The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
(via Engadget)
I have absolutely no use for a portable media player (PMP). I don’t fly or ride the bus anywhere that would lead me to think I’d get much use out of a PMP. Yet when I see this:
I can’t help but want one.
[tags]Portable Media Player, PMP, iRiver[/tags]
Wow! That’s a lot of portable storage. No price announced yet.
[tags]USB key[/tags]
(via Chris Pirillo)
A cross-platform GPLed daily comic viewer.
ComiX is a program that reads daily comic strips (cartoons). It has a user friendly graphical interface, with slide show feature, calendar like control, easy navigational comic strips menu, previews and next and today buttons, status bar for details on current comic strip.
[tags]Comics[/tags]
And now we return to our regular trivial posts.
[tags]Jessica Alba, Nancy Callahan[/tags]
A video you really just need to see. This robot climbs stuff.
[tags]Robots, cool stuff, climbing robot[/tags]
Some day, I’ll be able to get one of these.
Taiwanese Chi Mei Optoelectronics is a name you may not know, despite the company being the third largest LCD TV panel supplier in the world. At CEBIT in Hannover in mid-March, the company will display the world’s first 56-inch LCD TV panel. Perhaps more startling than the size of the mega-telly is the definition which is known as Quad Full High Definition (QFHD) with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels and an astonishing 8.29 million pixels.
[tags]LCD TV, QFHD[/tags]
 (via TechEBlog)
Wow! Big screen, bright display. The only thing not to like is the $11,999 price.
[tags]Multi-view LCD[/tags]
(via TechEBlog) Apparently, it’s about $1300.
Wake up, press a button, and you could have a nice hot shower waiting for you with Grohtherm’s new device. The Wireless Digital Shower lets you set water temperature and flow rate via a control panel. A remote control allows you to turn on/off the shower from anywhere in the house. That’s not all, Grohe’s TurboStat technology instantly reacts to any change in water pressure which prevents the shower from suddenly becoming too hot or icy cold. Cool technology like this doesn’t come cheap, expect to pay $1,306 for this system.
[tags]Shower, gadgets[/tags]
My wife tells me I’m a dweeb. I think these are some of the neatest things I’ve ever laid eyes on. Here’s number 8.
[tags]Lego, Top 10, strange creations[/tags]
(via TechEBlog)
I really need to give up gaming so I have more time to do stuff like this:
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It all started when I bought a weathered Superman Pinball Machine for the parts. When I gained access to the head I found the boards to be in good shape. I pulled the PCBs to see which ones worked and after a little fiddling and small repairs, they all fired up and the displays worked fine.
So, I had a fully functioning board set with a ravaged
cabinet and playfield. I decided to use the boards to make a design station to experiment with possible playfield toys and devices. The playfield is made of 3/4″ Birch Plywood. This meant the height critical components had to be counter-sunk, but I thought the additional rigidity would be a bonus. At this point I had a full length blank playfield with working flippers and slings to play with. I started sorting through the wire harness and decided, in an effort to avoid trouble, an 8-letter title would be in order. By chance one of my favorite shows “Futurama” had just that. I started buying posters, calendars, toys and anything else I thought might integrate well into a pinball machine.
Of course, I realize the irony in the fact that to have time to build cool gaming stuff like this, I’d really have to give up gaming. But I think I’m starting to have more fun maintaining a couple of web sites and writing about gaming that I have actually gaming most days. So I may finally be nearing the point in my life where I’ll do something like stop gaming to start building things. More and better pics at the builders site.
[tags]Futurama, pinball, mods[/tags]
It turns out buckyballs might be toxic. That’s might be toxic, in the same way that oxygen might be necessary to live.
Scientists already realized buckyballs could be toxic. Studies at Duke University in 2004 showed that when buckyballs were introduced to laboratory aquariums they damaged the brains of largemouth bass and may also have prevented certain water-borne bacteria from reproducing.
Until then scientists had theorized that the strong attraction that buckyballs have for each other would cause the molecules to clump together and safely sink to the bottom of any body of water, be it a test aquarium or a lake.
. . .
The buckyballs break apart vital hydrogen bonds within the DNA molecule’s double helix and they can stick to grooves on DNA’s surface, causing the molecule to bend. Not only do the buckyballs damage the DNA, Cummings says, they cripple its ability to heal.
“The buckyballs insert themselves in a way that prevents the DNA from self-repairing,” Cummings told LiveScience. The buckyball actually forces a piece of nucleotide from one of the DNA’s double helixes and takes its place, preventing the strands from reuniting.
Ouch. That sounds bad. And I’m sure someone will bring up Michael Crichton’s novel Prey, but this isn’t quite the same thing. That book was about nano-particle entities that were bad as a cooperating system, while this article is about a specific nano-particle that happens to be very bad all on it’s own.
[tags]Buckyballs, nano-particles[/tags]
To the bat cave, or something. I need to figure out where I can get one put in my house. (via boingboing)