But how about these Impossible Bottles by Harry Eng?

But. But. But...?

There may be spoilers ahead, so you might want to stop reading now…

Right.

Well, as far as I can make out, there’s no fakery involved when making impossible bottles. Everything that is in the bottle, has passed through the neck.

Take the three bottles above for instance. The bottle on the right looks impossible at first, but you could (if you had the time or patience), take all the cards out of the pack, unfold/roll up the empty box and put that in the bottle. Then using a pair of tweezers, reassemble the box, glue it back together if required, then put the cards back in one by one. It’d be a tough job, but it’d be doable I reckon.

How about the bottle on the left? It looks like the same kinda principle, but really pushing the limits as far as difficulty levels go. Put in the empty boxes, then the cards into each box. Thread the rope through. But if you look carefully, there’s a nut and bolt apparently going through all three decks of cards too. Maybe that’s an illusion? Perhaps the bolt doesn’t really go through all three decks?

What really intrigues me though, is the middle picture.

From the Puzzle Museum website:

Our venerable curator has gone nearly blind with a magnifying glass but has failed to find any sign of breaks or glue in this plank. It is a One Gallon Bottle and the plank measures about 14 cm x 12.5 cm x 1.8 cm thick. Even if one could use the key that is loose in the bottom of the bottle, the padlock on the bottom of the plank is too large to fit through the neck of the bottle.

So, dear reader, please put me out of my misery. How did Harry Eng do that?

Ever wondered what it would be like to be inside a stadium whilst it was being demolished – with explosives? Well, to be honest, no neither have I, but you can still find out exactly what it would be like now with this interactive video of the old Dallas Cowboys Texas Stadium controlled demolition (11th April 2010).

Just click and drag around whilst the building crumbles around you. It helps to turn your speakers on, oh, and watch out from above!

…and should you want to see it was like from the outside, a video of that was posted on the BBC News website a while ago. But it’s so boring just watching from afar, isn’t it?

And before you ask, no, it’s not a pair of old fashioned radioactive trousers.

Iridium Flare

Here’s the deal. There’s an enormous array of satellites flying around, high above Earth. In particular, I’m talking about the ‘Iridium’ network of communication satellites. Ever seen those clunky looking satellite phones with the big antennae on? Well Iridium satellites in low Earth orbit, just a few hundred miles above us allow those phones to function.

Anyway, there are around 60 or so satellites in their network, with a bunch of others in reserve just in case one of them does something stupid (like crashing into another satellite – whoops). The design of each Iridium satellite features two big solar panels and three highly reflective antennas. You can probably already see where this is going…

An Iridium Satellite

That’s right, as each satellite orbits the Earth, it will occasionally reflect bright sunlight from its antenna panels, causing a flare effect when viewed from a certain spot back on the ground. When the geometry is right, you see a rather brief, shiny phenomenon in the sky – undoubtedly mistaken for UFO sightings all over the world during the last two decades.

It’s actually all pretty logical when you think about it, and maybe it’s just me, but I still think that sounds kinda cool. With a bit of patience and dark enough surroundings, you can spot satellites as they drift over pretty easily, but I’ve never seen any making themselves quite this obvious. Fortunately, the boffins over at Heavens Above have worked out the path of each Iridium satellite and the relative position of the Sun and the Earth. If you pop your location in, you can pretty easily find exactly when and where you need to be standing in order to catch the best glimpse of an Iridium Flare.

They also appear to be pretty common, in fact, there’s one predicted this coming Sunday – very, very close to me indeed. I might just have to go have a looksy. Now if only I could work out which bloomin’ direction I need to be looking…

Hmmm. That’s not going so well so far, is it? Ah well, early days yet…

"Hoooooolmes!!"

Anyway, Sherlock Holmes was the first film of 2010 and I’ll have to say I rather enjoyed it.

Ok, so I can appreciate it’s never going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Hardcore Holmes fans will doubtless hate what Guy Ritchie has done to their hero – gone is the stuffiness, deer stalker and magnifying glass and in is the six-pack and loveable-rogue Holmes who seems to have a bromance thing going on with Watson. But yah-boo-sucks to the haters. At the end of the day, it’s a fun little outing with uber cool Robert Downey Jr making for a great choice as Holmes, Mark Strong who was the standout actor of RocknRolla and Jude Law as Watson. Meh, two out of three ain’t bad.

Anyway, old London town looks fantastic, there’s an intriguingly dark (if unlikely) plot that gets nicely wrapped up at the very end, a decent soundtrack, and a bit of gratuitous totty. Can’t argue with that. The action perhaps isn’t quite what it could’ve been and RDJ mumbles too much, but the rest more than made up for the areas in which the it lacked.

If ever a film screamed “sequel!!” at the end, Sherlock Holmes is it. And I’d watch it. 8/10.

It’s “bye bye” to Blogalism’s simple, minimalist look and “hello” to the colourful, all bells and whistles era. I’m sure you’ll find your way around pretty easily, but if you spot any problems, ie broken links or stuff just not working as you think it should, then please shout up.

If you’d like your own personalised avatar to show up next to any comments you make, just create a Gravatar. It’s pretty easy stuff and only takes a minute. It’ll also show up in any other forums and blogs you participate on (if they support Gravatars too). Bonus.

Anyway, I’m still not entirely happy with it, but I’m sure it’ll evolve over time just like the last incarnation did, but let me know what you think of the new look in the mean time…

Oh, and Happy New Year folks. :-)