Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
this looks like a more real world version of the Optimus keyboard. Too bad this version isn’t as amazingly cool looking as the other one, but it would be much easier to build. I figure that it’s a revision A kind of thing, the first versions all look like crap but get the job done. Once it takes off then it will start looking cooler.
The United Keys key-displays keyboard
If a loved one asks for this $400US Japanese ink-jet printer/paper cutter, it might be a sign that they are serious about making paper craft toys. Or that they are nuts. Either way this printer is a bit like the small desktop vinyl sign cutters that you can buy these days – call up the design on its program, load in some paper, and out comes a full color pre-cut paper project. Very neat!
You can run cardstock through it ( “(157g/m 2) and drawing paper * and postcard * mount 0.3mm or less in thickness” from the web site) , thats good because most paper models you build need thicker stock or they look like crud. Looks to only be supported under Windows, no mention of Macintosh at all. Bummer.
I wonder if this printer will make full clean cuts or will it make tiny pinholes in the paper so you can punch it out. Looks like is should make clean cuts from what the specs say but a demo would be nice (someone want to fly me to Japan to check this out?) I’d also like to know what the smallest cut size is, I’ve built some paper models that have some very small parts in them. It could be quite small as I now see that there is a plastic backing film that is rolled on to the paper during the printing process. This must be to keep parts from sliding around and hitting the heads. I doubt that the price per page would be very low but it sure would be fun to use. If the Craft ROBO is too small for your hobby, then you might want to look at this one. The Craft ROBO Pro II (translated page here) takes roll paper and will print/cut sheets as large as 2mx42cm!
You know, some people learn Japanese for the culture, some to understand the Anime, and others to play import video games. I’d learn Japanese to use this printer, as long as I could either make my own designs or import designs and tell it where to cut the paper.
Craft ROBO
[Translated via Excite Japan]
[via BoingBoing]
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
>
Ah, now that was the day. Computer games had the best graphics, the smoothest animation, and the best soundtracks because it was all in your head… Yep, text adventures games were and are some of the best fun you can have with a computer game. For a little history go see what Wikipedia has to say about the historic Zork series and when your done with that go a head and play the game. Some guys made a version that runs via PHP. Now if that don’t rock I don’t know what does.
(If you want to cheat a little you can look at some maps of the game)
I can see these becoming the next thing in high tech ‘must have’ add-ons in luxury cars. If you think about it, if you had one of these and you knew it would be buffering images from the cameras all the time even while driving you might be a bit of a better driver. Even more so if you knew that if there were an accident that you were involved in the device would have a record of the accident and a few seconds before it. It might be a real help in pointing the finger at who did what to who. Then again, the same idea might ensure that the idea never gets off the ground, from what I have seen on the roads most of the more expensive cars and SUVs are driven by some of the worst drivers around. No, an H2 can not make a left had turn from the right lane and think that no one will notice! Maybe its just that the cars are so freaking huge that you notice them more and thus their poor driving is thrown into sharp contrast. Anyway, this is a mighty clever security system – one I’m sure that will make the main stream news any day now.
The Insight System is designed to operate in buffering mode for an average of two weeks without starting your vehicle. Thereafter it will run uninterrupted without buffering , all on a standard car battery. This ensures that the most useful images are recorded…Cameras are placed inconspicuously throughout the vehicle…a typical camera installation covers all angles of the vehicle, including events that occur both in front of and behind the vehicle.
The Optimus keyboard has been getting some press lately, and I can see why. With a fully configurable keyboard layout there is no limit to how this can be customized. Each key switch has an OLED cover that will display just about any image you can fit in what looks to be a 40×40 pixel matrix. Typing in Japanese? No problem, just select the soft overlay and your now looking at a Japanese keyboard. Editing video? All your task keys are now highlighted and set. Same thing with games. No more hunting for the right keys to figure out how to fire the guns. Just look for the icon.
Will it support a fast refresh so you can display messages on your keys? I don’t know but that would be quite cool to be able to see your latest email message subject on the space bar.
Might be out next year for a kings ransom I’m sure, but wouldn’t it be sweet to have one.
I own a Color Classic as well an a much abused SE/30 (I added an Apple logo shaped window to it’s side) and I’ve been wanting to get some more use out of them before they fail totally. In the past I’ve tried to use the SE/30 as a web cam server, it kind of worked but it was slow and almost impossable to configure because the Quickcam software is too large for the screen. The Classic has an AAUI card in it but after a rather impressive blue smoke event with a weird media adapter I have pretty much written the card off.
I decided to do a bit of searching and see if anyone had tried building a useful Internet machine out of these antiques and was quite happy to discover that a few had. One of particular note is the Classic web server. Its online and even has a small downloads section that is running off it’s FDHD. You might think, “big deal, there are millions of web servers out there”. Well that might be true but look at the specs of this one:
Specifications:
CPU – 8MHz Motorola 68000
RAM – Maxed out at 4mb
Hard Drive – 40mb
Floppy Drive – 1.44mb 3.5″
Monitor – Built in 9″ black and white
Ethernet Connection – Asante EN/SC 10T SCSI to Ethernet Adapter
Operating System – Macintosh System 7.5
Server Software – MacHTTP
Web Browser – MacWeb 2.0
Screensaver – Basic Black
Yeah, not what you would call a powerhouse!
From there I noticed the link to the ‘68K Macintosh Web Server Directory‘. That is like pure gold! Gobs of ‘old world’ macs serving up pages fo rthe world to see. The SE/30 Webcam Server. Now he cheats a bit, his webcam is Firewire’d into an iMac and the SE/30 just serves the images up. The page you see is coming from the SE/30 though.
The one I want to build will have the computer do everything. Take the picture and serve it up to you. I might have to settle with just FTP’ing the image to this page and serving it up from there, my ISP has this thing about servers.
