Category: Technology

SD to IDE adapter

I don’t see Linux being a good use for this unless you have a small hard drive free system that you need a rewriteable filesystem. It would be handy for a remote device, like a balloon payload or something like that. Pretty neat

If you have spare SD cards lying around your house, why not employ them for something useful? This SD to IDE adapter allows your PC to recognize SD cards as though they were a hard drive. Since this works at the BIOS level, you can even boot directly from SD. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to update your Linux Live CD o­n an SD card instead of having to rewrite a CD over and over again?

SD to IDE adapter from Ircube

Shark Skin Inspires Ship Coating

By looking at the way shark skin is structured scientists have discovered a way to lower the amount of algae and critter build up on the hulls of ships. Might not sound like much but that could slow a ship down like crazy. I wonder if this new surface might be able to lower the normal drag of a boat. It must not hurt it all that much or it would slow aircraft carriers down too much.

Using a combination plastic-and-rubber coating, Brennan replicated a version of shark skin that is made up of billions of tiny raised, diamond-shaped patterns, visible under a microscope. Each “sharklet” diamond measures 15 microns, or 15 thousandths of a millimeter, and contains seven raised ribs that resemble different lengths of raised horizontal bars.

Wired News: Shark Skin Inspires Ship Coating

Prometheus

Nukes in Space

I can’t wait until this is launched. I think that once a high powered ion driven probe zips out to someplace like Jupiter and brings near live (after accounting for light delay) video of what it is looking at the public will love the idea of atomic power in space. Man, active powerful radar and a larger science package that ever dreamed of… Wow…

Prometheus looks to nuke future

(nuclear, space, atomic power, NASA)