A patent has been issued for this device, which would conserve space in burial grounds. The inventor even envisions a transparent variety:
“A clear plastic Easy Inter Burial Container, where the body is additionally encased in clear resin and is standing erect for all to view during installation, creates a very impressive image.”
The screwing-into-the-ground would be performed either by humans or by an adaptation on a tractor backhoe.
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How well do you know your computers, operating systems, and peripherals? Find out with this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. They’ll give you a question, and you decide whether they’re talking about an Apple computer, or an IBM clone type computer that uses Windows. Or neither. I scored 80%! Link
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Bike riding can get a bit boring after a while. So why not read a book while you’re at it? The Performance Book Caddy attaches to your bicycle’s handlebars, letting you focus on your text while riding. What would possibly go wrong?
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NASA is developing an aerial vehicle that will probably come as close to the personal jet-pack we were looking forward to. The “Puffin” features Vertical Takeoff and Landing, an electric engine, and a face-melting top speed of 300 miles per hour. They are already fine tuning its performance values for military use:
The rather unusual-looking craft would be especially handy for military applications. Its extremely low heat signature would make it difficult to detect in the air, and the fact that it’s whisper quiet doesn’t hurt, either. In fact, because it’s so quiet similar technology may be used for commercial transportation in the future. The lack of loud, emissions-heavy aircraft engines would mean that airports could be situated closer to city centers and even residential areas. And if we can’t have personal jet packs, then personal aircraft would be the next best thing.
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Bergmönch is an interesting idea! Now you can climb a mountain with a backpack, and then unfold the backpack into a scooter of sorts so you can wheel your way down. The question: is a speedier descent worth carrying the extra weight up?
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One of the more daunting challenges of sending missions to Mars is the problem of dust. Due to the atmosphere and lack of displacing elements, the dust can be a menace to all forms of human operation. With challenges come great solutions, though; scientists are zeroing in on controlling the particles with acoustic levitation, as shown here:
Blasting a high-pitched noise from a tweeter into a pipe that focuses the sound waves can create enough pressure to lift troublesome alien dust from equipment, suits or vehicles, according to a study published January in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
Wired has the story.
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Remember when you were a kid and you pulled a string to make a toy do something? Well, I do! Now that principle can charge your batteries. The YoGen hand-held charger was displayed at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where its developers showed how a pull of a string will recharge your phone battery.
A 5 Watt charge can be generated with a very easy pull of the string. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you pull, the same charge is generated. And I’m told it gives the same charge as if you were plugging into a wall, so 1 minute of pulling is equal to the same amount of talk time you’d get after 1 minute of wall charging, or about 5 minutes of talk time. It’s intended as a solution for quick emergency charging.
YoGen also demonstrated a foot-powered charger for laptops. Link -via Digg
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We looked forward to the promise of video phone calls for fifty years, but now that they are here, no one wants to actually use them. The hassle of dressing up or cleaning the room for a phone call only explains part of it. Joel Stein captures the exact reason why video phone calls never caught on, despite the availability of Skype.
…Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: we pay close attention while we’re talking and zone out while you are.
As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking. I wash dishes, I file receipts, I read news sites, I make little fake suicide faces to my wife Cassandra about how much I want to hang up that cause her to yell “Joel, I need you now” in a really unconvincing way that I’ve asked her not to do, but I still can’t stop making the suicide faces. In desperate times, when I am on my cell phone in the middle of nowhere, I will pace. The only other time I pace is when I stub a toe or burn myself. But when I start talking, I assume that you are sitting perfectly still, rapt.
(image credit: John Ueland/TIME)
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Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is a lot of fun, especially for someone like me who spent decades connecting audio-video equipment professionally. I’m sure you will enjoy it, too! Can you identify ten different types of connecting cables, both old and new? Good luck; I scored 80%. Link
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Matthias Wandel used LEGO Technic parts to build a machine that distributes dominoes in rows. His website is filled with other similar gadgets, most of which are made out of wood.
Link via Make | Wandel’s Wooden Machines
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Just because it’s holy water, it doesn’t mean that it’s also sterile water! To guard against swine flu, Italian inventor Luciano Marabrese invented the automatic holy water dispenser:
The terracotta dispenser, used in the northern town of Fornaci di Briosco, functions like an automatic soap dispenser in public washrooms — a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water.
"It has been a bit of a novelty. People initially were a bit shocked by this technological innovation but then they welcomed it with great enthusiasm and joy. The members of this parish have got used to it," said Father Pierangelo Motta.
Catholics entering and leaving churches usually dip their hands into fonts full of holy water — which has been blessed by a priest — and make the sign of the cross.
