Archive for the ‘Multimedia’ Category

Gallery: Top 10 Wired.com Sleep Photos, Decided by You

Oct 9, 2009 Multimedia

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The submissions for our sleep photo contest were all across the board, but none of them made us bored. Thank you to all who contributed. Here are 10 of the highest-scoring photos based on reader votes. You can view all of the submissions at the Wired.com Sleep Photo Contest page.

Above:

1) Sneak out of bed.
2) Play with everything!
3) … zzzzz.
Submitted by Rock

Photographer’s comment:

“Little guy learned that if he was quiet enough mommy and daddy would be none the wiser.”

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Balance
Submitted by William Bohne

Photographer’s comment:

“Kaduna, Nigeria, July ‘08.”

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A guy sleeping on the street in Akiba, Tokyo.
Submitted by Fred

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Sleep
Submitted by mikeDrzal

Photographer’s comment:

“21st and Sansom streets, Philadelphia.”

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Milk hangover
Submitted by Persio

Photographer’s comment:

“Caio sleeping heavily after a big bottle of milk.”

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The Red Balloon
Submitted by Ion Barbu

Photographer’s comment:

“Old man sleeping with a red balloon.”

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The Morning After
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer’s comment:

“The one who got away.”

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Sleeping In
Submitted by Amaury

Photographer’s comment:

“When my sister’s schnauzer had puppies I wanted this one. Sadly, she gave her away. That’s her mom in the background.”

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Sleeping Nature
Submitted by Fernando Paz

Photographer’s comment:

“On my way to Bryan Park in New York, I found this guy’s resting very pleasant on nature.”

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Road Sleep
Submitted by Dark Violet

Photographer’s comment:

“Somewhere around Newberry Springs.”


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Playlist: The Elements, Atlas Sound, Star Wars in Concert

Sep 25, 2009 Multimedia

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For a document that organizes the building blocks of everything in the universe, the periodic table is awfully dull. Enter science writer Theodore Gray. He spent years collecting and photographing samples of elements from aluminum to zinc, and his book The Elements is a loving reimagination of the classic table, detailing not only atomic weight and structure but also how each substance is used. Where would we be without brittle, iridescent bismuth, the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol?

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Music programming isn’t rocket science, but sometimes it’s wise to leave the task to the pros. This Chicago-based Web radio station offers more than 25 curated channels, letting you dive into a plethora of cleverly monikered genres like Au Naturale and Flux and explore music scenes around the world. Bonus: no registration required.

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Sure, you could build your own robot out of sheet metal and circuit boards, but that’s a chore—and the result could enslave you. Grab this $15 Japanese kit and you can make one out of paper in half an hour. Each Piperoid comes as a set of colorful tubes with holes and marks that make assembly a snap. Simply cut and slide the pieces together—no glue, tape, or PhD required.

Photo: Todd Tankersley

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You’ve seen the movies, played the videogames, and wielded the lightsaber. What’s next? A live Star Wars symphony! With Anthony Daniels (aka C-3PO) narrating, a full orchestra will perform John Williams’ glorious music, accompanying scenes from the films on a giant hi-def screen. The world tour starts October 1.

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At 14, armed with only a library book and mad DIY skills, William Kamkwamba built a windmill out of a discarded tractor fan and a broken bicycle. He used it to pump 12 volts of electricity—enough to power a lightbulb—into his Malawi home for the first time. Many inventions later, the TEDGlobal fellow recounts the story in this touching memoir.

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Every day we type in search queries without considering what they say about us. But what if our searches were not only made public but turned into a movie? You’d get I Love Alaska, a series of videos by Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug that use the accidentally leaked queries of a real AOL user to tell the tale of a cheating wife who is dumped by her cyberlover (tinyurl.com/czbm2n). As the camera pans over frozen landscapes, a voice reads her revealing keywords. It’ll make you think twice before you Google.

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Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne chronicles the ups and downs of his decades pushing pedals in NYC and abroad. Part travelogue, part cultural critique, the book takes us from Berlin to Buenos Aires, delivering historical ephemera and witty ruminations on everything from Jane Jacobs to padded spandex.

