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Las Vegas Hotel Implosions

Filed Under Fire | 2007-06-14, 14:01

On my first trip to Las Vegas last weekend, I marveled at the sheer size of some of the buildings on the strip. But I would have loved to be there to see the buildings get destroyed. Luckily the top ten Las Vegas hotel implosions are captured on video for your enjoyment. My personal fave was the Hacienda:

More hotel destruction

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Bay Area Maker Faire 2007: Divining Pod, NifNaks, and SRL

Filed Under Education, Fire, News, SF Bay Area, Video | 2007-05-23, 21:30

Wow, what an event. I only made it down for about half of one day and was astounded by the number of people as well as things that were there to see and do. Everyone and their brother who was within driving distance seems to have already reported on the event, but there were a few things I wanted to personally touch on that I found most interesting.

monochrom’s Divining Pod

The Monochrom crew was back in the states on their International Year of Polytheism tour this past weekend. Large balloons, a supply of helium, and small children contributed to an attempt at sending one lucky person to the heavens. To quote Johannes, it was a “semi-total success”. There are tons of videos and photos floating around, and monochrom has a good wrap-up here

NifNaks

Our friend Nifer has been in hiding, working hard on starting her own business, NifNaks, for several months. While we had a chance awhile back to peek at what she’s been up to, it wasn’t until the Maker Faire that she fully unveiled everything. She had her very own booth for the business that’s sure to take off. Of interest to most geeks out there, one of her more popular items was the Flying Spaghetti Monster pin. Her site, NifNaks.com, is up and live so those of you that didn’t make it to her booth can order your own felt creations.

The SRL Show

While there were a large number of things at the Maker Faire that were kind of dangerous (Tesla coils, fire sculptures, power tool drag races, and more) I don’t think many of them truly compared to the unannounced SRL show. They had several amazing machines to show off this weekend, including Hovercraft, Running Machine, Dual Mule and Mr. Satan Head. Destruction, noise, and fire were all the results of this show. Part of it included Mr Satan Head setting fire to a large ball that appeared to be made of cardboard, which burned ever so nicely. However, the wind started to kick up, fueling the fire and blowing smoke and ash directly into the audience. The bleachers evacuated, and people were forced to move away from the fence. This picture kind of gives you an idea of the level of smoke when they began to put it out.

Of course sirens were heard in the distance and the fire department showed up shortly after. It turns out that the event organizers impounded Mr. Satan Head and billed SRL for $6600 in cleanup to the damaged parking lot. Ouch. In addition, one woman suffered minor burns, however SRL covered both her medical expenses and “pain and suffering”. Laughing Squid has some great photos in their post about the show. We’ve got a few more shots on Flickr and Rick Washburn posted the follow video of the event:

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Rube Goldberg + Fire = Awesomeness

Filed Under Fire, Video | 2007-05-12, 12:02

I like fire. I like Rube Goldberg contraptions. There’s a Rube Goldberg contraption that uses fire. I don’t think anything else needs to be said. Just watch the video…

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Freeway Collapse in Oakland, CA

Filed Under Fire, SF Bay Area | 2007-04-29, 13:54

For those that haven’t heard yet, early Sunday morning (around 3:45am) a tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline crashed and exploded into flames (up to 200 feet tall) in what locals know as the MacArthur Maze. The heat from the resulting fire was so great that the on-ramp above the crash site melted and collapsed into what now looks like a Dali painting. Needless to say, this will have a significant impact to the traffic that flows out of San Francisco into the East Bay. Authorities are saying it’s even worse than the disruption from the collapse of the Bay Bridge in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Looks like a lot of us will be taking BART more often. Jason Schupp was kind enough to put together a Google Map showing where the damage took place.

More Coverage and Media:
CBS 5 (with video)
SFGate photos
Thomas Hawk’s photo from the morning after
SFist’s coverage including routes around the damage, aka take BART
Metroblogging SF also has some links
New York Times
Inside Bay Area

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Large Detonations and Explosions

Filed Under Fire, Video | 2007-04-17, 14:37

It started with a 100 ton detonation found via techyum:

Then we found another view of it:

Then we started poking around and found these:

How about a 426 ton one?

These all appear to be from the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) guys over in Iraq, disposing of weapons and explosives they’ve seized.

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Spelling Fire with Fire

Filed Under Fire, Video | 2007-02-28, 14:52

Text Mode – Think scrolling marquee without the lame LED lights.
Tracker Mode – “Draw” with the mouse or keyboard in real-time
Percussion Mode – Use the sounds of fire to create your own tunes.
Animation Mode – Low resolution animated patterns
Audio Mode – Winamp visualization in real fire!

I don’t know why we’re wasting time with all this writing, just watch:

More videos.

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