Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
LED Dining table
Originally uploaded by oskay2.
Dining table with a frosted glass top lit by 448 LEDs that respond, in a complex and gentle fashion, to input generated by motion above the table while we eat.
I like this but I wonder if you lose some of the interactiveness if your don’t use clear plates. What if you have soup? And will eating spaghetti make the table go nuts?
Google has expanded their online mapping service to include the planet Mars. Pretty cool being able to find the landing (sometimes crashing) spots of the probes that have been sent there.
Come June the military is going to run some tests to the effects of study ground shock effects on deeply buried tunnels. To do this they will detonate 700 tons (a little less power than 600 tons of TNT) of heavy AN/FO in a shallow pit 65 miles north west of Las Vegas some time in the summer of 2006. Should be quite a bang but not the biggest done by the propeller heads That was in the 80’s it weighed in at around 4000 tonnes of AN/FO over at White Sands.
I could have used this on my last trip. An 80GB USB 2.0 drive enclosure encased in a nice aluminium and rubber body. Reminds me of the much imitated bummper on Fluke meters.
An anamorphic pinhole camera makes some pretty cool images. But the question is, as always, build or buy? I like the build method that this guy came up with.
[via MAKE]
With birth rates low, the Japanese government is looking to get into the match making game and at the same time get people interested in science. the new magazine ‘Science Walker’ will be added as an insert in the popular magazine ‘Tokyo Walker‘ (translated version here). The idea is that the science insert will give young couples more things to talk about. I don’t know if it will work but what do they have to lose? I know that if my girlfriend asked me what photosynthesis was or if I read about the latest JAXA mission was, I’d be out looking for a ring the next day.
[via Boingboing]