Tesla Coils + The First Law of Mad Science

From Biopunk:
And just how small can one get a Tesla coil these days? I will be looking up more for sure, oh great uberlord of the skies...

While appealing to my megalomania is a good way to get my attention, misunderstanding the entire point of having a zeppelin is not a good way to do so. I have a zeppelin, I mean, a motherfucking zeppelin!, and I can guaranfuckingtee you than I am going to have some gianticmothefucking Tesla coils on board.

So you're really going to ask how small can one get a Tesla coil? For real?

Do you not see the title of this blog!?

Why would one even want a small Tesla coil?

This is barely a Tesla coil.

I mean, really? Even when I have explicitly noted below that Tesla is my penultimate scientific role model because he was batshit eccentric (OK, so I'm not really angry about this because I don't expect everything to get read)?

Now this is a motherfucking Tesla coil!

In short, make no mistakes about it: tiny Tesla coils are pointless, and tiny Tesla coils are stupid mad science, even if they are good electrical engineering. Good mad science always makes its machines much bigger and more badass than they strictly need to be, just because it can (this is also the First Law of Mad Science, so learn it well! I will post on the other laws of mad science at some point in the future).

Now, though, since I have just now learned that one can tune a Tesla coil to specific resonant frequencies (how I didn't know this before escapes me), I am going to go incorporate that into my zeppelin's coils.

Meanwhile, please vote on the poll to your left to appease my ego and enjoy the video below (which I post even through The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is currently frustrating me because I finally beat the giganticbastardtentaclefish in an underwater fight and now I find I am stuck playing as a wolf again! Ocarina of Time, though...they'll probably never top that).

Mad Science: Zeppelin

I picked up the local newspaper this morning and, sonofamothercrap!, someone managed to snap a picture of my zeppelin! I was out piloting it around town, low, just above the trees, the freezing winter air humming gently through my 3 jet engines (they're quiet because they funnel air into dense little triangles), in "light-bending" stealth mode no less, when someone on the ground below got this picture (I don't know exactly how they got this perspective, I wasn't close to any of the high-rise buildings in town, but maybe someone in one of them has a long-range camera). I mean, it's reassuring that this photo is so blurry; my stealth features are obviously working to some degree, but obviously I'll need to work on improving them. It could be that the power draw from shooting my plasma cannon (yes, it does have a laser sighting bead, and no my floaty isn't filled with combustible hydrogen, it's got MegaHelium instead [it's fun to go to concerts and vent the floaty at the stage]) weakened my cloaking devices and allowed some light to bounce off of my hull. Maybe I'll have to be more careful and more discriminating in choosing which asshats' shoes I melt to the pavement while they're wearing them (if you intend to wage war against me [ahem, Hermitage!], I recommend you start wearing wooden shoes, like clogs, although I cannot guarantee that they won't combust). For reference, that meshy grill looking thing at the front is about 7m high.

Still, though, I've got a sweet ride, huh?

Still, not as big as this:

This is the Graf Zeppelin in flight over Danzig.

One day I will build one that big, and it'll even have an improved secondary drive train (even better than the current TurboPolka auxiliary system) and a self-contained laboratory(!), and on that day that I launch it and hover menancingly against a stormy sky...on that day...you will need new underwear, or something...and stuff...Yeah! It's gonna be awesome! Of course, I'm going to need fancier goggles and a couple of Tesla coils mounted on the rudder, just for extra (Victorian? Steampunk?) street cred.

Sometimes I think that perhaps I was born into the wrong century...but only until I remember the Internet.

Bulltripe/Audio Monstrosity

I was going to post a pessimistic load of bulltripe about personal shit. I had thought for a couple of moments that ripping open the colostomy bag that has been my personal life lately and splattering it all over the interwebs would help, but I realize now that the solution to this is, in fact, beer. And maybe a zeppelin ride about town...

In other news, I now have a last.fm account as "ToasterSunshine", so you may grok my musical sensibilities if you so wish to.

UPDATE:
It seems that my planned evening of beer and video games has been taken over by creating this audio monstrosity. I haven't yet been able to figure out how to get my voice to not sound like I'm gargling a metal trash can, so here are the lyrics:

I study cells
I study rats
Gotta lean into the microscope
So I gotta hunched back
I got wild hair
And unsunned skin
The department chairs
Are all cranky old men
I use graphs a lot
Math a little bit
10 hours in the hood
But I just can't quit

If you got a problem with my data
I've got a problem with you
So you see you're gonna have to prove that your problem's true
Yo, I'll admit that I'm not inherently brilliant
But my data's always statistically significant
'Cuz, yo, motherfucker, I'm a scientst!

If y'all can come up with better lyrics or want to enter into a collaborative science nerd rap, then let me know.