Category: Cool

NASA TV Feeds

NASA TV

If your looking to keep up with what is going on with the current Space Shuttle mission and can’t get NASA TV in your area, you should take a look at this list. Dozens of links to feeds with a quality rating next to each one. I like the 350 kb/s feed myself, it’s almost like watching the video feed on cable. I’m watching the crew move the Canada arm around so they can install Raffaello, the Multi Purpose Logistics Module that was hauled up on orbit by the shuttle, to the ISS. It’s simplay amazing to see something like this and know that its happening right now.
Go celebrate NASA’s return to space by geeking out in front of your computer and absorb some hard core space news.

NASA TV Feeds

NASA, space, video, news

Breakfast Egg & Muffin Toaster

neat

I’m a big fan of neat do-dads that are multi funcional, well except for those scanner/fax/printer monsters, those pretty much suck across the board. The Egg and Muffin toaster looks like something that I’d be happy to have in my kitchen.

This new multi-function toaster can not only toast your bread, it can cook an egg and warm up a slice of ham. Breakfast ready to eat in about four minutes. That’s a great idea, hehe.

“With the new Egg & Muffin Toaster, Back to Basics continues to prove its ability of bringing to market new and better ways for the consumer to make the food they love,” said CEO Randy Hales. “CWe’re again creating a ‘light bulb’ moment for small electrics, this time in the toaster category.”
350 000 Egg & Muffin Toaster units will be available in stores around September and sell for $49.99. I Wonder if this lovely item will be available here in Europe also”

Breakfast Egg & Muffin Toaster – sunny links for rainy days.

Optimus Keyboard

keyboard

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.

Best. Keyboard. Ever.

keyboard, OLED, Optimus, cool

Antique Mac Web Servers

SE/30

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.

cool, antique, server, Macintosh, Apple

Pinholegraphy

Pinhography

This is agreat site devoted to a love of pinhole photography. I discovered Xiao Shan’s home page when I was looking at his Flickr photostream. As you can see by the image I’m using for this story, Shan likes to improvise and create unique cameras out of whatever is around, I like the zebra cameras myself but the coffee cameraas are a very close second. Its a great place to kick start your brain if your looking for a photo project and you get to see some beautiful photos too.

PINHOLEGRAPHY

photo, pinhole, camera, Japan, DIY

OfficeGuns – Slayer of Cans

Can killer

This is cooler than the Mini Claymore by far!
I built one of these at home last night and got some pretty good results. The pencils could have used something to stabilize them in flight, fins or maybe something to give it a bit of spin. Other than that I was able to shoot them across the room with ease. This might be the perfect thing to deter the pigeons from eating the cat food…

OfficeGuns – Guns Advanced – Super Maul

clever, improvised, office, guns,