Hardware Beyond the Hype
Oh, lordie, we’ve finally succumbed to the whole geek needlepoint craze! This poor 8-bit widow grabbed the ol’ “granny grating” (what wargamers call needlepoint mesh) and stitched up this “micro-messenger bag,” which holds one DS cart, for her hubby. When you think about it, there’s a real similarity between old chunky-pixel games and mesh-based embroidery.
[Via Kotaku]
While doing research for an article, I bumped into this incredible BEAM robot project. The builder, Bruce Robinson, wanted to know how complex a behavior set he could get from a robot using only BEAM technology (i.e. analog electronics and no microcontroller). The result, Hider, has nine sensor systems! Robinson writes:
“Hider is concerned with survival. Normally it parks itself in bright light where it is easily seen. If the light gets dim, it looks for a brighter place. In the dark it stays still and flashes a beacon every few seconds so it won’t get stepped on. And if it hears a loud noise, such as a door slamming or people talking, it “runs away” and looks for a dark place to hide in.
“While Hider performs more or less as intended, there have been a few surprises. For example, in the photo (below) Hider is “looking” at the darkest thing in a sunlit room — a wooden column. While we might think of a shadow as being darker, Hider doesn’t see it that way; its “eyes” look at the walls, not the floor. In a room with white walls and pale furniture, a nearby column of reddish coloured wood looks very dark.”
Robinson has exhaustive details on Hider’s design, logic, schematics for all the circuits, pictures of the construction, and lots of other info. The schematics are gorgeous, a model for how this sort of thing should be done.
One of the things that’s always frustrated me about BEAM is that, with the exception of Mark Tilden’s work at Wow Wee, few people seem to be experimenting with/applying BEAM principles in building complex (or relatively complex) analog control systems. This is one of the better, and better documented, projects I’ve seen.
As Rebecca of selectparks puts it, Paul Robertson’s “Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006” is “a kind of machinima recursion, where animations inspired by games have inspired animations.” Rebecca also calls it a masterpiece, which is a bit of an overstatement, but it is an interesting approach to animation inspired by the aesthetics of handheld gaming.
Now THAT’s one ugly-ass camera. It may look like a monstrosity, but it produces some pretty interesting images. This Flickr set shows how the builder made this panoramic camera that “shoots onto two frames of 35mm film out of a Nimslo 3D stereo camera and an old Delmonta twin lens reflex. Like a lot of these lo-fi camera hacks, it’s probably more conceptually interesting than a long-term art (or commerce) tool, but YMMV.
Not since Bart Simpson duped Mo for the umteenth time have prank pages been this obvious, or this embarrassing. Members of an Australian satire program on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) purchased two kiosk tickets (that did not require any proof of identity). When the two made-up passengers didn’t show, their names, “Al Kyder ” and Mr. “Terry Wrist,” were repeatedly paged over the PA. Some passengers in the terminal were alarmed, as they thought it might be a coded security message about an “unfolding incident.” As you might imagine, airport security was not amused.
You can see a video of Al Kyder being paged here.
Thanks, Jay!
Dharmesh Shah of OnStartUps.com has some interesting thoughts on Web 2.0 start-up stumbles and fumbles, on the news that Kiko is on the blocks, on eBay (bidding starts at $49K. No takers yet). He writes:
“For those that don’t know who/what Kiko was, it was one of the prototypical Web 2.0 companies (a free online calendar with AJAX, written in Ruby On Rails and funded by Y Combinator). It doesn’t get much more Web 2.0 than that.”
Read his five reflections on where Kiko may have gone wrong. (Some interesting forum discussion follows.)
The European Union thinks so, at least as far as its recently enacted RoHS Directive is concerned. The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, which went into effect on July 1st, is designed to restrict the use of certain hazardous materials in the manufacturing of electronics devices. The Palm Treo 650 runs afoul of this directive, as does many other electronics devices from other makers. Palm was forced to stop selling the 650 in Europe until a new replacement product that is within RoHS guidelines can be developed, hopefully says Palm, within the coming months.
