Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Humm, a laptop maker that was about to release a webcam enabled model but at the moment they decided to kill the idea and just painted over the lens to disable it? I’m not sure if I buy this… The placement is odd as well, it’s in the latch that keeps the laptop closed. You have a look at the video and tell me what you think. Is it a hoax or an undocumented feature?
[via Cryptolife]
Ooo, an R/C plane with a cockpit mounted micro video camera/transmitter that’s slaved to a gyro on the pilots head. Lots of discussion here. Video here, here, and here (best by far, lots of close passes with the ground).
Pretty much the idea is that the camera is sending a cockpit point of view back to the pilot where he views it on a set of head mounted goggles. To add a bit of extra zing to the equation the camera pans and tilts in response to the wearers head movements. You can see the fun that could be had with this, eh? Telepresence is amazing!
Some specs and build notes from the discussion group: (prices in Canadian I think)
My equipment is old. New equipment:
Gyro:$425
headset:$699
cam: $99
video tx/rx: around $150
antenna: 8dbi patch (optional) around $60
amateur radio license is req’d because you need to exceed 10mw of power.(it’s not hard to get and inexpensive in Canada)
and also it’s easy to plug, but not easy to get good video link without video dropout. It’s not easy to explain everything for me to someone who don’t have good electronic skill, for now it’s not for everyone.
The cam in this setup is glue on a servo and allow 45 deg of panning, the servo is plug in the rudder channel if not use or on slider etc. The servo can be modified to 180 deg easily by adding two resistor on pot. lead or buying a special circuit.
At the last second I decided to go ahead and make a Halloween costume. I was inspired by a commercial for the movie Shaun of the Dead. Funny zombie movie. How cool would that be? I mean I’m going to go out and oversee my kids why not wear something fun? I quickly collected that basics, white shirt, red tie, name badge, and a cricket bat. The first three are easy, I can either make or buy those but a cricket bat is something that I’m a bit short on. I’ve held one before so I know what they look like up close so armed with that and a few photos off the ‘net I can come up with something that should look pretty close to a bat.
Ok, so I’m asking myself how is this news? I mean, what do you expect from a company like Microsoft? If you don’t pay for the gold you only get brass. It’s like if you buy the standard version of Office, you get Word, Excel, Outlook and Power Point. That’s at a suggested retail price of $399. Now what you don’t get is Access, that’s their database application. If you want that you have to buy the pro version and that’s another $100. Life would be so much better if they included Access with their office suite, people do the worst things in Excel just because they don’t have a good (read any) database app. Man! Well, ok this post was about Vista so I had better say a little bit about it. I have a copy (legal, Bill sent it to me himself) of RC1 at work and it runs OK. I don’t have a *&%$ expensive graphics card to power the system so the Pentium 4 3GHz with 1 GB or RAM is only benching at a 2.2. Geeze! That’s some heavy software! The ‘Aero’ components remind me of the transparent Linux windows from about three years ago so nothing big there. The Widgets or Gizmos or whatever the hell they call they desktop cycle wasters are OK but dated. Other than that it’s much like working on my Mac but has more a Windows feeling. That means the OS treats me like child and offers advice and won’t let me see all the goodies until i much with the settings. I’m sticking with XP, I can’t afford paying $200+ for a un-crippled version of Vista.
"The new [Vista] experience you hear of, if you get Basic, you won’t feel it at all. There’s no [Aero] graphics, no Media Center, no remote control."
Back in 2000, in another life when I lived in a house and had space, I set up a quick and dirty haunted laboratory for the local kids that came around to trick or treat. I had lots of black lights, party gels (the red lights), green glow sticks, dry ice, a Jacobs ladder (15KV at 30mA), and my home brew Tesla coil (output about 50KV). The kids loved it! I had a ball firing up the Tesla coil on the un suspecting kids. The spark gap on that monster is LOUD! I was the only house in my neighborhood that did any thing close to this and my attempt was pretty half assed. I’ll say this, once I get another home I’m pulling out the stops and doing this again.
Any science fiction fan worth their salt knows what your talking about when you mention the word "Landmaster". Arguable one of the most recognized vehicle ever created for a movie (Damnation Alley