Smallist

Did Stegosaurus toddlers make these little tracks? I hope so, because the Stegosaurus is my favorite dinosaur, and I like small things. The tiny footprints were discovered close to larger stego tracks, right near the Denver metro area. Unfortunately, the jury is still out, and not of the “satan planted those tracks to trick you into thinking the earth is older than 5,000 years” variety. Ken Carpenter of the Denver museum said, “There were a lot of other dinosaurs running around at that time, certainly with these with these three toes and small, wide feet. It could be one of those other types. Let’s just say the verdict is still out.”

Others, like paleontologist Robert Bakker (who is mentioned in Jurassic Park, and possibly something of a showboat), agreed that they’re Stego babies. Nifty.

Benchmarking the ‘86 Mac Plus against an AMD Dualcore. Turns out when you just count basic tasks (spreadsheet, word processing, bootup), the Mac Plus wins. Among the more amusing statistics? Windows Vista takes up 15,000 times the disk space as System 6.0.8. Of course, good luck trying to browse youtube on this thing.

Sometimes, the fates reward the tardy druid. Today’s display of Manhattanhenge (or, as we must vociferously add, Manhattanhedge) was the real deal, despite being a day late. Clear of haze, Mr. Sun went right down to the Jersey horizon.

A word on these so-called HDR images: HDR doesn’t blend moving items very well, and I still haven’t really mastered the levels yet. So after merging several pics, I had to resort to layers and feathered selections to make this composite image.

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I hate the concept of bag clips, because they’re the sort of thing that collect ominously in utensil drawers, and which you can never find when you need, and which adds about 5 seconds of inconvenience to an impulse activity. This bag-folding demo could end the reign of the clip.

Via Lifehacker.

AutoBlogGreen reports on the French designed Air Car, which may be coming to India soon. The company, MDI, also makes the above “MiniCat”, an air car in miniature format for city driving.

The killer advantage of air is that an equipped pumping station can “fuel” it in 2 minutes, just like gas. (Charging at home takes around 4 hours). I would wonder how efficient the compression process is, and most importantly, how loud this engine is. The 100 mile range isn’t fantastic either, though certainly fine for a commute, especially if air stations became prevalent. And finally, I’d be concerned about heat: compressing air generates quite a bit of it, no?

More pics of the little beauty here.

First, this has nothing to do with small things. As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the phenomenon called “manhattanhenge”, or as some game show hosts will call it, Manhattanhedge (more on this later). It’s when the sun sets directly in line with the grid pattern in Manhattan, and it’s gotten enough press lately that the corner of Park and 34th was swarming with amateur astronomers and sun worshipers. Well, actually, bloggers and photographers. Every time the light turned red, they’d put themselves in jeopardy by running into the intersection to snap some shots.

I went one step further, I hope, by taking several bracketed shots and combining them into an HDR image. The best is above. I took a few other shots as well, below. The last one is just a standard photo.

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Purple running lights and flame decals will not make your car go faster. Very tiny tubes, on the other hand, can increase the speed of chemical reactions by up to 10 times.

A Chinese research team has found that inside a carbon nanotubes, metal catalysts perform that much better. And it’s not just the size of the tube — the carbon nanotube is unique in this regard, prompting the researchers to theorize that it’s the configuration of electrons that creates the effect. This could make ethanol fuel production faster and cheaper. The speed increase works for other reactions as well.

This team has a thing for tiny tubes. In 2004 they set the record for the smallest test tube.

At a town called Orchomenos, ancient greek pottery and statuettes have been found. And the best part? They’re miniature! You know how in Goonies, Mikey feels a bond with One-Eyed Willy over their love of intricate booby traps? Yeah, I’m feelin’ that.

The pottery is dated to the 5th through 3rd centuries BC, which puts it smack dab in the golden Age of Athens, from Pericles to Plato. It’s said to be offerings to the Three Graces, popular fertility goddesses at the time. I guess the Greeks didn’t feel that super sizing the offering would bring them more fertility. Or maybe they were just scared of getting stuck with a fat baby.

The Rome Zoo has some tiny new residents, hatchlings of endangered Egyptian tortoises (called “Testudo Kleinmanni”) found in a smuggler’s suitcase. More pics here. And the full story is available here.

If you’re really tight on space but want a VERY small garden, try these pet plants, complete with lanyard. They come in five varieties and need water every few weeks. Each has a little passive-voice mumbo-jumbo associated with it (It is believed that the goodness of looking after nature will be passed to the grower and their family), but I’d recommend ignoring this and just loving vegetation for vegetation’s sake. Some will require trimming, and some require more sunlight than the average pocket will allow, so be sure to let ‘em breathe every once in a while. And please, no “is that a cactus in your pocket” jokes.

Thanks, Michael!