Photo: Todomundo

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Bradford Cox, the songwriter behind psych-noise quartet Deerhunter, ditched an album’s worth of material after it leaked online. Fortunately for us, Cox later reconsidered and revisited the tracks. The resulting set of dreamy pop tunes, featuring members of Animal Collective and Stereolab, is worth the wait.

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Derrick Comedy, a sketch troop whose YouTube videos of witty nincompoopery boast 75 million views, has taken its antics to the big screen. In Mystery Team, a trio of artless teens fancy themselves detectives and bumble along on the trail of a murderer. Hilariously, one “disguise” consists of top hats and monocles.

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Feeling stressed at work? Let Tengu reboot your mood. Created by designer Crispin Jones, this USB-powered device sits on your desk and lights up with goofy faces that lip-sync to music—or a harangue from your boss. The original model looked like an innocent peripheral when asleep; this incarnation features gaudy afros and glammed-up attitude.


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Gallery: Vintage Culture on the Line — Novelty Phones Recall the Past

Aug 11, 2009 Multimedia

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Putting a fart app on your iPhone does not turn the faceless gadget into a unique signifier of your individuality.

For true phone freaks, nothing tops a vintage novelty squawk box for making the kind of ringing statement that cannot be ignored, even at 20 feet. Just don’t try slipping one of these bad boys into your pocket: While most modern phones look almost antiseptically sleek, yesteryear’s weirdo handsets came in a wide variety of bold colors and unwieldy form factors.

Janet Lavelle, who runs the Antique Radio Museum in Oak Forest, Illinois, also collects vintage phones. She showed Wired.com her collection, the dozens of phones she’s picked up at garage sales and thrift stores. Most are modeled on characters from comic strips and TV shows, although some are even weirder than that.

Got a vintage phone of your own? Send us a photo, and we’ll share it with the world.

Left: Have you ever dreamed of ripping Garfield’s spine out? Well now you can. Bonus: You can use his spine to order a pizza.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

You can kiss good taste goodbye.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Someday, science will find a way to clone a dinosaur. With a phone embedded in his back. He will be called Tyrannosaurus text.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Kermit demonstrates that his legs are useful for something other than being fried in a little butter.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Juno had a hamburger-shaped phone. The other two we hadn’t seen before. We’re just wishing there were a vegetarian option.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

So here’s Olive Oyl and Sweatpea adorning a telephone. Where’s deadbeat dad, Popeye? Hopefully getting some speech therapy.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

How ironic. You buy a phone shaped like a Ferrari, yet no one will ever call you. Ever.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

“Man, I could go for a beer. Ah, this Coors Light will do the trick. What? It’s just a phone!? F.M.L.”

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

This guys looks like a Williamsburg hipster who dropped acid and decided to have a heart-to-heart conversation with a banana.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

I don’t know about you, but if I were calling in an air strike, I would prefer to use this Beetle Bailey phone.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Calling planet Melmac. Please come pick up your furry freeloader.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Cartoonist Berkeley Breathed’s master creation, Opus: Now he can sit atop your desk and wring his hands nervously.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

The best thing about Tigger is that there’s only one of him. We wish we could say the same for this rotary-inspired tackiness.

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Betty Boop is nearly as old as the telephone itself, but can the flapper look ever really go out of style?

: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Plumber, mushroom stomper, princess rescuer, Go Kart champion, communication device.

Want more? Wired.com readers sent us these. Add yours, too.


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Playlist: Spherical Ice, Day-Glo Brothers, Maru the Cat, and More

Jun 24, 2009 Multimedia

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The carefully hand-carved orb of ice used to chill our last Yamazaki single malt in Tokyo wasn’t just for show. As master bartenders there know, a 2-inch diameter ball of cold has a lower surface-area-to-volume ratio than a typical cube. That means it melts more slowly, preventing vintage hooch from warming up and getting watered down. Japan’s mixologists hire apprentices to chisel perfect frozen spheres, but if you aren’t so flush, pick up DIY molds (two trays for $16) from the MoMA store.

Photo: Tom Schierlitz

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Not all summer anthems require booty-shaking beats. On its vibrant second album, this Los Angeles-based quartet leaves behind its old melancholy new wave synths for upbeat slide guitar, lively hand claps, and wall-of-sound horns and strings. Somewhere between “Vacationing People” and “See Us Home,” we started to long for a little offline, sun-kissed R&R.

Photo: Emily Ulmer

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The NYPD once had a word for walking along this elevated railway line on the West Side: trespassing. But the abandoned tracks, perched 30 feet above Gotham’s streets and sidewalks, are being reborn as a surreal 1.5-mile-long public park designed by the landscape architects at Field Operations. Strolling among the trees and meadows atop the hulking steel structure feels like something out of a dream. Or a game of Halo.

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You may not know their names, but you’re familiar with their work. In 1938, Bob and Joe Switzer invented fluorescent paint—without which we might not have highlighters, traffic cones, or the cover of this magazine. Their enlightening story, as told by children’s author Chris Barton (with illustrator Tony Persiani), shows how basement tinkering can lead to scientific discovery.

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Ever lost baggage while flying to or from Heathrow? There’s a tiny chance that Luna Laboo has it. Over the past eight months, the art director has bought $227 worth of unclaimed luggage at airport auctions and photographed it. Her goals: 1) Capture what’s inside and 2) harness the power of the Web to return all 11 bags to their rightful owners. Recognize anything?

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Is it OK to eat Independence Day hot dogs on July 9? Just how dangerous is sun-drenched coleslaw? Ask Stilltasty.com. The site tells you when leftovers are safe—and when it’s time to toss ‘em. It also offers tidbits on whether condiments should be refrigerated (yes) and if that pizza from yesterday’s meeting is, well, still tasty (no). Those five-day-old wieners? They’re done.

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Inspiration struck artist Erika Iris Simmons when she spotted a bunch of cassettes sitting atop a blank canvas. Now, under the name iRI5, the Atlanta- based Simmons unspools the tapes for her Ghost in the Machine series and uses their entrails to create stunningly accurate portraits of musicians like Tom Waits, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert Smith. (That’s Ian Brown of the Stone Roses above.) See and purchase Simmons’ work at iRi5.com.

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Barbecuing doesn’t have to be a heated challenge, especially if you arm yourself with the right utensils. This seven-in-one multitool packs everything you’ll need to make your grilling seem more like chilling: a spatula, two-pronged fork, bottle opener/corkscrew, tongs, serrated cutter, and even built-in holder for a cigarette lighter. The only task it can’t handle? Telling you when to flip those Kobe burgers.

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Yes, we know that YouTube is full of cat videos. But this is a Japanese cat video. Starring an acrobatic tabby leaping in and out of a cardboard box. (He even has his own blog.) We laughed so hard we wept. Thanks, Interwebs.:

Two decades after This Is Spinal Tap skewered the music biz, the band has reunited—again—to record a follow-up album. Real rockers Steve Vai and Keith Emerson join parodists Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer on Back From the Dead. The disc includes classic tunes, plus new ones that capture the clumsy mixed metaphors and misogyny intrinsic to Tap’s comic genius. First line of the title track: “Give me reincarnation, or give me death!”

Photo: Art Streiber


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Artifacts From the Future: Birth Control

Jun 22, 2009 Multimedia

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Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look at this birth control inhalation system from 2029.

We’ll continue to create a new artifact from the future in every issue of Wired magazine, but we’d like to see your prognostications, too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years? Each month, we’ll propose a scenario and ask for your help. Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. Check out this month’s challenge.

The concept for this Found page came from readers Ellen Teig and Justin Crawford. Wired Creative director Scott Dadich, design director Wyatt Mitchell, contributing designer Walter Baumann, contributor Steven Leckart, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, senior editor Chris Baker, associate editor Catherine DiBenedetto, and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image.

Photo: Daniel Salo; Woman: Getty Images

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We imagine women of the future will be able to puff away worries of pregnancy with this postcoital contraceptive delivered via inhalation.

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The system is named after the famous postcoital glow, and it does actually glow in the dark for convenience. The drug is flavored to cool you down.

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Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, the company that first brought us the Pill and the Patch, is the most likely candidate to pioneer yet another mode of contraceptive drug delivery.

