Fnord.

A marvelous essay on quartz, Seiko and LJ Bregeut.

In particular, the virtues of the 196kHz Seiko 8F56 movement, as seen in the Alpinist. All told in the form of a bedtime story with his daughter, complete with the ghost of Breguet and a tolerant wife. Well worth a read!

Oh yeah, here you go:

A long but incredible feature in the chicago tribune about oil, painstakingly traced from its source to its use, a filling station outside of Chicago.

Long. Well written. Unusually well researched and presented. Don’t miss it.

If the registration bothers you, there’s always a way around it.

A couple of months ago, I traded my trusty Seiko SKXA35 yellow-faced diver for this:

I originally posted a couple of errors - I said ETA 2688 and that it was probably cased in China. On Sep 14 06, Eugene Genin (US manager for Xezo) emailed me to correct me, so I’ll update this with his info. Oops.

Here’s his comments from the email:

The Legionnaire watch that you post is Swiss-made (there is no chinese casing in this watch).
The casing is produced in Italy where all 925 sterling silver cases are made for us according to our designs. Legionnare was our 1st series rolled out in 2002 for introductory marketing and now is discontinued. Movement in the watch indeed is unsigned Swiss-made ETA 2866 movement and watch was also assembled in Switzerland. Today movement ETA 2866 is discontinued. All other details of your posting about this watch are correct.

I’ve made a few edits and corrections in the rest of the review after reading his email.

You’re not paying the Swiss Price Multiplier, and you still get a good movement, sapphire crystal (not a scratch on it, despite gouges in the case), sterling silver case, good-to-excellent lume, and a nice clean readable face. That seems like a good deal to me.

I think Franck Muller came up with the ‘exploding numbers’ style, but you find them in every brand now.

Xezo is an internet-only brand, you can find ‘em on Ebay. (You can get them from their website, but the prices are much better on ebay.) I got this one as a trade for the SKXA35 on SCTF. I like this one, it makes a nice unboring dress watch with just a bit of panache. The handwind is a bit stiff, but the auto works well.
(As an aside, ETA movements prefer not to be handwound, except for when they’ve run down completely. Handwind causes more wear than the auto-wind from the rotor.) Non-hacking, keeps time to better than 10 secs/day. The tonneau case is quite attractive and slides easily under a cuff.

Since the movement is ETA, it does say ‘Swiss made’ on the face, although that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Guess you could use it for posing. I’d recommend it as an unusual, well-made, inexpensive dress watch that keeps good time.

I’m not saying any more.

The Saga of Number Five, which purports to be a real story about an Peruvian mummy:

Then, on one of his expeditions onto the flank of the Andes where he was digging, his crew discovered a series of mummies. They were primitive, and consisted mostly of bare bones, but by their arrangement and condition he could tell that efforts had been made to preserve them.

Four mummified skeletons were found in normal Peruvian burial position; knees to chest, arms crossed, in large ceramic urns buried in the earth. But as they were preparing to leave the site the final time, one of the diggers noticed signs that a large boulder in the middle of the burial pattern was not there naturally. His interest piqued, Jack decided to wait one more day for a cold cerveza at Crazy Joe’s Hostal and see what, if anything, was under the boulder. He should have left well enough alone.

The following morning, after extended efforts and calls to a nearby village for reinforcements, they finally got the boulder to roll. Sure enough, underneath was a final skeleton. Number 5 was clearly different from the others. For one, Jack could tell it was of a fairly old man, at least in his 50s, at a time when most people died by 30. All of the other skeletons appeared to be children or young adults. For another, the bones, when laid out, indicated a man about six feet tall, which was gigantic for that race at that time.

Didn’t Jack watch any Boris Karloff movies as a kid, we asked him later. It should have been obvious that somebody had wanted Number 5 to stay firmly in place under that boulder, and that moving him was NOT a very good idea. But Jack was pretty much a classic scientist, and did’t believe in ghosts. Not at that point, at any rate.

I do love the Dowbrigrade. Damn, he tells a great story. Go read it.

From Tao of Mac:

Think of [UML] as the modern equivalent of trying to ensure the hunt will be successful by drawing a bison on your cave wall. The big difference is that you don’t have to spray charcoal and clay with your mouth.

An amazingly cool article, about a photography book of subterranean Japan. Check out the Cockcroft-Walton towers:

UPDATE: History of Cockcroft and Walton, Wikipedia entry.

And this one (I assume its KEK), reminds of the CDF detector at Fermilab (JPG link, full pictures and story at this link.)

Update:

CDF pic from Wikipedia entry on Fermilab.

Very cool indeed.

Support found here.

Just installed, off to test.

Free, real-time traffic info, in addition to the already-killer-features of Google local.

Essential. Highly recommended.

Watch terms dictionary, more useful than you might think.