Author: John

Sony Librie – A Users Review

Sony libre

I happened across this while checking out some Flickr images. He had a close up shot of the screen of a Sony Librie :
Close up
So far this is the first ‘screen shot’ I’ve seen and it looks gteat! Best part of all is that it’s still visable in full sun light, as Nick says “It is like there is a small laser printer inside of the Librie, printing a new piece of future paper each time I turn the page.”
If it wasn’t so flipping expencive I’d own one. I do enjoy reading eBooks. I’m stuck with my flakey Viewsonic V36 PDA for now.

nick gray dot net

Bigger Shuffles Soon?

Bigger iPods?

Well if its not a screw up then Apple lawyers will not go hungry this month.
Larger Shuffles are inevitable. As flash storage drops in price the demand is going to keep going up – although I can see it topping out at 10GB just because transfer times. I wish that the interface wasn’t only USB 2. A Firewire 800 option would be nice.

Wouldn’t be the first time that a price comparison site has jumped the gun and accidentally revealed the existence of an unannounced new product (or screwed up and “announced” a product which doesn’t exist), but apparently some listings have turned up on Shopping.com for both a 2GB and a 4GB iPod shuffle. Neither listing includes any extra juiciness like a release date or pricing, but we’ve been hearing rumors about 2GB and 4GB iPod shuffles since May and supposedly Apple’s planning to announce a mess of new iPods at next month’s expo in Paris.

2GB and 4GB iPod shuffles?

The Raw Power of 1.5 Tesla

Tesla Damage

Magnets are fantastically wonderful things! Not just because they give us TV, electricity, and cool ways to hold papers to our refrigerators, but when they are built for medical imaging they become downright scary. Magnetic flux is measured in Teslas, the normal rating for a medical device is 1.5 to 4 T. For comparison, the Earth has a flux density of just 20-30 microteslas. A common rare Earth magnet might have a density of 1 Tesla but are quite small so they won’t pull a chair across the room (well, if you get a few hundred of them and then you’ll have something to write about!)
In the picture you can see that a cart of some sort has become wedged in the opening of some imaging device. Imagine what would have happened if there was someone in it… Well that happens sometimes. I remember a few years ago a story of a child that was killed because his oxygen tank became a deadly missile when he was being scanned by a MRI.

[via MedGadget]

Flying Objects!

‘Wiardosebn’ Bird robot kit

Weird-7

A little pricey at US$300 but it does have a gob (9) of servos and does not require solder to assemble (?). Nifty! The body is built out of laser cut (just a guess there, but it would be cheap to do) plywood so it will be quite tough. I’m a little foggy on the controls though, looks like it’s either by an RS-232C/USB port or a UHF RF remote. It also looks like the head/beak acts as a pendulum.

Bird type self-made robot of wonder kit products and two walking “Weird-7”
“Weird-7” Homepage

Rice Cookers: Zojiriushi Still The King

Rice Cooker

I like my rice cooker. I’m sure not many people can say the same thing or even know that such devices exist. Rice cookers are truly wonderful things, you put rice in and add water and a little while after you turn it on you have perfect rice. No more messy boiling water and burned pans. Heck, other people must think its a good idea, it made Sony famous!

Commonly used in Japan, this type of fuzzy-logic rice cooker can be set ahead of time. I’ve purchased several for friends and family and have settled on the Zojirushi brand. I’ve used a Zojiriushi for several years, and it has held up well and completely changed my cooking habits.

Top Rated Rice Cookers: Zojiriushi