Over the last few days the server I host MM on has started crashing randomly. I’m not really sure why, but I’ve been planning on moving the site to another host anyway. So this seems like a pretty good reason to do it. However, I’m a bit busy with work this week (the kind that pays the bills) so I might not be able to get everything migrated until sometime next week.

Until then, the site will probably be down sporadically. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hey everyone. I’m back from Vacation. TAM London was great and I managed to score a fantastic tour of CERN. Really the whole trip was fantastic.

I’m still trying to catch up at work, but I should have some new posts up in the next day or so.

I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow. I’ll be heading to NYC to visit my family and then over to Europe. My current itinerary is:

• 10/12-10/15 – Amsterdam – No specific plans, I’ve just always wanted to go. They have a museum of torture devices and another entirely of paintings of cats. It’s possible these are the same museum.
• 10/16 -10/18 – I’ll be at TAM London. TAM8 in Vegas was a lot of fun, but I rather despise Vegas. TAM London has an amazing speakers list, an awesome city and a much better graphic designer.
• 10/19-10/20 – Geneva – I’m going to take a tour of CERN. Actually the whole impetus for this trip was that I really want to take a tour of the LHC. Sadly, they’re not giving tours of it right now. I suppose that has something to do with it being turned on and all. I’m still psyched to tour CERN though. Maybe I’ll get to see the actual office where Tim Berners-Lee invented the blink tag. It’s pretty crazy; you have to reserve a spot three months ahead of time. I discovered this last month. Luckily someone canceled so a space opened up. If you work at CERN and can get me in to see of any part of the LHC I will be your best friend forever.
• 10/21-10/21+x – I’m not sure. I was thinking either Berlin, or Munich. Berlin sounds great, but Munich is on the way and has the biggest science museum on the planet. Then maybe Marseilles? Suggestions?
• 10/21x+n -10/29 – Valencia/Barcelona – again, not sure what I’m going to do, just always sounded nice. Then I fly home.

If you’re going to be in one of those cities at the same time as me and would like to grab a drink, send me an email. Also, if anyone has any tips or suggestions I’d love to hear them, either in the comments or via email.

If you’re interested in how my trip is going, I’ll be posting updates to my twitter feed (@shopsinc).

I’ve queued up a bunch of new posts, so there should be fresh content on the site pretty much every day that I’m gone.

See you in November!

I’m going to be in Las Vegas at TAM 8 for the next couple of days so posting will be a bit light. (Lack of posts last week was due to a delightfully incapacitating case of strep throat.)

If anyone else on the site is attending and wants to meet up for a drink, drop me a line

I thoroughly enjoyed this gallery, especially the TV glasses and the illuminated tires.

Want to test how well you know this site? How many of the inventions in this list have I posted here in the past?

I’m moving this week to Portland, OR and I’m not sure I’m going to get a chance to post much.

Updates to the site will be probably be sporadic or entirely absent until I get up and running again next week.

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of weeks. I’ve been on vacation, but I’m back now. On with the show.

Thanks for the support everyone. Rest assured that I’m going to keep working on the site. I have lots of great stuff coming up, so be sure to stick around.

Oh, and I thought you all would think this email I got yesterday was pretty funny all things considered:

Hi Charlie:

I’m an editor at PopSci and got your e-mail from my colleague [redacted to protect the innocent]. I’m looking to use a couple of images from old issues of the magazine in an upcoming issue, and he mentioned that you might have high-res files you could send. (All our archives are on Google Books now, but I don’t think the files are high-res enough.) These are the two: …

Wow. Google just released full indexed scans of every Popular Science and Popular Mechanics issue online as part of Google Book Search.

This is really great, but it does mean that I have a lot of magazines it would be pointless to scan. It also means that I need to decide what direction to take the site.

What do you guys think I should do? Stick with more obscure magazines? They don’t seem to have Modern Mechanix or Mechanix Illustrated… yet. Or link to articles in their archive?

They did a pretty amazing job with this and I’m really curious to find out how they actually scanned those mags. The old PS and PM issues have really thick spines that are very hard to keep open and photograph. I wonder if they cut the pages out or something.

Some of you might remember this article I posted a few years ago that had plans to build a Mahogany sports car.

Well, someone actually built one and it’s for sale at the St. Louis Car Museum

via Hemmings Auto Blog

My desktop is currently dead. I’m not sure if I’m only going to have to reinstall the OS or get a new drive. Either way, posting is going to be a bit light for the next few days. Today you get one post that was left over from last night.

Oh yeah, I forgot about it, but on Oct 15th the site entered it’s fourth year. A few approximate stats:

• 5000 posts
• 8,500,000 page views in the last year.
• 19,000,000 total page views.
• 13,000 comments
• 2.8 million spam comments (seriously)

Here’s a video from The New York Times of my dad making Mac and Cheese Pancakes. Not remotely relevant to the site but it’s cute and I felt like plugging his book.

Update: For some reason the you tube player was crashing PC IE. I have no idea what I could have done to cause that, but I’ve taken it out. If you want to see the movie, click here.

I’m going to try to post a few recipes later this week.

Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin