Fusion Energy Coffee at 7-Eleven

Michele mentioned that she saw ‘double caffeine’ coffee at the local 7-Eleven. Of course, I had to give this a try.
Loyal Cruft Readers know my interest level in strange coffee flavors at 7-Eleven is longstanding. This is so important to 7-Eleven, there’s a formal press release.


Sure enough, for those that can’t get enough caffeine in regular coffee, the option to double up has arrived. ‘Natural ingredients’? What exactly could that mean?

7 Eleven has added ginseng, guarana, and yerba maté. Wow, that’s some stimulation.

A typical cup of coffee is around 125 milligrams of caffeine, so a cup of Fusion Energy Coffee is likely to be around 250 milligrams. To put that in caffeine perspective, a tablet of No-Dose is 200 mg, a can of Red Bull is 80 mg, and a can of Mountain Dew is 55 mg. If you drink Starbucks Coffee, this is nothing. A small 12 oz cup of Starbuck Coffee is 276 mg. All info from the handy Energy Fiend site.
Of course the guarana, ginseng and yerba maté all add in a bit of energy. Seems to me that these herbal stimulants affect everyone a bit differently. Some people get a big boost from them, others not much. My best guess is that heavy caffeine users have their nervous systems so amped up, that they don’t notice much of the more subtle herbal stimulant effect.

Most importantly, how did it taste?
Fusion Energy Coffee tastes almost exactly like the regular ‘Executive Blend’ coffee. Just a hint of bitterness, similar to as if the pot had been cooking for a while before I got to it. Not bad at all. I’m a sucker for the American style drip coffee you find in diners and convenience stores.
Did I feel any extra burst of energy from the coffee? Nope. I drink about a half cup of coffee in the morning and sometimes a cup in the afternoons, so I’m not hardcore like some people I know. Running my Saturday errands sipping the coffee didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
I await 7-Eleven’s next coffee innovation.

Sony Execs must be crying

Upon walking into a Blockbuster store today, this is what I saw:


Playstation 3 systems are now plentiful, not reaching reserve prices on Ebay, and garnering nowhere near the demand of the Wii.
So let’s be clear, Xbox 360 sold more consoles since the fall of 2006 than Wii and PS3 combined. Currently, over 1 million Wii have been sold and they are still in high demand with none on shelves and still commanding premium pricing on ebay. Over 600,000 PS3 systems have been sold, but they are now languishing on the shelves, apearing to have tapped out the market place in around four months, with systems now reaching the secondary sellers like Blockbuster video.
Tell me again how Sony will “dominate the market” if people don’t appear to want to buy their consoles. The PS3 has nice graphics, but nothing else makes it better than a Xbox 360 or a Wii. We have all three at work, and no one ever plays the PS3.

Converting video to play on your Wii

The wonders of the Wii never cease.
I’ve known for a while about the Wii’s ability to show pictures off of a SD memory card, but only recently learned that you can play videos on the Wii directly as well.
Software made by Red Kawa can convert most video into the Wii format. The software is Windows only.
The Wii will play back Motion JPEG (MJPEG) video. Motion JPEG is an older video format and doesn’t utilize advanced compression algorithms. As a result, if you convert from an AVI or MPEG4 video, the resulting video will likely be much larger. For example a 174 MB Xvid file converted into a 667 MB MJPEG. That’s almost a 400% increase in size.
The operation of Red Kawa Wii Video Converter is very simple, literally one click. Then move the new file onto a SD memory card.


On the front of a Wii is the SD slot. Simply put the card in the slot and go to the Photo Channel. You’ll see the video(s) there and can play them.

The quality is OK, but not great. It’s nowhere as good as a MPEG file. Motion JPEG is inherently blocky, but does not break up at all in high motion scenes. It’s certainly good enough to watch.

The Wii lets you use all the fun Photo Channel tools, so you can draw on the moving video, pixelate it, or even do the puzzle from the moving video.
There’s no great reason to convert your video to Wii format, but if you download something you’d like to watch on your TV easily, this may be the answer. No media servers, DVDs, or other more complicated methods. Personally I think it’s great and sent Red Kawa (the same guy behind Videora) a $10 donation.

Lizard Rescue Service of South Pasadena

There are chores to do around Cruft Manor, one of the dirtest is cleaning out the spa. The spa died several years ago and for safety reasons, it is covered with a large plywood cover to prevent accidents.
After a few rains and nights of damp weather, the spa fills partially and becomes a haven for all sorts of ‘icky’ life. This morning I recieved the order from the top that today was a spa cleaning day. As a veteran of many battles with the spa water and it’s denizens, I was prepared. I lifted the cover and the earwigs, crickets, pillbugs, spider, and other went scurrying.
I lowered a sump pump into the water and fired it up. Next, I used the hose to wash things down and help dilute the dirty water so the pump could push it up the hose into the garden. Soon, all that was left was for the sump pump to do it’s work, so I went inside to goof off.
After a short while, I returned to check on the progress and saw this:


Yes, a lizard!
Obviously, the smart lizard found the insect haven and was getting fat on the buffet I had provided. Somehow it had fallen into the water and could not climb out of the spa.

At once, I called to the girls to take a look. They came outside and instantly the Lizard Rescue Service of South Pasadena formed and sprung into action.
At first I wasn’t sure if it was a land lizard or some sort of slamander due to it’s extremely long tail. After it set in the sun for a bit, it’s skin dried up as it soaked up solar energy, and I was sure it was a simple lizard. It sure has one long tail though, doesn’t it?

We placed the lizard into a styrofoam box and headed from the backyard to the nearby garden that borders on grass right-of-way near our house. Our thinking was that the garden and the right-of-way are not mowed and there is plenty of bugs of all sorts. Hopefully the lizard would agree. But lizards can’t talk, so we will never know.

Once the box was on the ground, the lizard just sat there, staring at me, not getting out of the box. I reached in and carried the lizard out of the box. I didn’t want to simply dump the already traumatized reptile.

Soon, the lizard was resting in the shade, getting used to it’s new surroundings. The work of the Lizard Rescue Service of South Pasadena was done.

How to do the electrolyis of water

Last month was Science Fair month and I helped Zoe show the electrolysis of water. For those of that never studied, electrolysis is the use of electricity to break down molecules in liquid form into their component atoms. In this case, we are breaking done water into the component elements of oxygen and hydrogen.
The circuit is fairly simple to build.


I used two 9 volt batteries in series to create an 18V drop. I bought a few 9V battery clips and soldered them to hookup wire. I then carefully wrapped the wire around one of sharpened pencils. The graphite in a pencil makes an excellent electrode.

The solder won’t really attach to the graphite well, so the wire needs to wrap around a bit and the solder acts as a cap. The electrical tape provides tension, keeping the connection.

The other end of pencil should be sharpened to expose as much graphite as possible.

When you have a tall glass of water ready, attached the battiers.

You’ll see the bubbles start to form immediately. The side with more bubbles is the hydrogen side. Remember that there are two hydrogen atoms for each atom of oxygen in water.

Seeing the gas appear out of water is impressive to people.

Water itself is a poor conductor of electricity. We added a bit of salt into the water. Salt water is a much better conductor of water, so the reaction is much more prominent.

Remember that salt is sodium chloride, chorilde being chorline. When the electrolysis occurs in salt water, the salt molecules are also split, freeing up the chorline atoms to make, you guessed it, chorline gas.
So when you smell salt water during electrolysis, it smells exactly like swimming pool water.
Here’s a short video to show exactly how much gas is produced from my setup:

Dear Flickrsphere


Take deep breath.
(Props to Alaina for the inspiration)
Yes, Flickr is making us old skool Flickr folk use Yahoo to log in. Many of you are acting like this is the end of the world. This is not the end the world.
You will recognize the end of the world by cats & dogs living together.
Besides the log-in name, you are also whining about being limited to 3,000 contacts and 75 tags per photo. If these limitations bother you, you are a fucking freak. Yes, needing to exceed 3,000 contacts and 75 tags per photo is a condition that only the seriously unbalanced are worried about. The Flickr people won’t tell you that, but that’s exactly what they are thinking.
Look, I’m old skool Flickr. Caternia herself personally told me to switch to Flickr from Photoamerica for this weblog. I understand the concern about Yahoo breaking Flickr, but nothing is getting broken here except for people that are a few Prozac shy of a pharmacy, kind of loons.
This ain’t hard.

I mean really. “OMFG, I have to use an 8 letter username instead of a 6 letter username! Grab the pitchforks!”
Everything is the same on Flickr except for the aforementioned freaks. To those freaks, I have no sympathy. Your requests are unreasonable. You are not losing your Flickr identity or your photos. You are simply changing your login in credentials.
Just stop with the “I’m quitting Flickr!!!1!!!1!” type posts on your weblogs. Nothing is better than Flickr for photos and you know it. You know your not switching to something else, so save your righteous indignation for something else.

A whole new level of Geek

My eldest daughter Zoe, loves herself some anime. As Loyal Cruft Readers may recall, we dressed as Naruto characters for Halloween. This weekend was the Anime Los Angeles convention. After gathering the approval of our family cosplay/anime expert Rachel, I decided to take Zoe to her first anime con.
Now, I’m been to sci-fi cons, gaming cons, all kinds of cons, but I had never been to a anime convention in costume to be part of the cosplay. Cosplay takes things to a whole new level of geek. I mean, I’m a corporate exec type, not a crazy cosplayer right?
Before I knew it, it was Saturday morning around 9AM and I was standing my kitchen dressed as Kakashi, drinking my coffee wondering if I was really up for this. Zoe was nervous in her Hinata costume and beyond excited to go. There was no backing out now.
Once we got there, I knew it would a different kind of convention as we walked in the door and someone yelled out “Yay! Hintata!” runs up and give Zoe a big hug. Zoe had to explain that the other girl was dressed as an older Hinata.
Within about 30 minutes, we were in the groove and I had been asked to pose with other people a few times. I was a bit perplexed by a girl wearing what appeared to be a bikini made of cotton puffs, wearing a mask like mine, and nothing else. She and her girlfriends were laughing up a storm. Zoe informed me that she was dressed as Sexy Jutsu Kakashi. It took me until the next day to actually find out what Sexy No Jutsu was.
Soon enough Zoe made friends with another group of Naruto cosplay kids and the rest of the day was spent following them around like some sort of ninja bodyguard.


We had a great time at the convention. I was a little bored at some times when Zoe was watching other kids play a Naruto video game while she waited for her turn to play. The highlight of the day was the Naruto gathering at 3PM.

Some of the costumes were fantastic in their detail and match to the ‘real’ anime designs. People put their hearts into this.
There are a lot of rules and procedures for the gathering and the immense amount of photos that are taken. More than once a teenager ordered me in and out of pictures and I simply obeyed. Who am I to mess with the system? 😉
You can view my set of photos on Flickr, if you want to see more of the gathering.
Overall the people were nice and inviting to newcomers. For many of the people there, the con is a place where they can enjoy their passion and noone thinks they are strange. Zoe is hooked and didn’t want to leave even after 9 hours. The next day she begged me to go back all day long.
The next big anime convention is Anime Expo in June (or ‘AX’ as we cosplayers call it…). We’ll be there, in fact I better go make our reservations now.

Six years of Cruftbox

Well, I missed the actual anniversary by 3 days, but six years ago, I started posting on my site as a weblog. I had been posting stuff on my site since 1997 in pure html, but I consider it a weblog when I started using software to post. Initially I used Newspro, since my hero, Lum the Mad, used it.
Take a look at the first postings. Hrrm, I was writing about video games and trends on the internet. At least I’m consistent.
The site came into being in 1997 as a family site, but in June 1998 I started fairly intensive work on detailing the adventures of my guild in Ultima Online. For the next four years, that was the main focus of my online presence. Cruftbox started in 2000, but most of my effort was on things like the Cookie Story, which in it’s time was considered hilarious. Just to claim the credit, I was basically blogging about events in a virtual world in 1998. How far ahead of my time was I, huh? 😉
While I wasn’t in the elite group considered as the first webloggers, it was still fairly early in the whole weblog thingie to have gotten involved. 1999 was the year that weblogging took off in it’s current form with people like Anil Dash and Rebecca Blood getting rolling. Cruftbox sprung into webloggedness six months after them. I’ve written about my theory of weblog origins, which differs from the idea that someone invented the weblog. Blogger launched in August 1999 and suddenly you didn’t need to understand things like CHMOD to have a weblog.
Looking back over the last six years, as you might imagine, I have enjoyed having this site. While I love my work, it does not offer me a great amount of creativity or chance to share what I do with many others. Cruftbox has been a way for me to put smiles on the faces of others. As the Dali Lama says, our purpose in life shoudl be to alleviate the suffering of others. If my weblog can even help a litlte in this manner, it’s worth the effort.
Despite what I just wrote, I still stand by my thoughts on why people blog. Even after six years, getting comments and trackbacks make me happy.
Things I’ve learned about weblogging
People at work will find and read your weblog.
Your friends & family will find and read your weblog.
People you meet will google you and find and read your weblog.
That being true, leads to:
Cruftbox’s First Law of Weblogging: Post only what you are OK with your co-workers, friends, family, and strangers knowing.
Consistently, the pages with the most hits are the following:
Loading Windows XP on a SATA drive
The Turduckhen
How to make a Smoker from a Trash Can
Images of GLAT – Google Labs Aptitude Test
Review of USB Coffee Cup Warmer
How TrackBack Works
In fact, the Loading Windows XP on a SATA drive page is the leading by far. Nothing else comes close. Who woulda thunk?
Cruftbox’s Second Law of Weblogging: You will never know what will be a popular post on a weblog, so don’t try to make posts you intend to be popular.
One thing that weblogs have proved is that a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words. Humans are visual creatures and seeing things is almost always better than reading things. Here’s a simple post where the story is OK, but the image is what makes it a good post.
Pictures, images, and graphics really help get your point across. Simply using other people’s images doesn’t cut it. Original images and graphics are what people want to see.
Cruftbox’s Third Law of Weblogging: Make your own images and photos for your weblog, because original visual content is what people crave most.
Lastly, I want to thank you, the Loyal Cruft Reader. Over the years I have made friends with many of you, enjoyed the comments and emails, and loved having an audience to share my fascination with junk food, science, video games, and technology with. Thank you for your support and continued reading.