Oh those happy North Koreans! Always coming up with exciting new inventions. Take the Autonomous Machinegun being developed by Samsung - human tracking and shooting capabilities - yay! I wonder how long till the US of A implements a similar technique to protect their border against the uber-terrorists :)
Add comment March 14th, 2007
Well it seems like the mythical Holographic Storage medium is almost ready for the mainstream - I’m ready to ditch all of these darn spinning disks…
Add comment February 15th, 2007
And the record of longest name of a fake organization goes to ORDER OF THE SCIENCE SCOUTS OF EXEMPLARY REPUTE AND ABOVE AVERAGE PHYSIQUE - who, by the way, have some really funny “scout” type badges that i would buy if they were real. One of my favorites is the “inordinately fond of invertebrate” badge: “In which the recipient professes an arguably unhealthy affinity for things of this category.” el oh el
Add comment February 15th, 2007
Take the Tone Deaf Test - compare two musical phrases repeated and judge whether they are identical. It pretty tough, especially since you can’t re-listen to a part of the test and the instruments used and rhythms vary quite a bit. I thought that the Pitch Test was perhaps more objective and scientific. I did better at that.
Add comment December 4th, 2006
I have a level 56 Night Elf Hunter on a PVP server in a fairly new, mostly raiding guild. It’s my first ever character in World of Warcraft, and it’s been a challenge, super fun, irritating, and fascinating. The world is so detailed and complex, and the player - player interactions never cease to astound me. So when I came across PlayOn and Terranova - projects that seek to examine the development of virtual worlds - needless to say I was quite fasincated by the accured data and analysis they had done. They cover all sorts of topics from how a new AH in Stormwind & Darnassus affect city population to discussion of avatars & Orcs. One day I need to roll characters on PVE servers and RolePlaying servers to get a feel for how different the game becomes given those fundamental changes in game structure. I’ve tried Second Life but it just didn’t cut it IMHO. Anyone remember The Palace from back in the late 90s?
The PlayOn project at PARC is an investigation into the social dimensions of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and virtual worlds - extensive, persistent 3D environments that are populated by thousands of players at any given moment. We have explored several virtual worlds including Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest Online Adventures, Second Life, World of Warcraft, and EverQuest II. These and others represent the most successful virtual worlds to date and are laying the foundations for future environments which may be used for more than entertainment and sociability. In our studies, we are generally concerned with three basic issues: community, interaction, and culture.
Add comment September 22nd, 2006
I first saw CrabFu’s steam machines at a robot expo. He makes steam powered vehicles that are not only technically amazing, but also look totally slick. Makes me want to go watch SteamBoy again!
Add comment September 22nd, 2006
I was quite fascinated by this page by József Hajdú about the old practice of using discarded x-ray fim as a recording medium for music. The end result is a weird type of picture-disc with so many layers of data.
“During the late 1930s and early 1940s the prevalent sound recording apparatus was the wax disk cutter. As a consequence of the lack of materials in the war-time economy, some inventive sound hunters made their own experiments with new materials within their reach.
I do not know the name of the inventor who first utilized discarded medical X-ray film as the base material for new record discs; however, the method became so widespread in Hungary that not only amateurs, but the Hungarian Radio made sound recordings on such recycled X-ray films.” - József Hajdú
[via Street Use]
Add comment September 11th, 2006
This video demonstrates the use of sound waves to make things levitate. However, the device is not only able to suspend objects in mid-air, but also to rotate and move them around three dimensionally.
Add comment September 8th, 2006
Add comment September 1st, 2006
Wired news has an article on a new line of TVs by Philips which use an innovative technology to make 3-D TV work without weird glasses
“I entered a conference room in Manhattan and a woman on the TV tossed a handful of rose petals out of the screen, where they floated in the air before my eyes.
At least, that’s what I saw. In truth, the image resided on a perfectly flat, 42-inch LCD screen. But the 3-D illusion was fully believable, and I didn’t have to wear a dorky set of polarizing glasses.
A new line of 3-D televisions by Philips uses the familiar trick of sending slightly different images to the left and right eyes — mimicking our stereoscopic view of the real world. But where old-fashioned 3-D movies rely on the special glasses to block images meant for the other eye, Philips’ WOWvx technology places tiny lenses over each of the millions of red, green and blue sub pixels that make up an LCD or plasma screen. The lenses cause each sub pixel to project light at one of nine angles fanning out in front of the display.”
Add comment August 25th, 2006
As always, I’m a sucker for high speed photography. Check out these colorful high speed photography ‘water figures’ and learn how they setup the cameras etc at the bottom. Or get the scoop from Make mag on DIY strobe photography.
[via make blog]
Add comment August 17th, 2006
Bump Keying is a method of lockpicking that requires no picks (or skills really!) With a specially cut key and a sharp rap on the end of the key, almost any lock can be opened. This video is of European origin, so perhaps this won’t work elsewhere - but that would require me to do research. As if!
[via Future Feeder ]
Add comment August 15th, 2006
The Evolution of Desktops is a fascinating look at how desktop interfaces have changed over the years. I was a little disappointed to see that other OSes such as Amiga and Atari were omitted, but it’s still quite nostalgic to see the ancient Mac screens!
Add comment August 15th, 2006
What could be better than full contact robot soccer with cute spastic robots? When those same robots are dressed in really funky outfits and the whole deal is set to light hearted, completely irrelevant music. Gooooooooooooal!
Add comment August 12th, 2006
I posted about SpokePOV a while ago , and now some really sweet spoke animations have been posted. My fave is Mario jumping over the mushroom. [via EyeBeam ReBlog]
Add comment August 8th, 2006
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