Conrad Sighed Heavily
Because I'm going to have to explain that title, and how clever and amusing it is, which will automatically suck all the humour and wit out of it, as there is no mosquito that drains both as quickly as Having To Explain A Joke <sighs at the wretchedness of life>. Art!
Tom Conti in his younger days
It was a television series that followed the lives of a group of Cambridge undergraduates, which might sound underwhelming were it not for the presence of Tom, who is always a worthy watch.
We shall now shift abruptly in topic, and switch instead to NASA and their Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where they assemble all their spacecraft and robots and rovers, including the Curiosity one. Art!
Why is this important? Because this is where Mark Rober worked for nine year, including assembly of the Curiosity rover. The guy is an engineer of some talent, and a sense of curiosity about the world. Art!
Here you see him with his devilish invention, the Glitterbomb Mark 3. Mark had a package stolen from his front porch a couple of years ago, which stoked up his righteous anger to such an extent that he created the Glitterbomb. Over the years this has been refined and gradually perfected, with the end result still being the same. Art!
 |
| Bombed with glitter |
What he calls 'porch piracy' is a serious problem in South Canada, with 2 million parcels being stolen per annum. Faced with the temptation of such an object, Mark et al found that 97% of people either actively ignore a parcel, or try to get it to the rightful owner. That other 3%, though ...
Anyway, let us take a look at the insanely complex construction and engineering that goes into a GB3. Art!
 |
| The GB3 and the fake earphones box it goes in |
When wrapped in brown paper it looks completely legitimate, and enticing bait for porch pirates. Let us look at the details in more depth. Art!
That cup on the top spins at 1,400 revolutions per minutes, and is loaded with half a pound of glitter. When it spins the glitter, of course - obviously! - gets everywhere, both on the thief and wherever they open it. You can't really see it very well in the "Bombed with glitter" photo but the thief's lower body has been covered in small shiny pieces. Art!
The underside of the 'handles', which are deliberately designed to look inviting and highly grippable, are coated with an hideously sticky adhesive that makes letting go hard to do (why that sounds like a song lyric). Then there's the interior.
There are four phones placed one to each face, meaning that no matter how the GB3 is oriented when the thief opens it, they are going to be in view front and centre. The phones also allow Team GB3 to track the GB3 down when the thief panics and throws it away in a nearby dumpster, and come pre-loaded with phrases from "Home Alone" such as "Merry Christmas ya filthy animal!", mock police scanner playback and in fact anything Mark feels like ad libbing on the spur of the moment*. Art!
Those little bottles contain "Fart Spray" and the cam above them rotates constantly, spraying out Fart Spray and causing an unpleasant stink. Not only that, Mark strengthens these potions with "Skunk Essence" which makes it even smellier and longer-lasting. Until yesteryon Your Humble Scribe had no idea that Skunk Essence existed, and still has no idea why it does in the first place. We're not done yet. Art!
Of course the thief will try to put the box back on the GB3, which is where the two small rods that spring out once it has been removed come into play. You can get a clearer picture of them in the picture with Mark present. Pretty obviously they stop the box going back on, all the while as it pumps out skunk-scented Fart Spray.
 |
| <sinister cackle> |
Conrad: Still Furiously Angry
 |
| Ideate a larynx |
I shall stop typing now before either my sanity or a blood vessel breaks.
"We Have Ways" Podcast 291
Ha! I remember way back to Podcast 1, when nobody knew if there'd be a Podcast 2, let alone 200. ANYWAY last night the lads (Al and Jim) had on Professor Joseph Quinn, an Irish academic, with one of their best broadcasts ever, about how the Republic of Ireland and it's citizens got involved in the Second Unpleasantness on the side of Perfidious Albion. It was pretty much all new to me, and delivered by Prof. Q. in an impeccable Irish accent that made it positively mellifluous. The subject is both deep and long and, as Al admitted, they only scratched the surface. I Tweeted both my appreciation and a request for a Part Two. We shall see!
The Prof, looking rather saturnine
He mentioned a book - but I dare not go there. I still haven't been able to shift that copy of Dickens to any of my workmates; Konrad (yes his real name) said he'd studied Dickens back in Poland but didn't want anything to do with my edition of "Nicholas Nickleby". Philistine. Of course, if an anonymous person were to Hermes a parcel to his doorstep ...
Finally -
Neither drugs nor book came today, so - fingers crossed that one or both does tomorrow.
* Some car thieves stole one, then went riding around for hours with the GB3 still live, until Mark sent them a personalised phone message. They then shot the GB3 so many times it broke.
No comments:
Post a Comment