Author: John

Lego Turing Machine

legos

I have been fascinated by mechanical counters and calculating devices for years, I’m even searching for a book I saw decades ago that told how to build logic gates out of clothes pins, cardboard tubes, brass brads, and paper clips. It even had a way to build a binary counter out of all those things! Anyway, the LEGO Turing machine is an amazing device that lets you explore the ‘states’ of this deceptively simple machine.

Well, this Turing machine is not entirely mechanical… I used the RCX to store the transition table. Since the symbols are bar codes read with a light detector, it would have been very difficult to continue with a physical mechanism

[via MAKE]
LEGO Turing Machine

The Pod

Pod

A steady camera will allways help a photo look better, no matter what. You can only hold a camera so steady all by yourself, exposures under 1/30 of a second might start to look a little too artistic if your know what I mean. The ‘Pod’ is a clever design, a beanbag with a screwmount on it. Not too bad, I might pick one up and stick it in my camera bag for times when I don’t want to use my UltraPod.

BTW, if you want some advice on how to shoot better video (stills too) head on over to Ninja Team Video and watch an eposode.

PictureMonkey: The Pod

CyberBug UAV

CyberBug

These things are so darn cool. I love the idea of telepresence.

Base weight is 2.6 pounds, takes five minutes to assemble, and will loiter on target up to 3-1/2. It has a GPS over lay on its joystick driven control box and it equipped with a visible camera and could use an optional IR camera if you want to shell out the bucks. And speaking of that, this is going to run you about $11,000US!

Cyber Defense Systems Inc.