mainstream and cool because it affects everything around is, every day!  He directly inspires my #ScienceLooksGood hashtag.

Check out this amazing video from Sagan's audiobook for Pale Blue Dot. Sagan describes how humbling it is that the earth is nothing more than a pale blue dot in the vast openness of a much larger universe that we have yet to understand. If you can't see the video embed below, click here.

Happy birthday, Carl.

Sports Science: Basketball and Parabolas

I live in Philly now, but I'll always be a die hard Knicks fan. So when the Knicks were in town for a game against the Sixers, I was there in my Knicks jersey acting a fool. A fool for science!

Think of what happens when you throw a ball. After you throw it, it follows the motion shown below:

This shape is known as a parabola. The ball beings to move up, but then gravity eventually pulls it back down.  This doesn't only work for a ball - it can also be a person! If someone is jumping, dunking, or do anything that launches them into the air, they will follow the same basic path. 

Another great example of parabolic motion is everyone's favorite part of a basketball game - free crappy t shirts! For some reason, people go crazy whenever offered free t-shirts that they will never wear in their lives. Philly takes it an extra step by having a huge t-shirt CANNON. I don't use that word lightly ... here's a pic of them wheeling it out onto the court.

Yeah. It's not joke. I've seen it advertised that it can shoot up to 100 t-shirts per minute. Why that stat exists, and why I know it, is a story for another day.  But when you see it actually begin to shoot, it's pretty impressive. And of course, the t-shirts fly in a parabolic motion towards a sea of halfway inebriated fans that will break your neck to catch a future dust rag.  You can check it out in action in the video that I posted at the beginning of this thread.