Dragon Populations Holding Steady

Comparing 2008 to 2009, we’ve seen catastrophic declines in castles, glowy magic and swords. Unicorns have seemingly disappeared, and even formerly sizable populations of elves, wolves and horses are in sharp decline.

Dragons, obviously made from sterner stuff, remain unscathed.

Context? Fantasy novel covers. This news courtesy of Orbit Books (via Making Light). Their handy comparison chart is reproduced to the right, but really: go read the original article. Sample quote: “The number of dragons on covers held steady this year. The dragon population seems to be in perfect balance – but we can’t tell if that’s because new dragons are being born to replace old ones, or if last year’s dragons are just really healthy.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

Cheap Self-Programming AVR Proto Board

There are lots of proto boards for the AVR microcontroller, and lots of programmers. This post presents my approach, which features easy assembly, off-the-shelf PCB, extremely low parts cost and a built-in USB-based programmer. Circuit, PCB and firmware are all completely Open Source. Read on after the jump for details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

Protected: Old Handle, New Blade

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


Tags: , , ,

AVR Dragon: Fixing Bad Fuse Settings

This post isn’t about the usual kind of dragon (if there even is a “usual” kind). The AVR Dragon is a gizmo made by Atmel, useful for programming their AVR line of microcontrollers. It’s relatively cheap (around US$50 at the time of this writing) and does many useful things. The specific application I’m going to talk about here is using it to “fix” parts when you’ve set the fuses in such a way that said parts won’t talk to simpler programmers. Details after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , ,

Sand Castle is No Defense

Sometimes, in fairy tales, building a castle can help you avoid being eaten by dragons. On the beach, alas, this is not the case. From the Harrison Lake Sand Sculpture competition, by way of EpicWinFTW.

Tags: , ,

Bay Area Maker Faire: Saphira

High-school students Sam DeRose and Alex Jacobson have constructed Saphira, a fire-breathing, Arduino-controlled animatronic dragon (named in homage to the protagonist of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance trilogy).

You can see her in person at the Maker Faire at San Mateo County Event Center, May 22 and 23. (Via Make: Online.)

Tags: ,

Teeth

Completing the set of digital medical imaging, here’s a set of dental X-rays. (Sorry it’s one big wide image; that’s as it was sent to me.) At least now, if something goes terribly wrong during my forays into Mad Science, the medical examiner can look to my blog for help in figuring out who I was.

The X-ray source for these images was a handheld emitter, which I didn’t have a chance to oogle as much as I’d have liked, but which I believe to be not unlike the Aribex Nomad pictured to the right. Technologically cool, and great old-school Buck Rogers styling.

Tags: ,

Protected: Scarborough 2010 Loot

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


Tags: , ,

With Forked Tongue

DeviantArt user toge-NYC created this wonderful white dragon with plastic kitchenware. Just look at it.

Tags: ,

They Both Seem Happy

Here’s an image from the Baje Nalozki Sagen Brauchtum (Book of Woodcut Artwork), courtesy of the image gallery at the Texas Wendish Museum. (The gallery is an autoplaying slide show, so I regret I cannot link directly to the source image.)

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, but I’m sure there’s a story behind it.

Caption ideas (even NSFW-ish ones, if they’re funny) are welcome in the comments.

Tags: , ,