Other manufacturers are expected to be withdrawing their products as well, pending more environmentally-friendly redesigns. Once these designs are worked out, let’s hope the manufacturers start selling this greener gear to the worldwide market, not just where they’re “directed” to do so.
[Via Treehugger]
According to a recent press release, US Robotics has added two phones to its line of VoIP (Voice over IP) devices. Of improvements made to their VoIP tech, the press release states:
“The phones feature technology enhancements designed to prevent echoes and resolve the “tunnel” sound Internet calls can generate with lower quality hardware. The integrated keypad on both phones allows users to place calls to Skype contacts with speed dial numbers assigned, or to dial telephones anywhere in the world with SkypeOut™”
The el cheapo USR9602 USB Internet Mini Phone (pictured) sells for US$25 and is designed as an entry-level VoIP phone to replace that el cheapo headset you might be using. The USR9601 USB Internet Phone sells for $50 and adds a blue back-lit LCD screen that can display contact and call status, and supports Skype caller ID. The phones are compatible with both WinXP and Mac OS X.
In June, I reported on the first DC Dorkbot meeting. The second gathering of the group happened on Tuesday night, at Teasism in Penn Quarter. Unfortunately, I was on the road and couldn’t make it. Thomas Edwards has some pics of the event and sent the following report to the elist:
“In case you missed last night, Rebecca Adams gave a presentation about her electroacoustic sculptures, I gave a presentation on sensors, Scott Hutchison showed a DVD of his painted animations, Tim Slagle showed off
great pictures and video of the Survival Research Labs show he went to last weekend, and Bryan Leister showed off his cool Theremin which doubles as a proximity sensor MIDI control device.”
You can see more pics here.
Thomas also gave a PowerPoint presentation on “Sensors You Should Know About.” It’s a pretty handy thumbnail guide to various sensor systems, what they sense, what they cost, and where you can get ’em. Here’s a link to the PPT doc.
I’ve always been a huge fan of the “pocket guide,” the little reference book that boils down the essentials of a technology to charts, graphs, tables, glossaries, tips sheets, etc. When I was a printer, I was never far from my Pocket Pal. Then there’s the indispensible Pocket Ref, a must for engineers, do-it-yourselfers, and builders of all kinds, and the Pocket PC Ref and Electronics Pocket Handbook for computer and electronics work.
Given this interest, I’m also a fan of the O’Reilly Pocket Guide series, which sort of takes their Hacks books and squeezes even more fat out of them (and crams more data in). O’Reilly is now offering this series as PDF downloads for only US$5.00 each. Being a PDF sort of ruins the whole handy pocket format, but it adds other features, like hyperlinked table of contents and index and full searchability. And, of course, since most of these titles deal with software, you’re likely using the guides at your desk anyway. Certainly can’t beat the price for the amount of useful info you’re getting.
[Let me bore you with a little story about pocket guides. In the mid-90s, Sean Carton and I came up with the bright idea (we thought) of writing an Internet Survival Guide, a little pocket ref that would cram most of what you needed to know to get on the Net, and use tools such as HTTP, HTML, FTP, Gopher, and the like. It would be designed like an outdoor survival guide. We even thought of having a fold-out map in the back that would show all of the navigation tools you needed in charts around a map of the global Internet. We envisioned it in a display box that bookstores could have at the checkout counter. We approached a publisher who loved the idea. Then they started changing it. We needed to cover Mac, PC, and Linux, we should add tutorials along with the summaries of tools, we should review specific tools. It should have a CD of apps in the back. With each new addition, the book grew in size. By the time we were done, our handy little pocket guide was the 1,175-page Internet Power Toolkit and it weighed as much as a small child. So much for lean and mean. Years later, another publisher came along with a Net book done like an outdoor survival guide that was sold via a display on checkout counters. It sold like crazy and became a best seller. Oh well, you can’t win ’em all.]