How to remove the RFID chip from an Oyster card

Kudos to Chris Woebken and Skeptobot for laying the groundwork.

Add comment May 11th, 2008

Project Ladybird Update: borked!

Update on Project Ladybird: Having retrieved an intact chip from the body of a London Transport Oyster card, I set about repairing the damage I’d done to it. Skeptobot used a milder solution of acetone and was able to extract the chip and aerial in one piece. I’ll need to drastically modify the aerial in order for Project Ladybird to work, so I’m not too disappointed that I need to reattach it – it’ll be a good lesson.

Out I went and purchased the necessary materials – fine wire, solder, a soldering iron, plus a crocodile clip to use as a heat sink (thanks for the tip, Ian!). My soldering skills have remained untested since high school, but I was pleased with the result.

The following day, I took my Oyster hack to Piccadilly station to test it out. The result… it failed! Boo. From what I can gather, I think I’ve attached the aerial to the wrong termini on the chip. I couldn’t find any good quality images of the chip with aerial attached, so I had to guess how to attach it. But it’s equally likely that I fried the chip with the soldering iron, or the military grade acetone used.

So it’s back to the drawing board, to extract a new chip, this time with Skeptobot-endorsed nail polish remover – watch this space!

Add comment May 9th, 2008

Project Ladybird is go!

For a long time now, unbeknownst to all but a few select friends, I have been planning a project of such pure, unfiltered awesomeness that it will surely melt your brain were you to even consider it. This is what I will hereon refer to as “Project Ladybird”. There are four stages to Project Ladybird:

1. Extract a working RFID chip from an ordinary London Oyster travel card
2. Define the limits of the attached aerial
3. TOP SECRET
4. Profit!

My first attempt to extract the RFID chip from an Oyster card ended in failure - I sliced and diced but could not find that darn chip. My next move would be to dissolve the plastic of the oyster card with nail polish remover to reveal the chip. Somewhat serendipidously, yesterday BoingBoing featured a man called Chris Woebken who had done just that, and was now in possession of a neat-o naked, working, Oyster chip.

He used industrial-strength acetone, though, so one quick trip to the builders’ supplies in Soho and I was ready!

I left the mix for an hour or two, kind of got caught up playing Medal of Honour 4, and when I returned, the Oyster card had dissolved into a satisfyingly goopy mess. Project Ladybird was go!

In fact, the card had dissolved a little too satisfyingly, and the aerial (typically embedded in a loop around the edge of the card) was now detached. Still, I had myself a (hopefully working) chip!

On closer inspection of Chris Woebken’s video though, a circuit diagram flashes for a few seconds. I think Chris likewise found himself in possession of a helpless chip, and attached a variety of different aerials himself. I’m going to try out the raw chip tomorrow, but if it doesn’t work, I’d appreciate some tips on how best to add an aerial…

6 comments May 6th, 2008

Ant Farm Update #1

Some readers may recall that a while ago I received a much-celebrated ant farm for my birthday. Well, now the English weather has warmed up a bit, the ground is crawling with little ants, and I decided it was time to capture some guests. Having given up on my crude jam-filled ant trap (by now, a science experiment in itself), I resorted to a jar and a stick. After a bit of poking around the dirt I had ten fine ant specimens - I mean, guests, in a jar. I put them in the fridge to make them sleepy and then shook them into my farm.

At first the ants huddled in a corner, so I assumed they were a little freaked and I put them in a dark cupboard to adjust to their new blue-gel wonderland. When I came back, four ants were crawling on the ceiling of the ant farm, and the rest - were nowhere to be seen! In less than two hours, over half my ants had squeezed through the pre-drilled air holes to freedom. Apparently, when they were huddled up, the mischevious little things were already planning a jailbreak.

So I taped up the air holes and put them back. I estimate there’s about 60 cubic centimetres of air in the farm, which should be enough to keep them going for a while.

After that I captured some more ants (from the same spot, naturally) and added them to my little insect kingdom. I didn’t bother chilling them this time, and I regretted that decision. The expression ‘herding cats’ is a misnomer, let me tell you. Once again I put my guests into storage to get settled in. When I came back, I discovered this:

My captive ants were systematically tearing away the rubber seal of the lid!! I had to admire the persistence and problem-solving abilities of the little buggers. To express this admiration, I taped up the entire lid to make sure this escape attempt was doomed. Even now, the ants have rejected my helpful starter tunnels and have made no attempt at building a hive, instead putting all their efforts into escape. I’m now keeping a close eye on my guests, and will report their future exploits.

5 comments May 6th, 2008

Statistics of a lonely heart

I was browsing idly through the lonely hearts column on my daily commute yesterday, when I stumbled across an acronym I’d never seen before: OHAC. One Hot Ass Chick? Over the Hill And Crumbling? Obama, Hillary and Colbert? Once at work, a quick Google search revealed all: Own House And Car. Damn, I thought, now that’s materialistic.

