TeamDroid | 2007

Posted on 03.30.07 by John @ 3:36 pm

GFS-UAV N-01A At first glance this flying craft looks like a simple ducted fan with a weird skirt under it. Fancy hovercraft? Kind of. In reality the skirt has no air flowing through it only over it. Something called the ‘Coanda effect‘(wiki) causes the air to ’stick’ to the outside of the craft and in effect creates an inside out hovercraft. The high efficiency electric motor in the top housing forces air to flow over the outside of the main body to create lift. The torque of the motor and the spin created by the prop wash are countered by the fins that ring the mid section and the direction is controlled by the four lower flaps. The platform is quite stable and looks to be a very good platform for just about any UAV application.

[via MAKE]
The GFS-UAV N-02 is now ready to do tests flights

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R/C Helecopter With Rockets!

Posted on 03.29.07 by John @ 4:39 pm

ROV with teeth One of the captions on the page says it all:

Unmanned Attack Helicopter, Ver. 2, 2004
Gas Powered Radio Control Helicopter modified to carry and remotely fire model rockets

Oh yeah… This would liven up the company picnic don’t you think? I wonder how he managed to ignite the rocket without throwing the chopper into a nasty spin? Any one else have something like this? BB gun mounted on a glider maybe?

The artist also has some very impressive sculptures listed in his online portfolio. I like the ‘Bronze Skull’ ones myself.

[via jaf project]
The Sculpture of Christopher Conte
Bronze Skull prototype

Filed under: Artistic and Cool and Design and Mad Science and Technology and To be used for Evil
Comments: 4 Comments

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Telling Time For Humans

Posted on 03.29.07 by John @ 4:26 pm

Fossil watch - Negative/Positive Display by Frank Gehry Nice but sold out. Crap.

Designed by postmodern architect Frank Gehry and developed by Fossil this Gehry Writes Time Digital watch has an innovative time read out display in Frank Gehry’s own script. If the time is 11:30, the display reads in script, "half past 11" and if the time is 12:54, it reads as "6 til 1". The display also automatically switches back and forth showing a negative screen during daylight hours and a positive screen at nighttime. Also contains a calendar function.

Fossil

Filed under: Artistic and Cool
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Japanese Deep Fat Fryer Dwelling Goldfish

Posted on 03.29.07 by John @ 4:10 pm

Japanese deep fat fryer dwelling goldfish This is an excellent exploit of basic physics.

Because oil floats on water, despite the massive heat (163 degrees Celsius) the goldfish simply stay away from the surface and all is well. They eat the crumbs of croquettes and other fried foods that fall to the bottom, and can live in there for 5-10 years as they happily clean away, ignorant to the fact that certain death awaits any potential escapees.

[via boingboing kottke]
Deep-fry diving for goldfish in Japan

Filed under: Artistic and Dumb and Japan and Mad Science and To be used for Evil
Comments: None

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Apple TV - An Honest Review

Posted on 03.26.07 by John @ 9:19 pm

I think I might have done the impossible, I found a review of the new Apple TV that was not written by a drooling Apple fanboy. Nice review, gives an honest opinion of the video quality of what was playing on the demo model. He does put forth an interesting idea on how one could go about turning the Apple TV into an automated bit torrent downloading monster capable of transcoding Xvid video to H264. Ooo.. I wants one…

Apple TV - gosh, I touched one.

Filed under: Apple and Computers and News
Comments: None

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DIY Your Own Pinhole Blender

Posted on 03.25.07 by John @ 10:17 pm

This is a great tutorial on how you can build your own multi shutter pinhole camera using old film canisters and a metal can. Very inventive I must say. The images taken with this sort of camera blends together different scenes in a very organic (see examples) way that many people can only achieve these days using a graphics program like Photoshop. Does anyone still remember the bad old days when trial and error was the only way to do such photographic manipulation?

Bricolage: weblog errante… Arquivo: Março de 2007

If you want to buy one, check out the ‘original’ pinhole blender at pinholeblender.com

Filed under: Artistic and DIY and Photography
Comments: 4 Comments

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Solar Storm Warning, Head For The Basement!

Posted on 03.24.07 by John @ 10:03 pm

Very cool. I’ll have to load the camera up with some nice film so I can take photos of the Northern lights. Too bad I have to wait until 2010 or 2012.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

I wonder if that in the next few years as the solar activity peaks the weather will be effected. Anyone remember the news about the coming ice age back in the 70’s? I do know that the ham radio guys will be enjoying it. Solar Max makes for good DX’ing.

[via spottings]
NASA - Solar Storm Warning

Filed under: Science and Space
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The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe

Posted on 03.24.07 by John @ 3:38 pm

The Skeptic Guide to the Universe If critical thinking is your cup of tea then this podcast is just for you. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is a free weekly podcast sponsored by the New England Skeptical Society that is dedicated to the examination of paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims with science and reason. Scientific process and peer review are the watch words of the day on this site! Even better, once in a while the famous James Randi makes a guest appearance on the show.

The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe

Filed under: Cool and Paranormal and Science
Comments: None

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Can a Rootkit Be Certified for Vista?

Posted on 03.22.07 by John @ 7:39 pm

Microsoft Vista You just know that this can’t be a good thing…

Forget what Microsoft says about Vista being the most secure version of Windows yet. More to the point, what do the hackers think of it. In a nutshell, they think it’s an improvement, but at the end of the day, it’s just like everything else they dissect—that is, breakable. "Not all bugs are being detected by Vista," pointed out famed hacker H.D. Moore. "Look at how a hacker gets access to the driver: Right now I’m working on Microsoft’s automated process to get Metasploit-certified. It [only] costs $500.

Can a Rootkit Be Certified for Vista?

Filed under: Dumb and To be used for Evil
Comments: None

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Boiling Hot Ice created in Nanoseconds by Sandia’s Z machine

Posted on 03.22.07 by John @ 7:34 pm

Daniel Nolan, the super iceman Icy hot!

“The three phases of water as we know them — cold ice, room temperature liquid, and hot vapor — are actually only a small part of water’s repertory of states,” says Sandia researcher Daniel Dolan. “Compressing water customarily heats it. But under extreme compression, it is easier for dense water to enter its solid phase [ice] than maintain the more energetic liquid phase [water].”
In the Z experiment, the volume of water shrank abruptly and discontinuously, consistent with the formation of almost every known form of ice except the ordinary kind, which expands.
(One might wonder why this ice shrank instead of expanding, given the common experience of frozen water expanding to wreck garden hoses left out over winter. The answer is that only “ordinary” ice expands when water freezes. There are at least 11 other known forms of ice occurring at a variety of temperatures and pressures.)

Ice created in nanoseconds by Sandia’s Z machine

Filed under: Mad Science and Technology
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Grand Canyon Skywalk Stirs Up The Dust

Posted on 03.20.07 by John @ 10:53 am

I saw on CNN this morning that the Hualapai Indian tribe(wiki) is getting ready to open what they hope will be their ticket out of reservation poverty. The Skywalk is a massive steel and glass horizontal arch that lets people walk out over the edge of the Grand Canyon and look down some 4,000 feet to the canyon floor. The tribe has bet the proverbial farm on this in hopes that the tourist draw from near by Las Vegas will give them a much needed boost to their economy. The fees from the Skywalk(wiki) attraction ($25US) and a tribal heritage center ($50US) will give the 2,200 members of the tribe a better standard of living.
However, this have been met with criticism from some environmentalists stating that the increased traffic will put an undo burden on the local environment. Also some members of the tribe have voiced concerns that near by burial sites will be damaged.
One mans cultural awareness center is another mans tourist trap. It all depends on what side of the dollar you’re on. I wish them the best of luck with this endeavor and I hope that the entire tribe and the other people involved will not over develop the land around Skywalk and degrade the attraction to the point that no one wants to see it any more.

Filed under: Dumb and News
Comments: None

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Alice: Free, Easy, Interactive 3D Graphics for Kids

Posted on 03.19.07 by John @ 9:48 pm

Alice I was reading my eWeek today and say this cool article talking about a way to teach programming to kids. The idea is that you have this rich visual 3D world that you program the objects in it to move and interact. I took a look at it and discovered just that, it talks about methods, objects, and other tenants of modern programming . Man, I wished I would have had this when I was a kid. It would have made learning BASIC a lot simpler.
Once the students get comfortable with the interface they will be producing animated movies in no time at all. They can draw from a library rich in 3D models like dragons, faeries, spaceships, buildings. There is also a way to import models from 3D Studio Max using a third party utility. There is also a collaboration with the popular game ‘The Sims‘ to add a much more fluid look and feel to the character animations. I hope that when this happens Alice will stay free to anyone that wants to download it. My kids are both fans of the Sims and I know that this would at least give them a clue as to what computer programming is like. Even if you don’t have kids but would like to know more of how all this software stuff works you should download it and give it a try. It’s written in Java so it will work on both PC and Mac.

Alice: Free, Easy, Interactive 3D Graphics for the WWW

Filed under: Artistic and Computers and Cool and DIY and Science
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NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records

Posted on 03.19.07 by John @ 9:21 pm

This kind of thing is just flat out cool.

The researchers found some clear links between the sun’s activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.

In a nutshell:

When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records

Filed under: Science
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Mr. Hell’s Science

Posted on 03.19.07 by John @ 9:19 pm

This is one show that I had somehow missed. The "Aaagh! It’s the Mr. Hell Show"(wiki) was shown on BBC2 back in 2001. I took a look for it on Amazon but turned up nothing, I did however see that you can buy it on Anime-On-Line. In this exciting episode Mr. Hell talks all about the virtues of science and how it’s made burning the neighboring village down all that much easier. Go science!
(Thanks to brother Steve for sharing this with all of us)

Filed under: Artistic and Cool and Science
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Solar Hot Air Balloons, Not Just For Kids Anymore

Posted on 03.18.07 by John @ 7:34 pm

Everyone knows about hot air balloons. A great big sack filled with hot air that floats as if by magic in the sky. Ok, not by magic, they float because the hot air takes up less space than cold air so it weighs less and thus floats. I’m sure most people think that the air needs to be heated by great honking propane torches to obtain positive buoyancy but that just isn’t the case. With a thin enough envelope (ballooning lingo for the thing that holds the hot air) you can use the mighty power of the sun to do this job on the cheap and clean. This site is loaded with useful info (some may be in French however) and data for your own personal exploration of the atmosphere. Did I say personal? Yep, you bet. Some people have actualy build solar balloons large enough to lift a person. There are even instructions on how you can build and use a 1.9 meter diameter mini solar balloon. I’m surprised that this hasn’t graced the pages of MAKE magazine yet.

[via Photoplane]
Solar hot air balloon

Filed under: Cool and DIY and Mad Science and Science and Technology
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