Category: Cool

Retrievr – Search by Sketch

Here is the deal. You draw (or in my case scribble) a few shapes in a little window and all of a sudden you get to see Flickr images that match what you, er.. drew, Ok, it only deals with basic shapes, colors and light values but as you can see from the above example it works for the most part. I was trying to draw the Apple logo (I’m going to blame the hardware, I can’t draw with a mouse for crap) and I got this. I also got a few photos of the moon (Earth’s moon, you gutter heads) and lots of portraits in black and white. Pretty cool, if you want to know more about the program or the company that makes it check out the System One Labs pages.

[via BoingBoing] 

retrievr – search by sketch

LEGO NXT

 

 

LEGO has announced the next generation of the Mindstorm robotics line of learning toys. The NXT will have more input and output ports (3 in and 4 out), a cleaner design (no bumps, just holes – I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not), and a simpler programming language. Where the old Mindstorms used an optical IR tower to communicate with a PC for programming , the new ones will use a USB 2 interface. The new kits also come with sonar sensors and servo motors with built in rotational sensors and Bluetooth radio. There is no word if any of the parts will be compatible with the old Mindstorm kits but it will be programmable from both PC and Mac platforms. From what was in the Wired article it looks as if the NXT OS may be open to hackers that will want to make their own firmware revisions but that yet to be confirmed. LEGO has had a tough year and I’m quite glad that they have not scrapped the robotics product line in favor of saving money.

[via Wired, Gizmodo, NXT Blog, and Robot Magazine] 

LEGO NXT

New Years Photo Safari

Urban MountainsSewerSakura No Gomi
Alien Summer HomeGreen RaysHive Mind
Light ValuesMulti-PerfMicro Bend

Sunday morning I got up at the crack of dawn and went over to some rather expensive loft/condos that are being built at 24th st and Camelback road here in Phoenix. I had all my camera gear with me and figured the low sun would make for some pretty good photos. I was right but I had this weird feeling. I’d have to call it a ‘Tokyo moment’. There I was surrounded by all these brand new buildings, sounds of traffic in the background, and not a person to be found anywhere. The exact same thing happened to me a few times when I was out taking photos in Japan. One in particular was when I went out to take photos of the Asahi Super Dry Brewery building in the Sumida ward of Tokyo. As I walked from Ueno station east to the Golden Flame I passed people but the closer I got to the river the fewer the people got. Once I got to the Flame there was no one to be found. I know that it was because it was early in the day on a Sunday morning but the effect was pretty cool. All alone in a city of millions. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photos I shot of these buildings here in Arizona. I’m going to make an effort to go on a photo safari at least twice a month so hopefully there will be more. Please leave me comments on what you think of my work.

Flickr Set: Photo Safari 

BitChar-G Modifications

Custom wheels for BitChar-G 

I brought two BitChar-G car sets back from Japan about six months before the craze swept through the US. That was in 2002, nice to see that there are still a bunch of people that like to race them and ever better, do mods on them. The picture here shows new wheels made from the little rubber finger pads from a pencil. Pretty cool, eh?

QFM Racing – BitChar-G Modifications

The Most Complex Pinhole Camera

6 X 9 format pin hole camera 

I was looking around for pinhole cameras and came up with this. It’s got to be the most complex pinhole camera I have ever seen… I stand in awe of this creation… The translation might not be perfect, but you should still be able to understand all of it.

6 X 9 format pin hole cameras