What do you figure this is?

So what do you figure this is? Is it a high tech barber shop? Is it a primitive game arcade? Is it a console for a security company? Is it someone's idea of a neat computer workstation? Intriguing .....

The Unknown Thingie II

I have a fascination with objects that I have no idea what they are. In a previous blog entry, I told of a story that I read of a person who collected mysterious unknown objects, and got rid of them when he found out what they were. He once found an object so intriguing and the mystery of it was so intellectually stimulating, that when someone told him what it was, he was devastated to the point of suicide. I am dying to find out what this is, but not to the point of dying.

I was walking along the beach a couple of days ago, and this caught my eye. It was washed up.

The above is the view from one side. Here is the other side:

This is the side view:

It seems to be made of some sort of plastic compound. It also seems to be part of something that the wave broke up. It is a part of a cell phone? Does it come from a boat part? I don't know. If you do, please leave a comment. I am thinking of trying it out as a spaghetti measurer. Whatever it is, it is a "holey" object.

Are there any guesses as to what this is?

An Anonymous comment said: It's a skateboard riser, it goes between the board and truck.

I think that he may be right !!!

The Unknown Thingie

I once read this piece of literature about a man in Paris who collected objects that were a complete mystery to him. Once he knew what they were, he disposed of the objects because they no longer interested him. If you were a guest at his salon, and you knew what the object was or did, you were not permitted to blurt out the function.

The story was a dark one, and if my memory serves me correctly, he found a set of objects of calibrated balls and some sort of apparatus at a flea market. For years no one knew what it was. These balls became the focus of his social life, and the source of speculative conversation at every party he threw. Eventually someone came and identified the objects as a primitive gravitometer to measure the alcohol density of wine from medieval times. The loss of the objet inconnu (unknown object) mystery was so great to him, that he committed suicide.

Well I have an unknown object that came with our house in the hills of Quebec. It was in the garage and it looks like this.

At first I thought that is was some sort of hammer. Then I realized that the blunt end was the same as the other end, but just broken off.

The other end had a fluke like an anchor, but it wasn't an anchor for two reasons. The first is that it is cast iron, and cast iron would rust.


The second reason why I don't think that it is an anchor is that it has a machine bolt on the other end and a groove that makes it bolt to a cross piece.

Might it be a meat hook? Could it be some sort of shoemaker apparatus? It really could be anything.

If you know what this is, or have a guess, please leave a comment. I am dying to find out what it is, but not dying enough to commit suicide once I find out what it is.

Mystery Plant Pods

Every day when I walk to the beach, I pass under a vine that reaches from a fence to a pole on the street. The vine is quite substantial and it has beautiful violet and purple large flowers something like a hibiscus, but not quite.

It is spring now, and there aren't any flowers on the vine, but there are huge pods on it where the flowers were. I picked a couple of them. They look like huge okra pods.

The vine still has some pods that are not quite dried out.





Since I spread seeds around to try and fill up the landscaped places with different tropical plants, I decided to open the pods and spread the seeds around the house.

It took quite a bit of force to crack the pods, and when I did, there was a cylinder inside. Cracking the cylinder yielded hundreds of seeds like milkweed with their own parachute-like attachment to fly in the wind. The parachute like thing was soft and like gossamer. I spread the seeds around hoping that at least one will take in the flower beds.

The Hottest Tee Shirt in Town -- Gone

Microsoft launched Windows 7 at the technology conference that I spoke at last week. I picked up the hottest tee shirt in town for geeks. It was a bit wrinkled. Was that an omen?

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to test drive Windows 7. I was stuck in the speakers hall and didn't make it to the workshop on Win7 and what it can do for me. I can tell you one thing. I am no fan of Vista. It has been problematic for me as a developer machine since I got it. I still prefer to do my real technical stuff on XP.

So I get this tee shirt, and I wear it out for an afternoon of shopping. The tropical heat and humidity made the wrinkles fall out. I put it on the butler in the bedroom. The other day, I was going out casually and I thought that I would wear it again before I had to wash it. The tee shirt has disappeared.

I know for a fact that it hasn't left the house. Nobody touched it, as the Lovely One was travelling to Paris and back to Canada. It is strange. But then again, I have used Microsoft Windows for a long time, and I am used to things just disappearing. Once again, Microsoft comes through in fine fashion.