This made me think, what do women really want? When faced with writing up an order in twenty words, what do they ask for? Love? Companionship? A man with his own house and car? And similarly, do men in the classified ads really fit the stereotype of ageing divorcee looking for a trophy girlfriend to spend their money on? There’s only one way to find out - with MATHS!

For this investigation my source material was a copy of the London Paper, mostly because it’s free and gets handed to me by a nice man outside Piccadilly Tube station. I drew up a score sheet that awarded a point every time a classified ad mentioned a key word or phrase. The categories are:

• Age
• Looks
• Wealth
• Personality
• Race
• Religion
• Location
• Family

So asking for a man “35-40″ will score one point. Asking for a women who is “fun-loving, charismatic and full of life” will score three points. “OHAC” scores a point for Wealth, as does asking for a “professional”. One hour of counting later, and the results are in.

I dropped religion, location and family from the final analysis because only very few people scored points in these categories. If I had a bigger sample, I might include them. There were 38 ads from women, and 32 ads from men. Overall, women were pretty verbose, scoring 126 points in total. Men tended to be more succinct, scoring only 60 points - less than half as much. Guess they’re not too fussy. Without further ado, here is the breakdown. The percentages refer to how much of the total demands an individual category constituted.

Women
Looks 15%
Age 19%
Wealth 13%
Personality 43%
Race 10%

Men
Looks 28%
Age 18%
Wealth 2%
Personality 45%
Race 7%

Great Scott! It appears that men have trumped women in seeking a partner with a personality (well, OK, the margin is probably insignificant). Men have also been more concerned with looks than the women - even when you group ‘race’ and ‘looks’ (which I felt maybe I should have done), men asked for it 35% of the time where as women only 25%. The biggest discrepancy between the two? Women said they wanted someone wealthy 13% of the time - while only one man in the 32 sampled thought it important enough to mention. Concrete, indisputable evidence that all women are gold-digging hootchies! Seriously though - this would be a fun project to apply in different countries, just to see if there were any differences. I’m sure some clever reader out there could rig together a piece of code that would do it automatically.

My next piece of classified ads stats? I’m going to look at how people describe themselves, and see if the sexes have really cottoned on to what eachother want.

3 comments May 6th, 2008

Daily Mail madness: “Attack of the killer ravens”

Today’s choke-on-your-cornflakes story of stupidity from the Daily Mail is a report on flocks of killer ravens that are attacking and killing livestock in Scotland. Yes, you read that right. There’s no report yet on disturbances in any towns called Raccoon City, but surely it’s only a matter of time before seagulls are blowing up petrol stations.

Before you get too worried, though, bear in mind this story comes from Jane Fryer, who in recent weeks has brought us such Pulitzer-worthy material as the supermodel who catches stray cats, and the shock revelation that WWF wrestling might be fake.  That is all.

2 comments May 5th, 2008

Miracle Gro’s nonsense organic advert

Spotted today as I was lazing in front of the TV: this bullshit advert from fertiliser makers Miracle Gro. Playing on current fashion surrounding all things organic, a heavily pregnant woman fawns about the benefits of Miracle Gro’s new organic compost. She blathers:

It’s 100% chemical-free

Say what?! That doesn’t even make sense. Please, will someone report this to the ASA before I go apoplectic?

4 comments May 4th, 2008

Friday Flash Fun: Roller Coaster

Just in time for lunch is this gem: Roller Coaster, produced by the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies. Produced to teach children about physics and g-forces, Roller Coaster puts you in the shoes of an intrepid theme park designer who must build a big dipper that thrills but doesn’t make the passengers throw up, or worse, black out.

It’s a little bit like line rider, but with more challenge. A scoreboard featuring ‘max g force experienced by passenger’ would be a great feature for the deviant minded amongst us.

1 comment May 2nd, 2008

Rise of the machines continues in Israel

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have become a staple of modern warfare, so it was only a matter of time before ground vehicles caught up. Although it looks like a stock racer crossed with a hatchback, the Guardium is actually Israel’s first (and the world’s second) autonomous ground attack vehicle.

The robot is designed to replace human soldiers for lengthy, tedious tasks such as patrolling, although a human operator can patch into the machine at any time. When on its own, the Guardium can navigate traffic, perform sentry work, identify targets and even engage targets. Personally, I don’t trust my toaster to get things done right, but I’m still not sure whether this marks an improvement on a jumpy 17 year old conscript with an assault rifle. John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org is quoted as saying:

A robot does what it’s told, and you’ll be able to get them to advance in ways it’s hard to get human soldiers to do. They don’t have fear, and they kill without compunction.

Now where have I heard that before?

Thanks, Brian!

