I had a blast collaborating with Eric Gradman last month on an interactive art installation named ArtFall. There’s a complete description here, and a downloadable iPhone encoded video here. Update: Artfall was covered in Makezine, Hackaday, Matt Cutts blog and a French blog.
For some reason, etymologists and scientists have felt the need to address groups of organisms using different words. Some, are more commonly known, like a “gaggle of geese” or “herd of elephants” . Here are some lesser known examples:
aarmory of aardvarks
army of ants
barrel of monkeys
battery of barracuda
bed of clams
bloat of hippos
cast of crab
cete of badgers
cloud of bats
coalition of cheetah
coffle of asses
company of parrots
congregation of alligators
flight of butterfly
intrusion of cockroach
leash of deer
lodge of beavers
maul of bears
murder of crows
orchestra of crickets
pack (wild) / litter (young) of dogs
parliament of magpie
peep of chickens
pod of dolphins
pounce of cats
prickle of porcupines
rout of coyote
scourge of mosquito
shoal of bass
stripe of zebra
swarm of bees
thunder of bison
train of camel
troop of baboons
With things only getting much bigger and much smaller, boning up on the terms for various magnitudes seems appropriate. Following is set of the International System of Units prefixes. This way when Apple comes out with it’s next smallest gadget, you’ll be right there with them.