Night at chiarOscuro

Earlier this evening, I was bored, and this is unacceptable--as far as I'm concerned, if you're bored, it's your own damn fault, so you can either stay bored or do something about it. This, I considered chiarOscuro, a weekly nightclub event at Edge in SE DC. First I called pictsy to see if she was going (no, other plans) and inquired about cheshirrrecat (no, other plans), before deciding that darn it, I'd go by myself, and almost certainly know some of the attendees.

After venturing out on the aforementioned quest for batteries for the lights I sometimes dance with, I headed north. I found that the directions on the website are more or less correct, though not perfect, and a U-turn or two and a bit of walking in the vicinity of Nation--a huge nightclub nearby--led me to the Edge, home of chiarOscuro.

Nice layout--good size dancefloor, bar area, lounge (hosting a one-artist exhibition), lounge annex (where, among other activities, cards and chess were going on), and a large open-air section with its own bar and music, and a motif of tasteful death-related art. I ran into learath, djkangal, underfiend, and a couple other people I'd met at Cue, plus several others I recognized. Danced now and then, chatted with a few people, lost one of my lights just in time to miss out on the two songs all night I would've raved to, and found it with the security guys after someone turned it in, just in time to miss said songs. Not sure it it's worth the $10 cover ($7 if you come early), but I'm sure I'll be back on an irregular basis.

Left around 0300, clocked the return trip at about 25 minutes and 20 miles, vs. Bridges' 20 minutes and 15 miles, and sleep will commence shortly. :)

Inventions!

A friend I met snowboarding in Lake Placid a few years ago sent me this link, about "Windhexe", a sort of 'tornado in a can' that can pulverize just about anything to micron-size powder without any moving parts. [A good stiff breeze for industry.]
"He knew the machine should work, and it did. It's just that nobody’s quite sure how."
“It may just be a very efficient way to knock things into walls very fast,” Brooks concluded. “Fast, but in a gentle way — not like a cannon into a wall.”

From that article, I found several other articles about inventions, some of which I'd already heard of, but all of which are kind of nifty.

Space chemist cooks up ‘solid smoke’
NASA lab is a kitchen for ultralight, ultra-strange aerogel
A block the size of a human weighs about a pound but can support a ton, and a sheet a fraction of an inch thick can prevent a blowtorch from melting a crayon.

Garrett Brown, the man behind the Steadicam
Inventor of the Oscar-winning camera has 50 patents to his name

Childhood passion grows into pop culture craze
Heelys are the latest in mobility