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Meloxicam, currently marketed as an arthritis drug, is also being tested as a postcoital contraceptive. It works by inhibiting ovulation (technically, it inhibits cyclooxygenase-2, which in turn inhibits ovulation). In short: no egg, no baby. It’s 100% effective in rabbits, which is saying something. If results can be replicated in people, it would be more effective than the Plan B pill (and without the menstruation).

The US Census Bureau predicts that the country’s population will top 370 million by 2029. Facing a 20 percent increase, we’re betting the government forms an Office of Population Control in the meantime.

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The news ticker warns about an epidemic infecting robotic pets, man’s future best friends.


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Artifacts From the Future: Chewing Gum

May 29, 2009 Multimedia

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Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look at gum from 2017.

We’ll continue to create a new artifact from the future in each upcoming issue of Wired magazine, but we’d like to see your prognostications, too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years? Each month, we’ll propose a scenario and ask for your help. Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. Check out this month’s challenge.

The concept for this Found page came from creative director Scott Dadich. Contributing Wired magazine designer Walter Baumann, contributor Steven Leckart, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, senior editor Chris Baker, associate editor Catherine DiBenedetto, and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image. Kudos go to readers BigFatChronic, jgombarcik, PRXstimulus, and Sparkus, who contributed to this Found Photoshop contest.

Photo: Daniel Salo; Face: Getty Images

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We imagine that Altoids® will branch out from its “Curiously Strong” line to create “Curiously Smart” chewing gum that temporarily boosts your intelligence.

Incredibly sour gums are all the rage today. In this Found, we predict that the gum of the future will be incredibly hot — so hot it’ll blow your mind.

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The product’s slogan plays on a line borrowed from Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben (“With great power comes great responsibility”).

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The gum is packed with stimulants that increase cognitive output. Aderall enhances concentration, and modafinil improves focus, pattern recognition, and short-term memory. RTX-451 adds the spice. We imagine it to be a milder derivative of the ultra-fiery chemical resiniferatoxin. (Pure RTX is 4 million times hotter than a jalapeño!)

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Curiously Smart gum super charges your brain. But once it wears off, you’re back to your normal self.

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The gum’s pungency can cause anything from sweating to hearing loss. But it’s the neuroenhancers that cause side effects like brain hemorrhaging and Tourette’s-like symptoms.

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Due to the drugs and the heat, minors will need adult supervision to chew Cherrybellum Explosion.


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Gallery: Oddities From NASA’s Massive Image Archive

May 28, 2009 Multimedia

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NASA probably has one of the biggest, most impressive collections of photo images on Earth. Its archive is full of the expected — shuttle launches, space walks and celestial objects — that never fail to inspire awe.

But while browsing this photographic buffet, the Wired.com photo desk uncovered some other nuggets, too, strange and often amusing images that inspire smiles, if not awe.
From jet-shoes to astronaut food, we’ve chosen some of the best or you.

Left: The sombrero-topped hombres picture here are the Apollo 11 astronauts being swarmed by thousands at a 1969 parade in Mexico City during the world tour that followed their trip to the moon. The tour was meant to show the United States’ willingness to share its space knowledge, and its space heroes. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins visited 27 cities in 24 countries in 45 days.

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NASA has long been at the forefront of technology, even as far back as 1947, before it was NASA. Here’s how things looked at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, where women performed mathematical computations for the male staff.

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This impressive looking projectile leaving its hangar at Michoud Air Force Base in New Orleans in 1977 was the first external tank for the space shuttle. If nothing else, it proved NASA need not feel ashamed in the boys’ room of the global space community. It contained two tanks, one for liquid hydrogen and the other for liquid oxygen.

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This is what passed for dinner in the Skylab space station, circa 1970. Unappetizing as the food may appear, it was a major improvement over the fare served up to astronauts on previous missions, thanks to the all-in-one heating and serving tray. Gone were the days of squeezing liquefied food from plastic tubes. Each member of the Skylab crew could choose his preferred purees and prepare them just so.

