- published: 04 Jun 2011
- views: 4923
Many people have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humour value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and of units that are widely known in the anglophone world for their humour value.
These units may or may not have precise objectively measurable values, but all of them measure quantities that have been defined within the International System of Units.
Most countries use the International System of Units (SI). In contrast, the humorous Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of units of measurement draws attention by being extremely old fashioned, and off-beat at the same time.
One furlong per fortnight is very nearly 1 centimetre per minute (to within 1 part in 400). Indeed, if the inch were defined as 2.54 cm rather than 2.54 cm exactly, it would be 1 cm/min. Besides having the meaning of "any obscure unit", furlongs per fortnight have also served frequently in the classroom as an example on how to reduce a unit's fraction. The speed of light may be expressed as being roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (or megafurlongs per microfortnight).
Quick demonstration of the 8 channel EL wire interface kit that I'm selling through Attoparsec. I have it hooked to an Arduino which is running a simple binary output. This could also have been done with a 555 and a binary counter easily enough. While I assume most people using the kit will hook it to a microcontroller, it doesn't really care where the inputs come from. Why did I make it? Because the playa is filled with el wire all blinking at the same rate. We can do better than that! If you want to put together an impressive piece of el wire artwork, this kit is pretty much the easiest, cheapest way you can get started. Find out more about it at: http://www.attoparsec.com/products/interface
Simple sweeping test of the Netduino driving the Attoparsec EL wire interface kit. This kit is great because it was inexpensive and utilized opto-isolators to trigger the triacs, keeping AC and DC voltages separated. After a little soldering, it was ready to go and worked the first time. http://www.attoparsec.com/products/interface/ I used 8 separate threads to perform the fading effect and triggered each one with the .Net Micro Framework "AutoResetEvent". This kept things simple and creates a nice effect with very little coding.
attoparsec.com @attoparsec
Gource visualization of attoparsec (https://github.com/bos/attoparsec). A fast Haskell library for parsing ByteStrings
This video shows you how to pronounce Attoparsec
A quick demo of how to align the mirror when setting up a Tim's Vermeer device. This technique uses a second, non-mirrored copy of the original photograph to eliminate mirror skew.
London Haskell user group, 24rd January 2013. A talk by Ben Clifford on Parsec parser combinators.
I made a chainsword prototype for Halloween, but its performance was not what I had hoped. I've since rebuilt the guide bar to include a tip sprocket and switched to low profile saw chain. As you can see, it is now much more effective when defending against pumpkin threats. How it will serve against zombies has yet to be determined. Next step will be to redo the handle to make it generally more sword-like in nature. Abslom Daak won't have anything on me!
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