I went to the bi-monthly hackerspace meeting last night. They had a guy there giving a talk about an open source 3D printer that he and his company is working on. I posted photos of it on Flickr. The thing is called ‘Cube.ly‘ and will, once finished, print 10cc of volume per hour, cost under $1000, takes a weekend to build, and is made of off the shelf parts. The frame is made of this stuff called ‘80/20′, think adult sized Erector set and the other bits like motors are available from McMaster-Carr or the guys that build the Makerbot (electronics).
Category: Cool
The Sandpit
The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.
Such a wonderful mix of tilt-lens camera work and time lapse technique.
“It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills. I used my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of these shots. Most were shot at 4fps in DX crop mode, which is the fastest the D3 could continuously write out to the memory card. The boats had slower frame rates, and the night shots used exposures up to two seconds each. The camera actually has an automatic cut off after 130 shots, so for longer shots I counted each click and quickly released and re-pressed the shutter release after 130 to keep shooting.”
For more info about the making of this short visit: “The Sandpit” – A short film by Aero Director, Sam O’Hare!
[via MAKE]
MONOCHRON – Monochome display clock kit
Another very cool clock kit to lust after. I swear, if I had my way my room would look like Doc Brown lived in it…
The second clock kit from ladyada & Adafruit Industries, we present MONOCHRON!
We wanted to make a clock that was ultra-hackable, from adding a seperate battery-backed RTC to desiging the enclosure so you could program the clock once its assembled
- 128×64 LCD (KS0108) – we special-ordered the black and white display
- ATmega328 processor (we even stuck an ‘arduino’ stk500 bootloader on there too)
- Laser cut enclosure in black acrylic
- Beeping/blinking alarm with 10 minute snooze
- Battery backed-up real time clock (DS1307) keeps time even when power is lost for years
- European/US 12 or 24 hour time display as well as date
- Completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with
- Plenty of space for mods, a prototyping area for soldering stuff in
- Soothing animation of retro arcade style table-tennis for two
Zapping Mosquitoes With Frick’en Lasers!
We live in amazing times.
…If Microsoft founder Bill Gates unleashes more mosquitoes at this year’s Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, Nathan Myhrvold will be ready for him. Myhrvold demonstrated a “Death Star” laser gun designed to track and kill mosquitoes in flight. The device was crafted from parts purchased on eBay by scientists at Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures Laboratory. As Myhrvold explained, a child dies every 43 seconds from malaria. Current methods for eradicating the disease aren’t working very well. There’s no viable vaccine yet, and although mosquito nets work, people don’t always use them. When given free nets by public health organizations, many people in the developing world use the nets for fishing instead. So until the time comes when malaria can be controlled, Intellectual Ventures thought it might be a good idea to try to control mosquitoes. Myhrvold’s team demonstrated the system onstage using a green laser light rather than a real laser for safety reasons. They let loose mosquitoes in a glass box rigged with a camera on one side of the stage, then pointed the laser device at the box. The laser lights quickly located the mosquitoes in flight. After the live demo, Myhrvold showed a video depicting mosquitoes being zapped for real in flight. They’re currently examining how cost effective it would be to deploy the device in places like Africa.
Airborne Laser Testbed Successful in Lethal Intercept Experiment
Spotted this real-world application of way cool technology today:
Airborne Laser Testbed Successful in Lethal Intercept ExperimentFeb. 11, 2010 – At 8:44 p.m. (PST)
A short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.
[via Launch-Alert mailing list]
Airborne Laser Testbed Media Gallery
My thoughts on the Apple iPad
It’s the long awaited tablet from Apple, the iPad. I figured it would be called the ‘iSlate’ or the ‘iTablet’ but I guess that’s why I don’t get paid to predict such things. So, this being a tech blog I figured I should say a few things about it. Why not, other people do on their blogs…
It’s the long awaited tablet from Apple, the iPad. I figured it would be called the ‘iSlate’ or the ‘iTablet’ but I guess that’s why I don’t get paid to predict such things. So, this being a tech blog I figured I should say a few things about it. Why not, other people do on their blogs.
First, I doubt that iPad will be merged with the Mac laptop line. I can see them eliminating the low end laptop but only if sales started to fall for those units. Maybe the Air will be retired because of the iPad, not sure. I’d have to see the sales numbers on the laptops to make any further observations on that.
Continue reading “My thoughts on the Apple iPad”