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Ham was the first chimpanzee launched into outer space. He was captured in Cameroon and eventually bought by the U.S. Air Force. He was the cream of the crop of 40 potential astrochimps. On his 16-minute flight in a Mercury capsule, he proved that astronauts would be able to perform tasks in space by pressing levers nearly as quickly as he could on Earth. After his flight, Ham retired and lived for 17 more years at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and then later at the North Carolina Zoo. He died in 1983 at age 26, which is relatively young. Chimps average 45 years in the wild and can live more than 50 years in captivity. Ham is shown here in a fetching space suit in 1961 at Kennedy Space Center.

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The guy in this photo is using jet shoes to propel himself around in a wheeled apparatus to mimic the zero-gravity conditions of a spacewalk. A description of the contraption was presented at an engineering conference in 1966: “Called OMPRA (One-Man Propulsion Research Apparatus), the device will provide a gimbals system for rotational freedom, a quick response vertical servo for this translational freedom … and a versatile maneuvering unit.” The photo was taken in 1967 at Langley Research Center in Virginia.

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No, it’s not Lawrence of Arabia’s troop of bodyguards. The seven original Mercury astronauts used parachute pieces to make hats and clothes during a 1960 training exercise in the Nevada desert. The idea was to prepare the men to survive in the event of an emergency landing in the wilderness. Pictured here, from left to right, at Stead Air Force Base: Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald Slayton.

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The Apollo 11 astronauts peer out from an odd-looking mobile quarantine facility aboard the USS Hornet as President Richard Nixon gives them a verbal high-five for their successful moon landing. Pictured from left to right: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin.

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The Launch Control Room at Cape Canaveral teems with identically clad NASA flight controllers and engineers in this 1965 image. The object of all the concerned faces seen here was SA-8, the first NASA mission to launch at night. The Pegasus II satellite, designed to detect micrometeoroids (tiny space bits that could potentially damage spacecraft), was successfully deployed.

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This transformer-esque contraption was the NASA 952 Lunar Landing Training Vehicle, seen here in front of a wind tunnel at Langley Research Center in 1969. A sister vehicle crashed at Ellington Field in Texas and this thing never went operational. The surviving vehicle is now on exhibit at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

See Also:


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Gallery: VW Shifts Gears, Going from Gas to Electric

May 19, 2009 Multimedia

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Eric Tischer woke up one Saturday and decided to build an electric car. The decision was just that easy. The project wasn’t.

It helped that he’s a gearhead. Tischer is the kind of guy who can take an engine out of a Mazda RX-7, stuff it into an MG Midget and wind up with something that runs. Converting his 1991 Volkswagen Passat to run on electricity took 11 months and cost about $20,000. Much of the time was spent figuring out how to build the inverter / motor controller. Much of the money was spent on batteries.

Tischer has put about 150 miles on the car so far. It hasn’t got much range and he says it handles like a boat, but it has been reliable. He gave us a rundown of the buildup and some specs on the car.

Tischer converted a ‘91 VW Passat with a blown engine. He found it on Craigslist for $1,800. The Passat is a bit big for a conversion, he says, but it’s aerodynamic and attractive. That counts for a lot. “It’s just a professional looking car with a beautiful interior, and something I enjoy having as a daily driver,” he said.

Photographs by Eric Tischer

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The engine came out in a few hours. The Passat has loads of room under the hood for an electric drivetrain and a pile of batteries, and the throttle-by-wire system simplifies the conversion. The engine was junk, so Tischer, a 31-year-old graduate of Chico State University, gave it away on Craigslist.

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The liquid-cooled Siemens motor came out of a Ford Ranger EV and cost Tischer about $1,250 shipped to his door. The three-phase AC unit is rated at 90 horsepower. Mating it to the five-speed transmission required fabricating an aluminum adapter plate and a coupling between the motor’s helical gear and the clutch.

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Homemade motor mounts secure the drivetrain to the chassis. “The AC motor has a very flat torque curve from zero speed up to about 3,000-4,000 rpm, and from 3,000 4,000 up to 10,000, it is constant horsepower,” Tischer says. VW tucked the Passat’s steering rack well out of the way, so there’s nothing to get in the way.

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Power comes from 24 Optima 55 Ah batteries Tischer bought at CostCo. Eight are mounted under the hood. Tischer says he typically drives 20 miles to work, about half of that on the freeway at 65 mph, then recharges for 3.5 hours at 10 amps, 230 vac. “This is roughly 7.2 kilowatt hours,” he said, “and the battery pack is rated at 16 kilowatt hours, so 20 miles uses roughly half the battery capacity.”

