It's almost Friday, which must mean it's time once again for 'and now for something(s) completely different'. And so we begin...

Long-time readers know that I spent a week in Taiwan earlier this month, as well as this same time last year. The architectural pride and joy of the country's residents is Taipei 101, the world's largest completed skyscraper (at least for the next few months). Geography buffs may be surprised to hear that such a structure was built smack-dab on top of the earthquake-prone Ring of Fire. Well, in-between the 88^th and 92^nd floors, in the center of the building, there's a suspended 660 metric ton (730 imperial ton) tuned mass damper. Thanks to Gizmodo and Make Magazine, I'm able to share with you this clip of the damper in action during the Sichuan Earthquake of May 12, 2008, whose epicenter (as the name suggests) was on mainland China, approximately 1,100 miles away:

Speaking of my Taiwan trip, one of my dispatches (along with a day-later follow-up) mentioned the controversy surrounding in-vehicle television viewing, specifically for front-seat drivers. Early last year, I mentioned Sirius's Backseat TV satellite service, which for perhaps obvious strapped-finances reasons seems to have made little to no forwards progress. AT&T launched a conceptually similar service called CruiseCast earlier this month. And satellite navigation provider Mio just unveiled a mobile TV-enhanced product with little to no safeguards against use by subsequently distracted drivers.

Taiwan again: later that week, I showed you pictures of some of the H1N1 (aka 'Swine Flu') pandemic-prevention measures in place. Unfortunately, as Slashdot later informed me, it's fairly easy to 'game' the system.

One day later, I shared snapshots and thoughts on some of the wind turbines installed along Taiwan's coastline, as a revisit of my late-2006 coverage of the topic. Check out this recent picture, courtesy of Boing Boing, of one blade's worth of a turbine being transported (and while you're at it, check out the size of the cracks in that windshield!):

And also check out the recently released (and intentionally over-optimistic, not factoring in NIMBY foolishness) estimates of U.S. and worldwide wind power potential, as covered at sites like Ars Technica and Slashdot.

Next, Apple's iPhone series. I mentioned last week that one of the notable advances of the latest-generation iPhone 3GS over its 3G predecessor was its higher-resolution (3 vs 2 Mpixels) embedded camera, which was also capable of video capture, macro focus and tap-to-autofocus, auto-expose and auto-white balance features. A nice evolution...but dare I suggest that at least one person's gotten a tad too enthusiastic with his Red Rocks Micro-based iPhone 3GS professional shoulder mount? This DIY tripod for the iPhone, on the other hand, is probably meaningful to a fair number of folks.

One of the features added to both the iPhone and iPod touch with the just-released v3 firmware is Find My iPhone. As long as the device is communicating with the Internet (and therefore with Apple's MobileMe servers, also assuming you've paid for a $99/year MobileMe subscription), you can send a pop-up message from any browser (such as 'Give me back my handset and claim a reward') or even remotely wipe the device's contents (which I would have found handy four-plus years ago...call me a visionary). And with the iPhone, you're able to dynamically track your handset via cellular tower triangulation (since the iPod touch doesn't have a built-in cellular radio, you're only able to rely on hit-and-miss-at-best Wi-Fi-based location). Check out Kevin Miller's ballsy account of tracking down a mislaid iPhone; the image of he and his friends running down the street with an in-hand laptop admittedly makes me giggle every time I think of it.

Wednesday afternoon's writeup pointed you to several product teardowns. More generally, there's the longstanding tradition of the 'unboxing', wherein breathless first customers take and subsequently publish a series of still images (or a video clip) of the step-by-step removal of the plastic and paper surrounding their latest precious, followed by an examination of the packaging contents. This spoof by 'Steven Frank' (with thanks to Boing Boing for the heads-up) is a classic. At least I hope it's a spoof:

And thanks to iFixit's user-submitted disassembly instructions service, we now know the proper way to teardown a banana. I do it all for you, dear readers; alas, there's no video of this one.

Switching gears once again, let's take a look at the sun, the subject of a surprisingly popular post by yours truly in early May (or was that Mayan?). Thanks to Slashdot, we have a possible explanatin for the dearth of sunspots the past several years.

And speaking of video, I'll wrap up with a clip of John Hodgman's recent speech to the White House Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner. President Obama was in attendance and, as you can see, bore the brunt of the 'nerds-and-geeks versus jocks' jabs. There's some partisan sniping at the very beginning, but feel free to skip past those bits if you don't 'lean that way':

Slashdot discussion predictably and quickly degraded into a heated debate over the difference (if any) between 'geeks' and 'nerds'. ;-) Hodgman, as you may already know, plays 'PC' in Apple's latest series of TV commercials. I, for one, think he's a pretty funny guy.

Happy weekend, all!