All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

How Do Cats Land On Their Feet – Physics Edition

Have you ever wondered why cats always land on their feet when they fall from a height?

It turns out that their ability to land on their feet is a result of a skill known as the cat righting reflex. It revolves around them having an unusually flexible back, no collar bone like a human does, along with precise timing with moving its front and back legs at a particular time.

A kitten begins developing this ability at about 4 weeks of age apparently and by 8 weeks of age it has it mastered. Our trusty feline friends can use their cat righting reflex to land on their feet from any height but it must be at least 30-40cm tall or it doesn’t allow them enough time to rotate in the air.

F1 Car Evolution

Below is a fantastic animation by Rufus Blacklock showing the evolution of Formula 1 cars since 1950. The shape for each year is the design associated to the car that won that particular years championship. I love that you can see the engine move from the front of the car to the rear of the car and the number of cylinders changing across time as the regulations have changed.

Eating Vegemite By The Spoonful

Watching this movie I was laughing so hard I snorted out loud and had tears running down my cheeks! I’m not sure what was more funny, the fact that an American was eating the Vegemite knowing full well that they don’t like it or that the notion of eating Vegemite by the spoonful is hard for me to deal with and I love the stuff.

Let There Be Light

Since Claire & I moved into our house a couple years ago, we’ve had a constant battle with the lights throughout the house.

Like most modern houses, it has a mixture of standard light bulbs and the small halogen lights. Neither one of those types of lights have been particularly long lasting, however the small halogen down lights have been particularly flaky.

In the last few months, we’ve had a collection of different light globes blow throughout the house and after replacing the blown light bulbs – no banana. We tried switching different bulbs from other light sockets, different brand lights and different types/styles of lights but to no avail. Claire and I were at the point where we thought the light socket had some how died because no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get the lights to work.

Today we tried again and were able to get them to work with a lot of wiggling & jiggling of the light bulb in the socket. I’m not really sure how that works but even when screwed in tight to the socket, the light bulbs won’t shine but after unscrewing them a little, wiggling this way, jiggle that way – they seem to come good. You’d assume that if it works less than 1/4 of a turn from tight, that it’d definitely work when tight but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Despite the annoyance of them not working for so long, its good to have all the lights in the house working again.