bookofjoe

How to open (undetectably) a locked bag with a ballpoint pen

Makes understandable all the reports of things gone missing from people's luggage.

Unless you believe you and I are the only ones who know this trick.

Fair warning: over 900,000 people have watched this video since it was uploaded twelve years ago.

You could look it up.

A strong argument for hard-shell luggage without zippers.

Fruit Fly Brain

[The brain of an adult fruit fly, including every one of the 140,000 neurons connected by more than 50 million synapses.]

From Carl Zimmer's superb New York Times article:

It's smaller than a poppy seed, but packs tremendous complexity into that tiny space.

Over 140,000 neurons are joined together by more than 490 feet of wiring, as long as four blue whales placed end to end.

Previously, a tiny worm was the only adult animal to have had its brain entirely reconstructed, with just 385 neurons in its entire nervous system. The new fly map is "the first time we've had a complete map of any complex brain," said Mala Murthy, a neurobiologist at Princeton who helped lead the effort.'"

Other researchers said that analyzing the circuitry in the fly brain would reveal principles that apply to other species, including humans, whose brains have 86 billion neurons.

Now researchers are embarking on a far more ambitious map: a mouse brain, which contains about 1,000 times as many neurons as a fly.

Hongkui Zeng, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle who was not involved in the project, said that the completion of the fly map could help speed up the mouse brain project. Dr. Zeng said such improvements were essential to complete the new map in our lifetimes.

"Any improvement could make a large difference," Dr. Zeng said. "We can't wait 10,000 years."

Click here to view a detailed 360-degree video showing the many layers and pathways of the fruit fly brain.

The work was published yesterday in the journal Nature.

[Scientists have traced distinct circuits of neurons through the fly brain, shown here in different colors.]

Knife Block

Take a piece of wood.

Make two narrow wedge-shaped holes.

Dentist's Telephone Pole Flyer with Tear-Off Teeth

I love this.

Dr. John Mullally practices in Norton Shores, Michigan.

Feel free to give him a call (231-737-6453) and tell him how much you like his flyer.

'Industry' — The Soundtrack

I've loved this show since the first episode of Series 1; I'm chuffed HBO has just greenlighted Season 4.

From the beginning I've been enchanted by the music, not dominant but rather like smoke curling at the edges of the action.

I've been listening to it quite often during the day while working; in fact, it's playing right now here at bojWorldHQ©®™.

You can too!

Superb interview with soundtrack creator Nathan Micay here.

Lodge Cast Iron Skillet Rust Eraser

From the website:

Successfully restore any piece of Lodge cast iron cookware with our Rust Eraser.

This is the best tool to have in your arsenal when you want to restore family heirlooms, remove rust from a Sportsman's grill left outside too long, and so much more.

It provides precision when removing surface rust and tarnish.

Features and Details:

• Do not use on hot cast iron cookware

• Branded with Lodge logo

• 3.5"L x 1"H x O.5"D

• Easy to use

$9.99 (Lodge cast iron skillet included with orders from Atlanta's southern suburbs).

Not so fast, joe: maybe we don't feel like forking over $9.99 when there are prolly plenty other and cheaper ways to remove rust from our skillets.

For you, the Washington Post's "How To" columnist Jeanne Huber has some alternatives.

Her detailed response to a reader who wrote "My cast-iron skillet has rust stains. What should I do?" appeared in the August 2, 2024 edition of the Post: read it here.

Floral collar from a pit filled with funerary items for King Tut

It was included in a 2010 Metropolitan Museum of Art show, "Tutankhamun's Funeral."

The collar was woven from colorful herbs, flowers, berries and leaves.

According to Edward Rothstein's April 22, 2010 New York Times story, "The show's curator, Dorothea Arnold, suggests that [the collar was] used to adorn Tut's body, or else [was] prepared but never used."

Tutankhamun came to power at age 9 (perhaps in 1332 BCE) and died before he was 20.

That the collar has survived the passage of some 3,300 years (it was discovered in a pit in 1907-8, about 15 years before the tomb of Tutankhamun was found nearby) as well as it has is, to me, nothing short of astonishing.

Experts' Experts: How to Clean your iPhone's Lightning Port

From the pros at iFixit.

Introduction

Use this guide to clean your iPhone's (generation 14 and below) charging port, a.k.a. the "Lightning port."

If your iPhone charges intermittently — or not at all — your charging port may be dirty, which prevents your charger from sitting correctly. Cleaning your charging port may fix this.

This guide uses tools that you might have around the house, but we also sell a Precision Cleaning Kit (below) that includes some small brushes and picks to make your cleaning life easier.

Precision Cleaning Kit: $9.95.

Dog Mustache Ball Toy

From websites:

Go "Indognito" to the park with this fun toy.

For the pooch with a good sense of humor.

This shiny black toy is a ball on one side and a giant cartoon mustache on the other.

Dogs naturally pick up the ball, thus adopting an outrageously funny mustache.

Dogs also love to hold the ball in their mouth and shake the mustache back and forth.

Features and Details:

• Durable

• Non-toxic

• Natural rubber

• 3 sizes: Small/Medium/Large

From 12.99.

Where annoying people congregate

High on any list of things that irritate people are those who constantly find fault.

Even more annoying: that small sub-group who are usually spot-on in their criticism.

For those who enjoy cinema-focused nitpicking, there's Movie Mistakes.

It was started by British film buff Jon Sandys in September 1996 and is updated pretty much every day.

It's devoted to noticing small, sometimes huge on-screen FAILs.

[via Barry Newman's Wall Street Journal story]

Experts' Expert: Does Maple Syrup Need To Be Refrigerated?

The episode of the Washington Post Cooking Chat feature headlined above should really read "Does Maple Syrup Need To Be Refrigerated Once Opened?" since it sits on store shelves factory sealed indefinitely at room temperature.

But I digress.

A reader asked Post food writer Aaron Hutcherson, "Maple syrup — does it need to be refrigerated after opening? I don't keep molasses in the 'fridge."

Hutcherson's answer: "I don't believe that it *needs* to be refrigerated (I'm pretty sure mine is in the pantry), but maple syrup is best refrigerated."

Talk about... waffling....

Want a second opinion?

How about a third and fourth, from others who participated in the September 11, 2024 live chat?

Your wish

is my demand.

But what about my Crack Correspondents©®™?

Flautist?

Taylor?

Tam?

Anyone?

Time Flies Clock

Designed by Rafael Morgan.

Apply within.

How To Make Your Own Superball

So easy even a TechnoDolt©®™ can do it.

Ethanol + Water Glass = ball.

NOTHING IS WRITTEN IN STONE

DJI Neo — 'Our palm-sized drone for vlogs is here'

Even though boj is still stuck in the antediluvian Dark Ages of the internet, adding vlog features has crossed what's left of my mind every now and then for the past several years.

The problem for me is that even the simplest drone I've come across — Snap's Pixy (below),

which cost $230 when it came out in 2022 and is now gathering dust amongst my collection of failed/obsolete tech — was way too hard for me figure out how to use.

Here is a link to my archive of six (6) YouTube videos I made featuring Pixy.

After two days and many hours of trying to ascend a very steep — for TechnoDolts©®™ at least — learning curve, I was able to master getting it to return to its launchpad on my hand:

But I digress.

I just got an email featuring DJI's latest small drone, the Neo.

DJI is the world's leading drone maker so perhaps this new one might be different.

For $199 it might be worth taking a flutter.

I will have my CrackResearchTeam©®™ investigate.

Stay tuned.

Or move the dial, same difference in the end.