I finally broke down and ordered one, and an hour later I got an email from Cliff Stoll with a long series of photographs of him packaging my Klein Bottle – including the packaging and invoicing, with my name on it.
Get an Acme Klein Bottle
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#22these are made by Cliff Stoll, of cuckoo's egg fame.
Came in here to post this. This guy is unhinged by the way. He came in to give a talk in a course I was taking at UC Berkeley and as he continued to ramble on he noticed the students starting to glance at the clock on the wall above his head. He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something, then he stands up ON A CHAIR WITH WHEELS and pulls the clock off t…
I saw him speak in the late 1990s. He was absolutely a character, but also a fantastic speaker. Nobody was looking at their watches at the (well-attended) talk I was at.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#23these are made by Cliff Stoll, of cuckoo's egg fame.
Came in here to post this. This guy is unhinged by the way. He came in to give a talk in a course I was taking at UC Berkeley and as he continued to ramble on he noticed the students starting to glance at the clock on the wall above his head. He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something, then he stands up ON A CHAIR WITH WHEELS and pulls the clock off t…
I saw him speak twice. His sense of wonder is pretty unmatched.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#24From 2017, with contributions from CliffStoll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014218
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
How am I more fascinated by his warehouse robot than the glass bottles. It's such a great design/implementation.
It's a great robot! His remote controller seems a bit cobbled together, but you can easily use a $50 RC controller with a $5 receiver and an Arduino to control whatever you want with 16 channels, it's amazing!
I'm fairly certain his robot was designed and built before Arduino's existed. The barrier to building robots and electronics has come way down in the past 15 years.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#26I ordered one of these for my dad for Christmas one year, and as we live in the Bay Area, I opted to just pick it up from Cliff Stoll’s house. Guy was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met—introduced me to his family and gave me a tour of his workshop, including the robo-car he uses to retrieve the bottles from his crawl space. My dad got a kick out of the bottle but has probably since forgotten about it, so I think…
Did the same. Legendary.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#27I want to show a bit of appreciation for a website that loads in 50ms. Thanks for keeping it simple, Cliff.
Apparently it uses the rest of the time to send and receive spam email. Someone needs to fix this for him, just PTR records, SPF records and those sorts of things. Close down the open relay...
I am sure it would help him have more time for more fun things if he had some kind soul fix the email aspect for him.
It is sad that 'keep it simple' only gets you so far.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Came in here to post this. This guy is unhinged by the way. He came in to give a talk in a course I was taking at UC Berkeley and as he continued to ramble on he noticed the students starting to glance at the clock on the wall above his head. He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something, then he stands up ON A CHAIR WITH WHEELS and pulls the clock off t…
“Unhinged” is a pretty uncharitable description, and your “horrified” class sounds a bit closed-minded. Another way to describe the same is “excitable, passionate, and non-conforming”. But I would instead say “Cliff Stoll is a national treasure”. I’m super jealous of the middle school kids who got to have him as their science teacher.
I feel like the world needs more people like Clifford Stoll. He represents one of the last vestiges of the "old, weird America", from a time when "Think Differently" meant something real and wasn't a marketing slogan. Sure he's eccentric, but that's what makes him unique, and I tend to optimize for uniqueness when it comes to things like art, literature, music, and even science.
I read his book The Cuckoo's Egg when I was in high school and I found it vastly entertaining and enlightening. It's dated now but I think people could still get something out of reading it.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#29these are made by Cliff Stoll, of cuckoo's egg fame.
Came in here to post this. This guy is unhinged by the way. He came in to give a talk in a course I was taking at UC Berkeley and as he continued to ramble on he noticed the students starting to glance at the clock on the wall above his head. He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something, then he stands up ON A CHAIR WITH WHEELS and pulls the clock off t…
>He went off on a half-baked rant about how clocks don't matter and we should think for ourselves or something
I had a conversation recently with someone who was telling me how visiting Cape Canaveral didn't convince them of the existence of space travel. This comment is eliciting a similar feeling of despair.
Re: Get an Acme Klein Bottle
#30I want to show a bit of appreciation for a website that loads in 50ms. Thanks for keeping it simple, Cliff.
Apparently it uses the rest of the time to send and receive spam email. Someone needs to fix this for him, just PTR records, SPF records and those sorts of things. Close down the open relay... I am sure it would help him have more time for more fun things if he had some kind soul fix the email aspect for him. It is sad that 'keep it simple' only gets you so far.
>Apparently it uses the rest of the time to send and receive spam email.
Given his CV, that is sort of hilarious.