
Acme Klein Bottle - ZeljkoS
http://www.kleinbottle.com/
======
CliffStoll
Warm greetings to m'friends at HackerNews from an astronomer who's blushing
from this attention.

Like most old school hackers, I try to explore ideas that keep me awake ...
the "I wonder if I can make an x" where x may be a topological manifold, an
arduino line-follower, a garden leaf moulded into ceramic, a Penrose tile
pattern, an LTE geolocation algorithm...

And, as most of you realize, this Klein bottle microbusiness is mainly to have
fun and stay busy -- a chance to fool with everything from math to
glassblowing.

Best part, of course, is meeting math folk, students, computer jocks, and
random visitors. To each, I hope, I leave the strong encouragement to keep
exploring!

My warm wishes to each of you, on a sunny Sunday morning in Oakland,
California!

-Cliff (who's typing with dough on his fingers, left from mixing up scones for breakfast)

~~~
drivingmenuts
I remember the first time I saw the video about your under-floor distribution
system and all I could think was: I want that.

I have no product to sell or organize, but I still want that.

... perhaps some sort of underfloor cat organizer ...

~~~
rhinoceraptor
The video in question:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU)

------
el_benhameen
Cliff is one of the most warm and genuine people I've ever met. I ordered one
of these for my dad and went to pick it up, thinking it would just be a quick
transaction. I got a half hour tour of his workshop, storage area and
retrieval robot and a nice chat about life, the value of family, and Klein
bottles. What a great dude.

~~~
trymas
Isn't it the same guy from numberphile videos?

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AAsICMPwGPY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AAsICMPwGPY)

~~~
FreeFull
Yes, that's the same guy.

------
rebolyte
One of these was given to me as a graduation gift. Included with the order
receipt were photos of him wrapping up the Klein bottle, holding it up and
smiling with it, and the receipt was signed with a note saying,
"Congratulations!" It's possibly the best present I've ever received! In case
you see this, thank you Clif!

Because of this I read The Cuckoo's Egg, and it was pretty great too. What a
cool guy.

~~~
ErrantX
Cliff is one of the original nerds, it's worth reading the whole of
kleinbottle.com for the amusing anecdotes and jokes.

My favourite:
[http://www.kleinbottle.com/drinking_mug_klein_bottle.htm](http://www.kleinbottle.com/drinking_mug_klein_bottle.htm)

The Cuckoo's Egg is excellent; I encourage all of my team(s) to read it as it
highlights how attention to detail and creative thinking can unlock unexpected
value (with the added bonus it's a spy story!).

~~~
leejoramo
I would add that the Cuckoo's Egg is perhaps the best narrative describing the
early days of the Internet. If you want to understand how people originally
used and thought about the Internet read this book.

While I had used BBS's previously this book was my formal cultural and
technical introduction to the Internet

------
calcsam
Cliff is an amazing guy. If you're in the Bay Area and looking for something
to do, give him a call and ask if you can stop by. He keeps all of his
merchandise in the crawl space under his house and built a remote-controlled
forklift to bring it out. He has lots of interesting glassblown 3D shapes,
Klein bottle hats, and so on, plus incredible stories.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Numberphile did a video a couple of years ago that featured the forklift in
question:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU)

Cliff is a really neat guy. I met and talked to him briefly once (at Dayton
Hamvention, 20ish years ago). He's a really, really nice guy.

~~~
CliffStoll
K7TA here ... you send me back to those golden days of flea markets and boat
anchors. Whew!

------
keithpeter
FAQ 11 answer...

 _" My website looks old-fashioned because it loads faster this way and I'm
too lazy to rewrite it. I last updated this page on March 30, 2017 12:54 PM"_

Excellent. I really must order a klein bottle woolly hat.

------
CarolineW
For those of you who don't know Cliff Stoll, you need to watch this:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything](https://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything)

~~~
zacharyz
Or read some of his books like The Cuckoo's Egg. He was honestly one of the
reasons why I got into computers as a kid.

~~~
jpalomaki
Interesting companion to this is Markoff's "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on
the Computer Frontier" [1]. One of the stories covered in this book is the
same one as in Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg, but from the other side.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Cyberpunk-Outlaws-Hackers-Computer-
Fr...](https://www.amazon.com/Cyberpunk-Outlaws-Hackers-Computer-Frontier-
ebook/dp/B01EZJBIMA/ref=sr_1_1)

------
p4bl0
Is he really the same Cliff Stoll who wrote _The Cuckoo 's Egg: Tracking A Spy
Through The Maze Of Computer Espionage_? It is one of my all time favorite
books. I really recommend it if you haven't read it already. I didn't know
Cliff Stoll also made other awesome stuff. He really seems to be an amazing
person.