But fear of contracting the H1N1 virus has led many in Italy — where some 15 people have died of swine flu — not to dip their hands in the communal water font.
"It’s great," said worshipper Marta Caimm as she entered the church. "Thanks to this we are not worried about catching swine flu. It is the right thing for the times," she said.
Link (Photo: Stefano Rellandini/REUTERS) | Video clip (embedded YouTube clip) at TYWKIWDBI
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If you’ve got a loved one whose motto is "just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you," then this is the perfect
gift: a scanner for wireless spy camera!
This portable detector features a 2.3-inch TFT color display and it is capable of finding spying devices within the frequency of 900MHz to 2700MHz.
Whodathunk there’s such a thing? Link
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Some of you may remember the wonderful Leave Me Alone Box. Now you can make your very own, with step-by-step directions from Instructables. Link
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An awesome collection of 16 various anti-theft gadgets that will help you keep your personal belongings, food and computer data out of strangers’ and thieves’ hands. Don’t miss the home security paintball turret!
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Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) pilot and out-of -work electrical engineer Cy Brown strapped a camera to his GPS-enabled plane and had some friends launch fireworks at it. A rural farmland becomes a miniature war zone, as Cy pilots and swivels the lens, hunting down the active thrillseeker sect’s base camp.
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In case you didn’t realize how far component miniaturization has progressed in the past decade: casemodder Klaus Diebel offers the iMac CS, which is an iMac case (in your choice of colors) that contains a computer (a Mac mini), a sound system, and a coffee maker! Each unit is custom-made, so you’ll have to discuss the price with him if you want one. Link -via Gizmodo
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For prying into lives around the globe, the Google Street Viewmobile finally gets its just desserts. Thank you, Anonymous Winged Avenger!
Via Gizmodo
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Flip open and fire up your laptop, find an unsecured wi-fi signal and check your email … have you just stolen wi-fi? It may be illegal in some places, but is it immoral? Can wi-fi be stolen?
Here’s an interesting article by Finlo Rohrer of the BBC News Magazine about whether "stealing" wi-fi is wrong:
So here’s the thing.
You’re walking down the street in Hypotheticalville and in front of you is a gentleman who, when he walks, spills seemingly endless torrents of golden coins on to the pavement behind him.
He seems unconcerned by this and you notice that if not picked up, these magic coins quickly evaporate. Is it moral for you to pick a few up?
It’s the kind of tree-falls-in-the-forest whimsy that an undergraduate philosopher might mull over for a moment, but back in the real world a not entirely dissimilar debate is being played out.
The man arrested in a street in west London is at least the third person to be accused of breaching the law by taking internet service without permission. [...]
There are also suggestions using somebody else’s wireless could come under the Computer Misuse Act, usually used to combat hacking and electronic fraud.
But if it can be interpreted as illegal, can it be truly said to be immoral?
Heavy downloading might affect the unsecured person’s speed of access or download limit, but a use like checking an e-mail is hardly likely to be noticed. Most "victims" will suffer no loss.
What do you think? Is it wrong to use someone else’s unsecured wi-fi connection without permission?
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A few weeks ago we were asked to participate in this neat little Sweep Panorama photo contest. Sony provided Neatorama with this sleek and very pretty Cyber-shot DSC-WX1 camera to play with. The task was to take a bunch of panoramic photos and submit them to compete against other photos by bloggers around the web. I'm not a professional photographer by any means, but I sure had fun anyway.
The camera is very little and a real treat to tote around. I am used to lugging around a huge SLR. As long as I am not having a particularly fat day, this compact Sony will actually fit in my pocket. But, the really nice thing about this Sony camera is that I don't feel like I am giving up quality for convienince. Yes, it's really really easy to use but has lots of bells and whistles to boot. The camera is 10.2 mega pixels, has a 5x optical lens, 24 mm wide-angle lens (35mm format), anti-motion blur, take movies and so on. Frankly this little guy is way smarter then I am.
The panoramic feature they asked us to test out is super cool. All you do is set the camera to the "sweep panorama" mode and you are ready to go. The camera shoots multiple images and seamlessly pieces the together into a panoramic image as you move the camera. You can take vertical or horizontal pictures. The fun thing about the mode is that you can fit a lot visually into one picture. The way it scans actually allows you to achieve a certain amount of depth that you can't get with other still cameras.
We are still playing with camera and we have been asked to submit even more photos. We can't tell you which ones we provided but we think you will have a good time looking at everyone's interpretation of the assignment. Check out the cool panoramic photos at WeSay and vote for your favorite panoramic photo today. The winner is allowed to choose which school they would like 10 additional cameras to be given so you are voting for a good cause.
