[zeke]

But then those Germans are a strange lot….;)

One word: Lederhosen. Any questions?

[zeke]

Turns out it’s not just me and things have gone a bit Pete Tong.

I’ll bite. Pete Tong?

[zeke]

True. So long as the portrait isn’t of her fleeing the blazing house while she herself is on fire. That wouldn’t be legal, because the subjects cant be self lit. Got it.

[zeke]

Indeed — what about candles and other open flame?

[zeke]

…and they’re back.

[zeke]

In a word, yes. Everybody’s hosed atm…

[zeke]

/Yo’ Zeke, you may need to care about this…

Yep, thanks for the heads up. I ran some tests, and verified that the PHP is not sending any HTTP user string at all. The packet sniffer shows just the ‘GET’ request and request version, but there’s no user agent. Somehow, I’m still getting data on both the live and test sites though- the packet trace showed the image grabber is getting valid data, files are being stored, and I did a close on the test site and everything worked just fine.

So good news, FT is ok, bad news, it could be something on your end. PM me…

// Update: scratch that — what I was seeing was an initial grab right before the fark db started dropping piles of excrement. I’ll check again in a bit, what I was seeing was the requests timing out….

// Second update: original statement stands — not sending a user agent, getting everything back right. Could be something changed with fixing things, but the live site has been getting data without a problem since the contest was greenlit, so… I got nothing.

[zeke]

Is this a glitch or what?

schnee or Zeke can tell you for sure

Not it. The FSM is all schnee’s 🙂

[zeke]

Why? What’s on your mind?

I’m starting on a coding effort that, if it works and works well, will be something I want to give to the FT community as a whole. Testing it on Windows and Linux is easy, doing a build for OSX is more of a challenge as I don’t have a platform to test it on. I’m pretty sure there’s a number of Mac fans in the house and want to take care of them too 🙂

More details to come as the code comes together….

[zeke]

/Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain……..I am the great and powerfull OZ

Hey! That’s my tagline!

Oh, and, uh, Goober says hey.

[zeke]

This thread needs more fire.

Glass bottle full of lighter fluid with a plastic cap in a camp fire.

Useless without pics, or at least hospital reports of shrapnel damage.

[zeke]

I call shenanigans! That was only a 1.25L bottle of Diet Coke, vs 2L of the Diet Pepsi bottles. Use the same size bottle and same number of mentos (personally, 5 seems to be about the right number) and compare apples to apples. Part of the problem with a 1.25L bottle is that it’s so small that the reaction ends too quickly.

Also, were you dropping them in one at a time? Stack them up in your fingers so they drop in all at once in a straight line. It takes some practice, but gives better results.

BTW, if you coat them in a very light layer of vaseline, it slows the reaction down because the coke needs to eat through the vaseline. Coat, drop, seal off the bottle, put it down, and run.

Last, do not use beer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAcc8CPhlO4

[zeke]

Or if all else fails, buy a regular coke and a box of Equal sweetener. YMMV 🙂

Dumping powder into a carbonated beverage?

You won’t need the Mentos.

Need? No. But it works better, especially if you chop up the mentos into smaller parts, and pour the mentos bits and Equal in at the same time. Just hurry. And run 🙂

[zeke]

I think there is something different in the make up of the soft drinks over here as we dumped a whole roll of mentos into it. We are being jipped on the aspartame! 😡

Yeah, but if you remember your chemistry classes, too much of one reagent doesn’t necessarily increase the reaction if there’s not enough of even one of the other components. Without enough aspartame, the reaction won’t happen. If you can’t get diet coke, try diet pepsi, or something else, but make sure it has the aspartame. Or if all else fails, buy a regular coke and a box of Equal sweetener. YMMV 🙂

[zeke]

This was the peak of the eruption when we tried it! A rather large letdown!

Aspartame is a key part of the reaction. The number of mentos you put in also counts – the more you put in, the bigger the boom. Diet Coke of course works great. I decided to give Diet Big Red a shot on a whim, and was pleasantly surprised at the results. In fact, the first attempt at a shoot was somewhat aborted when I panicked for a moment and took my finger off the shutter. The reaction worked a little better than expected, and I feared the fountain was about to hit the light fixture above the table 😉

[Author]

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