Flipping ship

The FLIP research vessel (Floating Instrument Platform) is the only ship in the world having the ability to flip from a horizontal position to a vertical position while at sea.

FLIP is 108 meters long and weighs 700 long tons. According to Alan Bellows, "when in horizontal traveling mode, the long, hollow ballast area trails behind. When it reaches the desired location, the "tail" is flooded until the nose sticks straight up into the air, taking about twenty-eight minutes to reach vertical position".

During the flip, the crew stand on the outside decks. Scientists and crewmembers literally walk up the walls to stay upright. Suddenly, the aft side of the barge becomes its floor. That makes for some ingenious engineering feats in equipping its bridge, galley, crew quarters and scientific laboratory. Even its head, or bathroom, had to be constructed to operate in a vertical and horizontal position.

Freakish bathroom - it has a regular sink and a "sideways" sink. When the ship tilts, the sideways one becomes the regular one.

Zoom World

Astonishing Flight thru the Endless World-

Awesome. Surreal artwork - your p.o.v. zooms in and in and in....

Oh, there is a massive Digg rebellion underway right now....

This is insane, all of the stories on the Digg home page are currently related to a HD DVD encryption processing key that has been cracked. Under pressure from the MPAA, Digg admins removed the original articles and then Digg users started rebelling in protest, burying normal stories, while digging up the HD DVD stories.

It’s a pretty fascinating study of how online communities can react as one massive group. I’m sure Kevin, Jay and the gang are working hard to resolve this issue.

[link]

Digg A lot of pissed off users.

Would we get busted if I posted the encryption code here? It's so tempting.

Bo Duke is selling the General Lee on ebay. The bids are already over $2,000,000. Crazy!

[link]

I'm a horrid skipper, so I'm sorry, but I have no idea if this was posted already, but I just got this on e-mail and wanted to share.

Speaking of the General Lee, my daughter decided yesterday that she now wants to always enter our car through the driver's side window. This is less than practical, since it's a Ford Focus (with doors that fully open).

Oh, that's beautiful indeed. And at last we have a place for Buffista Island!

I currently have Chumley attempting to impose himself on the laptop -- he's got an entire paw (a huge one) resting on the space between the keyboard and the screen. Just stay off the keys, honey.

As if my life weren't complicated enough... K has been diagnosed with eppstein-barr virus that is moving towards full blown mono.

Fuck. I'm not sure what to do. I called the NICU already since she was in yesterday afternoon, but now what? Do I need to get tested? What happens if I am asymptomatic and just test positive for the virus? What do I do with all of the fucking breastmilk I am pumping.

I already have soo much on my plate that I can't really contemplate one more complication. There's already too much for me to deal with that I can't deal with this.

Fascinating. The statement from the site owner:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

ETA, ouch Kat. I hope this passes without throwing things too off kilter.