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AELight Xenide Shines a Light – Almost Half a Mile!

October 31st, 2007 by iDunzo

AELight’s Xenide flashlight doesn’t look like much. Slapped into a blisterpack in a big-box grocery store, slung up next to cheap Maglight knockoffs and overpriced clockwork LED models, shoppers might well walk past it, unaware of its lurking, immemorial power.

But this thing is $500.00 USD. Why? Because it packs metal halide lamps similar to those used in fog lights, and projects 900 lumens almost a kilometer away.

Powered by a rechargeable Li-Ion battery pack, this overpowered torch weighs a stiff 8 pounds and has a fixed-focus lens and water-resistant casing.

For your money, you also get a bundled AC charger, shoulder strap and travel box.

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Google Celebrates Halloween 2007

October 31st, 2007 by iDunzo

Halloween, or Hallowe’en, is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31 and today Google gives us a spooktacular logo:

Traditional activities include trick-or-treating, Halloween festivals, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses”, carving jack-o-lanterns, and viewing horror films.

Halloween originated from the Pagan festival Samhain, celebrated among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain.

Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century.

Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century.

Source: Wikipedia

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Samsung Claims DVD Speed Record

October 30th, 2007 by iDunzo

Samsung just released what it says is the fastest DVD burner on the market.

The Super-WriteMaster SH-S203N internal drive can write dual-layer DVD discs at 16x, compared with current drives that top out at 12x. Speeds for other formats range from 20x for DVD+ to 6x for DVD-RW.

The drive is $80.00 USD and includes SATA interface and label-design software for decorating LightScribe discs.

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Apple Pushes Out First Leopard Updates

October 29th, 2007 by iDunzo

Well that didn’t take long. Apple has already pushed out some Leopard-related upgrades that reportedly fix issues with Keychain passwords, Wi-Fi support, Aperture and Backup.

The most significant upgrade, and the only one that applies to all Leopard users, is the Login & Keychain Update 1.0.

The update addresses a rather obscure Keychain issue that affects accounts originally created in OS X 10.1, but also includes fixes for those having trouble “connecting to some 802.11b/g wireless networks.”

A couple of commenters on our Leopard first look story and other posts I’ve seen around the web reveal that the Wi-Fi troubles have plagued a fair number of users. Hopefully this update will fix the problem.

The other Leopard-related update released today is Aperture 1.5.6 which improves reliability when recovering Aperture libraries from a Vault (Aperture’s backup files) on Leopard, as well as a few other small fixes.

The updates are available through Software Update or directly from the Apple site using the links above.

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Alaska Highway Opens as a Hedge Against Invasion

October 29th, 2007 by iDunzo

October 29, 1942: The Alaska Highway officially opens to military traffic.

Until the early 1940s, Alaska was a neglected U.S. territory. The Klondike gold rush of the 1880s and ’90s was a distant memory, and oil had not yet been discovered.

There were a bunch of trees and rivers and snow, but nothing really worth exploiting, so the vast wilderness was pretty much left to the bears and the hardy few who lived on the frontier.

Although proposals had existed since the 1920s for building a highway through western Canada into Alaska, the Canadian government wasn’t very keen, and the plans were shelved.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, coupled with their military incursions into the Aleutian Islands, changed things in an instant.

Suddenly, Alaska became a potential Japanese invasion route to Canada and the Lower 48, so both governments agreed that the road would now be built.

Military necessity dictated the route. It was a far cry from the original highway-commission blueprints and their more topographically friendly, meandering roadways.

The Alaska Highway — like the Burma Road for moving Allied supplies from northern Burma to China — would take little account of mountains, wilderness, water or elevation.

The U.S. Army assumed control of the project, and the Corps of Engineers — augmented by thousands of civilian contractors — began construction through the northern wilderness. By any measuring stick, it was grueling, backbreaking work.

A Canadian army observer remembers:

Those U.S. troops — I felt sorry for them to begin with — then was amazed at what they did. If you weren’t there, you just couldn’t understand it. I saw fellows so tired, they were ready to drop in their tracks. It was rush-rush-rush. Fellows were doing 18 to 20 hours a day on bulldozers. One was up to his neck in ice water repairing timbers in subzero weather. God, I admired them. Most were southerners — they’d never experienced cold like that. And in the summer, it was mosquitoes — like they’d eat you right there, or pack you away to eat at home.

In the end, the 1,500-mile highway, stretching from Dawson Creek in British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska, was completed in an astounding eight months.

In many places, it was a “highway” in name only, instead resembling a glorified footpath with stretches of unpaved road, murderous switchbacks and no guard rails or shoulders.

Apparently vehicles had a tough time negotiating the road, and traffic didn’t really pick up until 1943.

After the war, major improvements were made to the highway, and it opened to general traffic in 1947 after wartime travel restrictions were lifted.

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How To Survive A Zombie Attack

October 28th, 2007 by iDunzo

With Halloween just around the corner, here’s an informative video on how you can protect yourself in the event of a zombie attack.

Who knew COSTCO could be so helpful during a zombie attack?

Posted in Geekery + Humor + Videos | 1 Comment »