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Four more batteries are mounted under the car where the gas tank used to be. Tischer says he spent about $8,000 on batteries and the charger. He’s using a Manzanita micro PFC-20 charger that can draw up to 20 amps at 240 volts.

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Tischer designed a battery management system to prevent overcharging. As each battery reaches 14.4 volts, the circuit sends excess power into a resistor to keep the battery from overcharging as the others continue charging. The circuits cost him $6 apiece to build. Beefy 4/0 gauge cable and crimp lugs tie it all together.

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The trunk houses 12 more batteries – six are stashed under that white cover in the spare tire well – and the electronics that keep the car going. The green box is the Manzanita charger. The gray box on the left is the custom-made inverter / motor controller (more on that in a moment). The black box is a homebuilt insulated-gate bipolar transistor stack.

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Tischer designed his own inverter / motor controller because the unit used to control the Siemens motor is no longer available. The inverter converts the 312 volts direct current from the battery pack to 230 volts alternating current for the motor. It runs in “sensorless vector control” mode, which allows Tischer to control the amount of torque generated by the motor. Full throttle means 100 percent torque. Half that amount is good for 65 mph on flat ground. Tischer gives a detailed explanation. (.pdf)

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Tisher has put about 150 miles on the car so far. After five months of troubleshooting, he’s got it running “quite well” and has hit a top speed of 87.3 mph.

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Tischer says the Passat can easily carry 1,000 pounds, so it had no trouble handling the weight of the EV drivetrain. The motor weighs 120 pounds and there’s 960 pounds of batteries aboard. That’s roughly what the pack in the Tesla Roadster weighs.

“I’ve never driven a gas-powered Passat,” Tischer said, “but I’m sure it doesn’t feel like a boat like mine does. Stiffer springs in the back would definitely help. The ass end is sitting pretty low right now.”


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Gallery: Mount St. Helens Then and Now

May 18, 2009 Multimedia

: Photo: U.S. Geological Survey

Mount St. Helens today is synonymous with huge explosive eruption, death and destruction. But it wasn’t always that way.

The mountain was once the center of a thriving recreational paradise and prosperous timber industry. Take a look at what the mountain looked like in the old days, during the
1980 eruption, and after … right up to the present.

Left: Young women enjoyed this view of Mount St. Helens from the Helen Leonard Girl Scouts Lodge in Gifford Pinchot National Forest in August 1956. (Just to keep time in the proper perspective, this photo is closer to the time of the mountain’s huge eruption than we are today.)

: Photo: USGS

These Boy Scouts sailing on Spirit Lake near the mountain may have been trying to reach the Girl Scout camp.

: Photo: USGS

St. Helens’ pristine snow-covered cone, seen here from a boat in Spirit Lake, reminded many people of Japan’s Fujiyama volcano.

: Photo: USGS

The volcano rumbled back to life in March 1980 after 123 years of quiescence. The steam-and-ash eruption began March 27.

: Photo: USGS

Mount St. Helens’ colossal eruption on May 18, 1980, sent a huge column of steam and ash skyward, and mud and ash northward (away and to the left in this view).

: Photo: USGS

The initial blast of steam, other hot gases and debris stripped, burned and flattened trees that had towered 150 feet. The eruption destroyed 200 square miles of forest.

: Photo: USGS

Beyond the area of total devastation, tree trunks still stood, and some vehicles survived. You could shovel the ash off your hood, but woe (and whoa!) to your engine if it sucked this stuff in.

: Photo: NASA (Earth Observations Laboratory, Johnson Space Center)

This 2002 photo from the International Space Station shows the lava dome that built in the crater in the first decade after the 1980 eruption. It rises 876 feet above the crater floor and measures about 3,500 feet in diameter. The 1980 blast zone starts at the gray area on the north (upper left) side of the summit crater.

: Photo: USGS

Mount St. Helens erupted again from September 2004 to January 2008, building the dome in the summit crater. It’s seen here In October 2004, a period of robust dome growth.