~~~
CliffStoll
Yep, same guy. But I suspect that my wife and kids would dial down the
adjectives.

~~~
alxndr
Cliff, thank you for writing that book! It is what got me, like many others,
seriously into exploring computers (in legal ways!).

------
rcthompson
I had one of these in college. It's probably still lying around my house
somewhere. Admittedly, my storage organization strategy is probably biased
toward objects composed of orientable manifolds, so it's understandable that I
would lose track of it.

~~~
andybak
> It's probably still lying around my house somewhere

And equally your house is lying around somewhere inside it.

------
ZeljkoS
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU)

------
WhitneyLand
It's worth reading the site text to get an impression of Cliff Stoll.

On one hand he's our people, ticking off many of the stereotypical but true
geek attributes. He might seem weird to a some people, but I feel like I
totally get him as a person even if I disagree with some (a lot?) of his
ideas.

On his recent youtube videos he's the closest real life match to Doc Brown
you'll find.

I do wonder how he's copyrighted a glass object representing a mathematical
surface. Maybe it has to do with the fact that different projections can be
made into 3d space, how do design and build the projection, etc.

------
ZeljkoS
Checkout is golden, it asks you for number of dimensions in your universe:
[http://svedic.org/TEMP/KleinBottleCheckout.png](http://svedic.org/TEMP/KleinBottleCheckout.png)

~~~
pfd1986
No string theorists allowed? ;)

------
amelius
This (quote) is what's holding me back from buying one:

> Not only are these difficult to fill and empty, but cleaning them is a real
> challenge. Since there's little air circulation within the Klein Bottle,
> moisture doesn't evaporate. Worse, you can't reach in with a towel. So
> you'll need to dry the interior surface using alcohol. I've had good luck
> with a pair of small magnets wrapped in cotton cloth.

~~~
Analog24
My aunt gave me the Klein Stein for graduation (a klein bottle in the shape of
a beer mug). It's actually not that hard to clean. You rinse it with water and
then bake it in the oven at ~200F for an hour and you're good to go. It is a
bit more involved than a normal mug but it's really not as bad as you would
expect.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
Here's a video[1] of Cliff showing-off a three handled klein bottle.

I like the bit where he says a two handled klein bottle is a torus.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaihe8HGiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaihe8HGiY)

------
stuart78
I'm the proud owner of one of these, and he really makes the entire purchase
process a special experience. From the personal email on order to the notes
included (and fast shipping). Every house should have one. Or several.

------
adrianratnapala
I wonder if you could also get an evil kleinstein, were the handle connects to
the outer chamber at the top and the main inner chamber at the bottom. Good
yoke that.

------
zafka
I bought a few of these. They are quite cool, and the documentation is
probably half the value. I Think I owe it to the universe to support this type
of endeavor.

~~~
CliffStoll
Thanks, Zafka, for helping with my two kids' tuition!

~~~
zafka
Your welcome!! I just watched your Ted Talk which someone here linked to.---

I would also like to give a you a big shout out for Teaching!!

    
    
       If everyone here followed your lead, the world would benefit greatly.

------
woodandsteel
Ah yes, Klein bottles. When I was a child, I was assigned to Escher
Elementary. It had a great math program, though I did have to walk uphill both
to and from school.

Then I graduated and was assigned to Klein Bottle Middle School. It had a good
reputation, but I could never find the front door. I had to transfer to
Hyperspace Tech, which fortunately has a front door everywhere.

------
jdeibele
I remember Cliff giving a talk at Sequent in Beaverton. Two indelible
impressions were the energy and enthusiasm that Cliff had ... and the person
in the front row tossing Cliff something to eat every X minutes.

Felt very much like a hummingbird or something that had to eat 2X their weight
every day.

------
adamisntdead
Currently owning one of their Klein Bottles, I can say that it was a very
personal experience. I live in Ireland, and I recieved 2 personal emails,
about the klien bottle itself, and a letter with a few notes.

My klien bottle sits on my desk, and I couldn't be happer with

------
MichaelMoser123
I thought a klein bottle is supposed to have walls with zero thickness -it's
made of an idealized plane...

~~~
kmill
Ok, it's an immersion in R^3 of a tubular neighborhood of an embedding of the
Klein bottle in R^4.

But be like Michelangelo and see the immersed Klein bottle inside the glass.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
... but with an imaginary klein bottle you can own one without buying it;
that's cheaper, isn't it?

~~~
unclenoriega
You'd think so, but it's actually more expensive because you don't get the
experience of buying a Klein bottle from Cliff Stoll.

------
frik
Is this a late April fool?

~~~
Taniwha
No, Cliff is very real, I used to live a block away

~~~
CliffStoll
(pinching myself) yep, I think I'm real. Or maybe someplace on the complex
plane.

------
znpy
already posted two years ago...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9064180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9064180)

~~~
danso
Reposts are allowed, as per the current HN faq:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

Particularly in cases, as in this one, in which past submissions had very
little discussion. Or when past submissions are more than a year old.

~~~
glaberficken
Also, I would add as a personal opinion. These type of "cult" submissions that
get re-posted at regular intervals add a lot of character to HN.

