The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
(via boingboing)
This is a really cool visual effect.
As I’ve noted before when linking to photochop guide, a how-to in Gimp would be handy for those of us unable to afford (and unwilling to pirate) Photoshop.
[tags]Photochopping, Photoshop, Haunted house, How-to guide[/tags]
(via ComputerWorld)
A series of animated tesselations from Japan. And in case you don’t know what an animated tesselation is:
Scroll down on the first page and click on Next to see the rest of the animations. After the first page, the next button is more obvious.
[tags]Japanese animated tesselations, Animated gifs[/tags]
(via LifeHacker)
Here is a site I could have used 15 years ago in college. I have a brother who is a pretty good artist. I have the drawing skills of a ferret using a calligraphy pen to draw on pressed reeds (no, I don’t have any idea where that comparison came from). That made my required art class much tougher for me than I would have liked. But the folks at DrawSpace seem to think they can help folks like me learn to draw any way. Here’s a snip of their front page. Missing is any of the advanced courses, and most of the beginner and intermediate ones as well. This is just a small sample of what is offered.
And since I’m sure just seeing what a few of the lessons offered are isn’t enough to convince most folks, why not look at one of the (advanced) skills purported to be learnable.
If you can’t do that now, but would like to be able to, it’s time to hit Drawspace and learn.
[tags]Drawspace, Learn to draw online[/tags]
Sorry, I just couldn’t carry the alliteration any further. But I think that’s a decent article title just for getting things going when talking about fire-walking. Since it seems many consider it some sort of mystical mystery, how about we look to LiveScience.com for an explanation of the phenomenon from a professor trying to get students interested in thermodynamics.
Physics professor David Willey doesn’t use chalk and formulas to spark his students’ interest in thermodynamics.
He walks on fire.
“Nothing gets a student’s attention like the possibility that I might kill myself,” said Willey, this year’s winner of the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.
That bit then leads in to an explanation of just how firewalking is possible. Here’s the punchline – wood is a bad conductor. If you know what that means, then just jump ahead to the next article. If that’s not enough to clue you in, then please hit LiveScience.com for the full article.
[tags]Firewalking, LiveScience, Thermodynamics, Walk on fire[/tags]
This is an awesome photo, and I almost missed posting it on the day it was featured. In fact, there have been several great astronomy pictures of the day lately. But I figure folks get tired of me posting picture of the day stuff too often, so I’ve held off. That said, check out this one and then look back through the archives at the NASA site.
The Comet and the Galaxy Explanation: The Moon almost ruined this photograph. During late March and early April 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp passed nearly in front of the Andromeda Galaxy. Here the Great Comet of 1997 and the Great Galaxy in Andromeda were photographed together on 1997 March 24th. The problem was the brightness of the Moon. The Moon was full that night and so bright that long exposures meant to capture the tails of Hale-Bopp and the disk of M31 would capture instead only moonlight reflected off the Earth’s atmosphere. By the time the Moon would set, this opportunity would be gone. That’s why this picture was taken during a total lunar eclipse.
Credit & Copyright: J. C. Casado
[tags]Astronomy Picture of the day, POTD, Hale-Bopp[/tags]
(view MAKEzine blog)
A graphical look at graphical and semi-graphical user interfaces on Apple and PC systems from 1984 to present. See what you have missed, if you just entered the computing world recently. Shoot – I was into computers since way back then, and I even missed a lot of these interfaces.
[tags]Graphical interfaces, User interfaces, Computing interface evolution[/tags]
(via boingboing)
Pardon the departure from the normally less-adult-oriented language for the site. I just couldn’t pass up this image.
[tags]Samuel L Jackson, Liquids on a plane[/tags]
A picture and build details on the making this:
into this:
I’d like to build one of these myself, just to have around and show off my geekiness in a more visible way.
[tags]LEGO, Escher’s Relativity[/tags]
(via TechEBlog)
Scientists in Japan have recently announced the development of a “lifelike” female android called “Repliee Q1Expo.” Of course, they should have named her Rachael, I think, but what do I know? (And speaking of Sean Young, go check out her pictures on IMDB – I can barely believe she’s nearly 50).
More information from the BBC:
She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.
She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.
So why the uncanny valley reference? Well…
As you’ve probably gathered from some of my recent posts, I tend to aimlessly wander around the intarwebbe from time to time. In those ramblings, I usually find nothing of note. Occasionally, however, I find stuff that I really think is worth passing on. The latest such finding is the site National Parks Traveler, which discusses various goings-on in America’s national parks. After reading a few days worth of posts there, I look to the sidebar and see what categories I have to look in on the site. Out of curiosity, I decide to see what the Missteps in the Park category holds. Among the lost tourist details is this little helpful hint on how NOT to behave in a national park.
So, what’s at play here? Are we talking communing up close with nature, or a building case of child neglect?
I’d opt for the latter. I mean, really, where are the parents and what are they thinking? Do they have a death wish for their kids? Any bets that if the kids wound up being gored, which they didn’t, that the parents would sue the National Park Service?
(via LifeHacker)
Got a little spare time and a desire to better see your wallet’s contents at night? It’s time to mod that sucker and put some night-lighting in.
I first got exposed to the glorious field of illuminating wallets when shooting Gear Live’s The Bleeding Edge ( http://www.bleedingedgetv.com/ ), a weekly video show. They had been sent the Walit ( http://www.lazyboneuk.com/store/pro240.html ), an electroluminescent glowing wallet, to review. I was excited at the idea – I had personally never thought of a glowing wallet and was eager to see how it worked.
I was, however, completely disappointed. The Walit was terrible. It was dim, the batteries took up too much space, and it had a flimsy clip to turn the light on and off.
. . .
Parts list:
- A leather wallet
- At least four small surface mount LEDs (Search eBay for “white smt leds” or salvage them from an old cell phone)
- Two colors of thin, flexible wire (I used wire wrapping wire)
- Two CR1616 watch batteries
- A small amount of sheet brass, or something to make the battery holder out of :
- A 1/8 watt 100k-ohm resistor (though anything betweek 10k and 1 megohm should work)
- A generic PNP transistor
- A small tactile snapdome button
Now go, mod, and come back with pictures.
[tags]Wallet mods, Light your wallet, Night-light for money[/tags]
I know we all dream of the future when the robots do all the work (and prior to the robot uprising in which they cleanse the earth of us miserable puny humans, of course) and we get to sit on the porch, sipping lemonade, chatting amicably with our neighbors, and just generally enjoying the bounties of the mechanical workers we command. But would it interest you to know that we’ve already passed that time? Yes, we had robots doing the work, and we flat missed it.
You don’t believe me, do you? Well here, let me prove it to you.
ROBOT PLOWS WHILE FARMER RESTS
While its owner sits comfortably on his porch, a new farm tractor operated by radio control plows his field for him. Radio impulses governing the tractor’s movements are supplied by an automatic radio transmitter, and are picked up by an antenna on the tractor. A receiving set starts the tractor’s engine, works the throttle and controls the steering. The new robot, exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair, is an improved model developed after earlier experiments.
See? I told you. This happened all the way back in September 1934, according to Popular Science magazine (thanks as always to the Modern Mechanix web site for providing this delightful look back on the world as it was).
[tags]Modern Mechanix, Popular Science, Robots do the work, The robots before the uprising in which they crush all the puny humans[/tags]
