Came across this priceless video of the current Macau SAR’s chief executive, Mr. Fernando Chui, being sworn in. His Mandarin is unbearably bad, so some prankster had taken the liberty and subtitled it with just about the worse words one can use, given his mispronunciations. So he’s shown essentially in the video talking about fecal matter, pants not fitting, and a sick Dad frying cheese – to the Chinese President Hu Jin Tao.

My mandarin isn’t perfect, but if I’m the chief executive, I’d at least learn how to say my own name, the place I’m running, and the place I report to correctly.

And on the note of good Mandarin speaker, here’s a clip of the Australian PM Kevin Rudd at APEC2007.

Boys with Toys

Came across Vrogy’s photo stream on Flickr. What do you do when you mix a CAD guy, a CNC mill and a cosplaying geek? A website where you can download Solidworks model of the Halo3 sniper rifle, among other things.

And speaking of boys and projectile weapons, here’s an old video of a Rufus Hussey, the “Bean Shooter Man”. Mr. Hussey passed away in the 1990s, so this must be (judging from the Pepsi cans) quite an old video.

And here’s a modern day German guy by the name of Joerg Sprave that designs some really out of this world slingshots, complete with compound ball bearings and load balancing yokes.

When you have a bunch of coworkers that relies on wit to prank each other. Better yet, when you can prank your boss, and he appreciates it.

Jared, the other Mechanical Engineer at my day job, also has a side business, building parts to soup up Evos. (Peeps, go over to his website, Binary Engineering, and give him some web love). Recently, to advertise his car, and his mad engineering skillz, Jared got a vinyl plotter.

Used to be that if you wanted a vinyl plotter, you were stuck with a Roland or Summa. These are the 800 lb gorillas in the vinyl plotter world – expensive, well crafted machines.

But if you think about it, a vinyl plotter is just an X-Y plotter with the ability to lift and lower a swiveling tungsten carbide blade. And the stepper motors and drivers required to drive such a system had come down drastically in price lately.

Enter the joys of Chinese manufacturing, stage left. Now, for < $400, one can buy a 24" wide vinyl plotter. The software's not as refined, and the cutter is a loud, cheap, affair - but it gets the job done.

And of course, what do creative engineers do given a new toy? They find a way to prank someone.

Here's a caricature of myself I found at my desk when I came in Monday morning:

And here’s a new door decoration for my boss. He owns a Harley, so we have a feeling that this one’s gonna be up on his door for a while

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