Disclosure: We do get to keep the camera (Thanks Sony and Technorati! It rocks), but the opinion above was 100% ours. There was no pressure to write only positive reviews.
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Trying to ignore the alarm isn’t going to work with the Princess in a Pea Alarm Clock (PPAC). Jeff Saltzman rigged an air compressor to lift up one side of a mattress when it’s time to wake up. If the sleeper doesn’t get up, s/he’ll get thrown to the floor.
UPDATE 12/14/09: I’ve swapped out the video. Thanks, GlitchEnzo!
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This camera, made by the Nagoya Institute of Technology, has 158 lenses — more than any other camera in the world, according to Guinness World Records. It was made by associate professor Yojiro Ishino and his students in order to take 3D pictures of a flame. The lenses are arranged in four rows, and the entire rig is 47 centimeters across.
Link | Image: Sankei News
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After a football injury at the age of sixteen, Jamie Cap became paralyzed from the neck down. Now, thirty years later, he controls a shotgun attached to his wheelchair with a breathing tube. Getting legal permission was a substantial struggle, but now he’s been cleared by a court to start shooting:
Cap, 46, recently won a 2 1/2-year legal battle to allow him to use, with the help of a partner, a 12-gauge shotgun fitted with a battery-powered machine that is operated by a breathing tube.
He described firing that first shot last week with a combination of wistfulness and enthusiasm another person might use to describe rekindling a decades-old romance.
“I don’t know if there are words,” he said. “I’m so happy. When you find you can do something again after 30 years, you can’t put a price on that. Some people think it’s nothing, but try being paralyzed for 30 years and then come talk to me.”[...]
Cap might not have embarked on his bureaucratic odyssey had he not found Indiana-based Be Adaptive Equipment during a random Internet search. The company, which has made wheelchair mounts for shotguns since 2002, sells about 20 per year, according to owners Brian and Renee Kyler. Cap’s model cost about $1,600; a new 12-gauge shotgun starts at about $250.
For a quadriplegic, firing a shotgun requires help from a companion. In Cap’s case, a friend sets up the contraption, safety on, on Cap’s wheelchair and Cap aims the shotgun by moving the toggle switch with his mouth. Once his partner releases the safety, Cap fires by sipping on the breathing tube.
Link via Geekologie | Photo: AP
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Ford
GT Red/White Stripes - $58.95
We've just gotten our shipment of Road Mice, the wireless computer mouse shaped like your favorite cars! These puppies are gorgeous - and come complete with functioning headlights and smooth lines that give it a realistic car look and feel (except, you know, they're tiny!)
To sweeten the deal, we've added our Christmas Special Mystery Bonus to these items. Every purchase of the Road Mice computer mouse will come with a free Mystery Bonus.
The Road Mice will make the perfect Christmas gift for the car lovers in your family. Quantities are extremely limited - in the past, we've sold out of these in just a couple of days, so get yours now: Link (scroll down)
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Many college students use laptop computers to take notes during class. The student in this video, as a prank, took an old mechanical typewriter to a lecture for that purpose. The professor gets quite perturbed and asks him to mute the sound effects.
via Gizmodo
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Joyce and Kaufman made this awesome Star Trek menorah, complete with LED lights! Link
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Touch screen iPhones and other gadgets are cool, but if you can’t use them with gloves, you might just get way too cold depending on where you live. Fortunately, Instructables has a detailed set of instructions for making your gloves conductive so they can still work with your touch screen devices.
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Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum of Massachusetts are pretty enthusiastic about steampunk. So much so that they have converted the entire interior of their home into a steampunk haven called Modvic (modern Victorian). The full-house effect is amazing, as can be seen in the photos on the linked page.
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Any geek who is not quite sure if this is an appropriate time to pull out the iPhone can use this handy flowchart from Gizmodo. You can enlarge the chart at the link if you need to. Link -via Boing Boing
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Borrow My Pen – $6.45
Tired of people "borrowing" your pen all the time? Well, give ‘em a little shock with these subversively funny pens. Each of them are printed with fake but very funny company names and tag lines, such as:
Part of Neatorama’s Christmas Special (purchase of each product will get you a Free Mystery Bonus). Perfect for stocking stuffers. Get ‘em while you still can: Link
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This company will make a tiny branding iron with your name on it! The product is a metal part that will replace the head of a disposable cigarette lighter. Fire up the lighter, and your branding iron will be hot in no time. Yes, it sounds dangerous, that’s why the description says “for decorative purposes only.” What could possibly go wrong? Link -via Bits and Pieces
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