The end of Spiral Island…
Giorgio write “Hi, with respect to the post you wrote about Spiral Island, well it seems that island was destroyed during the past hurricane season.” – Spiral Island was a floating artificial island in a lagoon near Puerto Aventuras, on the East coast of Mexico south of Cancun. It was built by British expatriate Richie (or “Reishee”) Sowa beginning in 1998; he filled nets with empty discarded plastic bottles to support a structure of plywood and bamboo, on which he poured sand and planted numerous plants, including mangroves. The island sported a two-story house, a solar oven, a self-composting toilet, and three beaches. He used some 250,000 bottles for the 66-by-54-foot structure. Spiral Island was destroyed by a hurricane in 2005. Mr. Sowa plans to build a stronger island in a more sheltered area. Link.
“The original Minix was an educational operating system – that actually served as the inspiration for development of Linux. MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system designed to be highly reliable and secure. It is based somewhat on previous versions of MINIX, but is fundamentally different in many key ways. MINIX 1 and 2 were intended as teaching tools; MINIX 3 adds the new goal of being usable as a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers and for applications requiring high reliability.” One of the nice things about Minix 3.0 is that unlike previous versions of Minix – it installs and runs just fine inside of Virtual PC. Thanks Brian! 
Here’s a pretty fun site that lets you generate your own warning labels with choice of graphics and text. You can make DANGER, WARNING and other types all with the familiar icons you’d expect. Fun for project and pranks. I might make a set of these and slap on products that have wacky DRM, like those Sony CDs. 
“The ideal time to install a home network is while your home is being built. It is so much easier to run all the cabling throughout your home before the walls are finished. This web page will describe the network that I installed in my new home as it was being built with a focus on the ‘How To’ aspect.” [
Shawn writes “Rhode Island artist Neil Salley makes interesting installations using his own home grown technologies for creating 360 degree-viewable holograms. Be sure to look at his TVD 360 degree TV prototype. I wish there was more on the site about the technical details- all of his inventions and pieces are refreshingly simple and low tech.” 
Might be a good DIY project…“This is the first laser-guided regulation-sized pool cue. When activated, the harmless visible laser provides a precise guide for lining up the perfect shot with pinpoint accuracy. The touch sensor on/off switch features both manual and automatic shut-off to preserve battery life. The set includes a 58″ two-piece cue with a secure microfiber grip and an aluminum joint and ferrule…” [
This week’s video from the Nation Association of Manufacturers is all about steel…“Try to live in a world without steel. Steel is sorta of the mother of manufacturing. For many, it epitomizes the history of manufacturing here in America. When you see this video, you’ll see that it really does epitomize manufacturing in that it is now as high-tech as the rest of manufacturing…From spectrometers that do molecular-level inspection of steel to lasers and high-tech instruments that calibrate and measure the steel in every step along the production process, there is technology everywhere you look.”