2 comments April 30th, 2008

Death by Caffeine

Alfredo Duran hit the news for the first and the last time recently, as the 40 year old shift worker died of heart failure exacerbated by his four-can-a-day Red Bull habit. This gave me pause to reflect upon my own energy drink habit, currently standing at a can of Relentless each workday - primarily because a can of Relentless is twice the size of a can of Red Bull and hald the price. Now, unlike the unfortunate Alfredo, I don’t have an underlying heart condition, but the question remains - how much is too much? Luckily, the internet has an answer for everything, and I’ve discovered the joy of The Caffeine Database, hosted by Energy Fiend. Not only does this site list all the energy drinks you’ve heard of (and a lot you haven’t), the list can be ordered by caffeine content per item or per ml. Even better, there’s a neat gadget that’ll calculate your lethal dosage of tea, coffee, or any other caffeinated drink.

30 cans, huh? Let’s hope they don’t mean ‘in one year’!

4 comments April 28th, 2008

Many-handed clock spells out the time

Reading the time just got easier thanks to this ingenious timepiece. Industrial designer Christiaan Postma used over 150 clockpieces to build a single clock whose hands spell out the hours throughout the day. I’m always on the lookout for novel ways of displaying the time (I’m a sucker for binary watches), and this is a fantastic clock to add to my wishlist.

Via Technabob

1 comment April 27th, 2008

Westminster University’s crackpot ’science’ degrees

Veteran quack-basher Prof. David Colquhoun reports on Westminster University’s crackerjack science degrees in er… pseudoscience. Yes, for just £3,145 (or £9,450 for you internationals), students can earn a Bachelor of Science in Complementary Therapies, including classes in herbal medicine, vibrational medicine and homeopathy. Does the course involve looking at the science behind these quack medical practices? Does it hell.  Let’s look at one of the lecture slides:

Remember, this quasi-Jedi mumbo-jumbo isn’t just a single class or lecture - this is an entire science degree course at a British university.  Your tax dollars at work, folks.  To top it all off, Westminster University’s Vice Chancellor has repeatedly refused calls from the Times, the BBC and Prof. Colquhoun (a highly distinguished scientist himself) to answer this insult of a science degree.  You can see all the gory details on David’s blog.

6 comments April 23rd, 2008

Hornet Juice Sports Drink has a sting in its tail

A long time back, a loyal reader (whose name is sadly lost in the mists of time) sent me a link to a bizarre sports drink that, like many others, promises you’ll train harder/faster/stronger/better, but unusually, claims to do this by rejigging your digestive system to mimic that of a big bug.

The makers of Hornet Juice Sports Drink claim it is based on the activities of the Giant Hornet, an endurance athlete amongst insects that can “fly 50 miles a day”. The makers of Hornet Juice believe this is down to the hornet’s diet of an amino acid mixture secreted by their larval. By recreating this mixture, they claim:

Hornet Juice activates the metabolism of fat for energy right from the start of your physical activity. This results in your glycogen being conserved, enabling you to maintain a steady pace to the very end.

Presumably because what’s good for an inch-long flying insect must also be good for a six-foot tall running human.  And I guess reconfiguring your entire digestive system is a safe and advisable pastime, too.  Ah, there’s nothing like a bit of cargo cult science to put a smile on your face.  Seriously though, don’t they remember what happened to Timothy West in Tales of the Unexpected?! (anyone got a video link to this?)

4 comments April 22nd, 2008

SciencePunk hits the 10 million mark

I enjoy trawling through my statistics, much in the same way that Scrooge McDuck used to swim through his gold coins in those old cartoons. And the last time I visited the vault for a dip, I was thrilled to see SciencePunk.com has clocked up 10,000,000 hits so far this year. That’s four times as many as the whole of 2007! Sweet.

4 comments April 22nd, 2008

Jet Powered Beer Cooler

What do you do if you have a shed, a warm day, a propane cylinder and a manly thirst for a cool beer? Why, you perform the only manly solution - construct a jet powered beer cooler! Simon Jansen explains:

Not being built for playing rugby I have had to go with the shed. I may not know a rugby hoop from a cricket stick but I know my shed like the head of my hammer. A shed is a place where a kiwi bloke spends much of his time alone surrounded by his tools, current and past half finished projects and the collection of parts and material usually referred to by others (typically wives/girlfriends) as ‘that pile of junk’.

A session in the shed is typically an all day affair. Starting very early in the morning and going through until late at night when the light fades to the point that you can’t see and hit your thumb with a hammer a bloke will not leave his shed for anything (Hint: Empty paint cans can be very useful here). All supplies must be taken in at the start of the shed session. And the most essential of these supplies is beer.

But how to keep the beer cold?

From here Simon progresses to the only logical, manly, solution:

I knew from some long forgotten physics lecture that when a liquid expands into a gas it will draw heat from its surroundings. And I happened to have a source of a suitable liquid right in my shed in the form of a LPG cylinder (liquid petroleum gas). Obviously it would not do to evaporate vast quantities of a flammable gas into the closed confines of my garage. That would probably be dangerous. What I needed was a way to remove the dangerous gas. The solution was obvious. The gas is flammable so why not burn it. Burning the gas with a normal burner would not use up the gas fast enough to give me any serious cooling. What I needed was a way to use up a lot of fuel very, very quickly.

What I needed was a jet engine!

See the rest of the story here.

2 comments April 22nd, 2008