June 13, 2007
10th Dimension
Ever stay awake at night trying to visualize the 4th dimension? Yeah, me too. It's a bitch. Here is a site that not only helps... it helps you to visualize the 10th dimension! Halp, brane hurts!
http://www.tenthdimension.com/
September 18, 2005
Magic Brush!
The BBC is running
a very interesting article about a device created by Kimiko Ryokai, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab.
The brush can scan any external image or surface and use that to "paint" that texture onto a digital painting.
Ms Ryokai wanted to know what would happen if you could literally suck the ink from the environment.
September 11, 2005
Willy Wonka for Geeks
My last entry about the Babble device led me on a thread of links that wound up at a Wired article about the company that produces it.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67951,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5
| "It's as if Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just yawned wide to welcome us. Only here, all the candy plugs in." |
Cone of Silence
Ever wanted a real cone of silence? This company has something that is pretty close: http://www.sonaretechnologies.com/babble.html
It rebroadcasts snippets of your real voice, causing the effect of scrambling what you say so that others cannot understand. It sounds a lot like a room full of people. Very interesting gadget!
September 10, 2005
Das Keyboard
A keyboard for the Uber Geek. This is a totally black computer keyboard with nothing at all on the keys. The keys are all blank! The whole thing looks like some stealth ninja keyboard.
Apparently not having the keys labeled makes one even faster and more accurate with typing after the initial training period.
September 07, 2005
New iPod
There is a sexy new iPod just hitting the streets : http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/
It comes in a 2GB and 4 GB version and looks very sweet. I think I may have to get myself a birthday present here soon...
September 28, 2004
Ear Training on the Web
My friend Mark and I have been enjoying a wonderful site on the web called "Ear Plane". Its a site that has many little ear training tests, both melodic and harmonic. It goes from the very simple to the extremely complicated to the impossible (well, for me anyway... heh).
If you are looking to improve your ear, this is a great place to do it! Check it out at http://www.earplane.com
September 22, 2004
Mmm, coffee!
Okay all you coffee buffs out there. Want to try one of the rarest and most expensive coffee in the world? Then you might want to check out Kopi Luwak. This is basically ferret poop roasted and brewed up real nice. Seriously!
The animal responsible is the Common Palm Civit, a marsupial found in Indonesia, where the coffee comes from.
If anyone has tried this coffee, let me know how it was!
May 19, 2004
Using the Java language for algorithmic music composition
This is a very cool article about cellular automata and music.
Take computers, mathematics, and the Java Sound API, add in some Java code, and you've got a recipe for creating some uniquely fascinating music. IBM Staff Software Engineer Paul Reiners demonstrates how to implement some basic concepts of algorithmic music composition in the Java language. He presents code examples and resulting MIDI files generated by the Automatous Monk program, which uses the open source jMusic framework to compose music based on mathematical structures called cellular automata.
Facinating stuff!
April 23, 2004
Army Scientists and Engineers Develop Liquid Body Armor
Army scientists and engineers have developed a liquid body armor.
The key component of liquid armor is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties."During normal handling, the STF is very deformable and flows like a liquid. However, once a bullet or frag hits the vest, it transitions to a rigid material, which prevents the projectile from penetrating the Soldier's body," said Dr. Eric Wetzel, a mechanical engineer from the Weapons and Materials Research Directorate who heads the project team.
Reminds me of when I was a little kid playing with water and corn starch. The paste poured and your finger sank into it if you did it slowly. But fast movement made the stuff pretty rigid. Looks like the same concept here, but much more advanced.
Some links to scientific articles about this:
- Advanced Body Armor Utilizing Shear Thickening Fluids
- The ballistic impact characteristics of Kevlar woven fabrics impregnated with colliodal sheer thickening fluid
April 16, 2004
Rollercoaster Simulation
No Limits, a german website has a program that simulates rollercoasters. People from all over the world have used this program to simulate almost all of the worlds rollercoasters in every detail. Want to know what the ride in Disney's California Adventure is like? Load it up and take a ride! Its very cool, and kind of scary how much content people have produced for it.
Demo Scene
The Demo Scene (link may not work) has always facinated me. Programmers gather to produce very compact, very cool programs that show off graphics and music in as little code as possible. The stuff produced is often less than 64k in size, but has enormous amounts of content. Its mind blowing when you see it and realize that there is only 64k of code running these things.
This group has some pretty impressive demos. They have recently released a First Person Shooter (ala Quake) that runs on less than 100k of code. Damn.
April 03, 2004
Soccer Robots!
Okay, this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Robots that can play soccer. No just the basic game, but they can do things like hand stands, get up from the ground, hang their heads in shame. Take a look at the little movies that are on the site. Sweet stuff!
Here is a sample: one of the robots doing a handstand.