: Photo: USGS

Dome growth slowed down, but the ash and steam continued, as in this July 2005 view. By 2007, the dome was the size of about 200 large sports stadiums.

: Photo: U.S. Forest Service

Here’s what Mount St. Helens looked like (from the north) when we were preparing this gallery Friday, May 15, 2009. You can check the latest high-def webcam view now.

See Also:

Gallery: Death by Volcano

May 18, 1980: St. Helens Blows Its Top Off


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Gallery: The Best Gaming Rigs Money Can Buy

May 11, 2009 Multimedia

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Recession be damned! Just because the economy has come to a screeching halt doesn’t mean hardcore PC gamers are slowing down. In fact, well-heeled fraggers are still buying elaborate rigs festooned with premium parts (like liquid immersive cooling systems) that shred through Crysis at 60 frames per second and often cost as much as a used car ($9,000!). Here are a few of our favorite gaming machines that have come hurtling down the pipeline recently

iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970

This camouflage-colored tower comes loaded with 6GB of DDR3-1866 RAM, 2 GTX295 video cards, an 80GB solid-state hard drive, and a Blu-ray burner. What’s more, it has additional storage for 1TB of data, and it packs a speedy Core i7 965. And at under five grand, it’s practically a bargain!

$4,230, ibuypower.com

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In addition to an Intel Core i7, Blu-ray drive, X2O water-cooling technology and 1,080GB of storage, it also flaunts an Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 Triple SLI video card for fragging speed that blazes like a solar flare.

$7,800, maingear.com

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Phobos is Greek for “fear,” or something. Or it should be: We were a little scared to take a look at the price tag of this rig after discovering what’s inside (and outside) its chassis. First of all, an 8-inch touch panel sits on the outside of the machine, letting you control performance of various components while keeping a watchful eye on the processor, memory, network and storage data. Inside the black monolithic chassis lurks an Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz processor, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards, and an MSI Eclipse SLI Intel X58-based motherboard. But don’t expect BFG to drop you once you have shelled out $8,000 (yes, eight Gs) on this rig. You’ll also get the rig hand delivered and set up by an expert who will make you feel like gaming royalty. Of course, if you’re that serious about a gaming machine like this, you’re probably already a PC expert of some kind.

$8,000, bfgtech.com

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There’s liquid cooling, then there’s liquid immersive cooling. The folks at Hardcore PC said “screw this” to the usual network of pipes and tubes circulating cooling liquid around high-performance PCs. Instead, the company opted to build an enormous tank, fill it with 4.5 gallons of industrial cooling fluid, and then drop the components for their finest PC inside. The results are awesome. The 100-pound leviathan clocks 45 frames per second in Crysis and does so while running whisper quiet.

$9,723, hardcorecomputer.com

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Alienware was one of the first boutique gaming rig makers out there and it’s still one of the best, offering smart, well-assembled machines for a relatively small amount of money. One of its newer models, the ALX X58 follows that tradition. The system, which is ridiculously customizable, can be decked out with an overclocked Intel Core i7 Extreme 3.86GHz with 8MB cache, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 video card, and a sound blaster X-Fi hi-def surround sound audio card. Oh yeah — and a sticker price that starts out a bit south of 4k.

$3,700, alienware.com

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The fastest an airplane has ever flown is Mach 3 (set by a Blackbird SR-71). Apparently Falcon had something a little quicker in mind when they hatched the Mach V. In production since the early ‘90s, the Mach V is completely customizable. If we were to assemble one it’d probably have an Intel Core i7 965 processor, 12 GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and maybe an ATi Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. We’re guessing a setup like that would also post some of craziest times on Crysis we’ve ever seen. Probably something in the neighborhood of 60 frames per second.

$8,000, falcon-nw.com

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Although not as famous as its more flashy brethren, CyberPower still makes machines that are very capable of dusting even the most well-appointed Dell. Case in point: the Gamer Xtreme XI. Entombed within the NZXT Khaos Black Full tower case beats the heart of an i7-965 Extreme Edition 3.2 GHz processor, factory overclocked to 4.0GHz. Also stuffed inside is an Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX (with three way SLI support.) And keeping everything chilled and quiet is an Asetek Liquid CPU cooling system.

$4,390, Cyberpowerpc.com


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