Category: Dumb

Own Your Own AWACS Plane

 

Hum, looks like it might be fun to play with.  Here are the specs: 

  • Takes 26 digital pictures by radio control while flying
  • AWACS appearance
  • 55" wingspan
  • Twin, electric-ducted fan jet engines
  • Simple thrust vector steering control
  • Push button camera control
  • 1,000-foot flying range
  • Additional rechargeable flight battery included
  • Includes home and auto chargers
  • E-Z Launch Takeoff System ensures expert launches
  • Easy for beginners and fun for experienced flyers
  • Digital camera is Windows compatible

26 images are a bit low, and the camera should be slung under the body of the plane. You want to see the ground, not the sky. Yeah, you lose the ‘AWACS‘ look but you get more funtionality. If your wanting to buy one of these just remember when it comes to R/C planes you get what you pay for. This plane has no control surfaces, the direction is controled by giving more or less power to one the motors on the wings. Want to turn right, you give more power to the left motor. Your not going to be pulling any fancy acrobatics with this craft. It also looks to be made out of foam so one arrested landing via a tree trunk is going to leave a mark. Buy extra wings and some tape. If you see one on a discount table someplace pick it up, but don’t pay full retail. If you just can’t wait to take pictures from the air of somthing give kite aerial photography a try.

[via red ferret ]

Radio-Control Digital Camera Plane

Champagne cork parachute

ChampiChute

Umm.. Yeah. Stock up on these for the Yew Year. Or better yet, as the animated GIF is better at telling how it works  than the patent papers, build your own. Ya know, nothing says ‘I’m a geek’ louder than a parachute on a champagne cork. Come to think of it, a cork parachute and a 2 liter bottle of something fizzy (I’ll go with baking soda and acid of choice for home chemistry, vinegar) should make for some weekend fun.

[via BoingBoing]

Champagne cork parachute

Recharge Your Chi, Empty Your Pockets

 

‘Life Enery Apllifier"… I quote "Now you can create clear energetic fields in your home, work, spa and recreational environments. Release stress and increase your energy. Heighten awareness and support your creativity. Use the Environmental Energy Systems (EES) along with your spiritual practices to connect with your higher self, bringing inner harmony and accelerating personal growth. Many experience the energy generated by the EES System as being very thick, like love." Or the stuff that makes grass green.

[via Red Ferret Journal]

Enviromentalist

Aluminium foil hats are/aren’t dangerous

Tinfoil hats are bad?!?Well this isn’t good news for some people I’ve met… Some MIT students with access to loads of gear checked out the RF properties of some common aluminium foil hat configurations (Fez, Centurion, and the Classical) and discovered, much to the horror of nuts everywhere, that they can amplify frequencies used by government agencies:

The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ”radio location” (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites (see, for example, [3]). The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings.

 Thats right folks, the hats will let the secret beams into your head. I’m glad I don’t own any stock in Alcoa.

[via Engadget]

Aluminium foil hats are/aren’t dangerous