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Somewhat gratified
April 6, 2012 – 4:20 pm
… to see that I’d posted the cool helmet on my blog before it showed up on Tumblr. BTW: http://timsculptor.tumblr.com/
Disco Ball Helmet
April 1, 2012 – 12:41 pm
If I were the type to ride a motorcycle, I think I’d want this:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Disco-Ball-Helmet/
I really wonder what it might look like on a very sunny day, and how often this person might get pulled over for presenting a danger to other drivers. Cf. the episode of CHiPs in which Ponch and the other guy track down the mirror-sterious cause of an accident on the 10. Those two were geniuses.
Google Fun
November 4, 2011 – 12:33 pm
Some of these have been around a while, but 80% were new to me.
http://mashable.com/2011/11/03/google-easter-eggs-2/
Hair Makes Everything More Wonderful
October 21, 2011 – 3:25 pm
Really not entirely sure how I feel about this. Sure, they’re amazing. But I’m glad I’m not eating anything prepared in this kitchen!!
http://people.hws.edu/chin/ChristineChinWebsite/SentientKitchen/index.html
Interesting Educational Sites
August 26, 2011 – 9:22 pm
The first, which is quickly becoming famous is Salman Khan’s http://khanacademy.org, which extensively uses YouTube to provide what he calls “asynchronous learning”. Over two thousand videos covering a wide array of subjects, with particular strength in math, economics, and science. He also has over 60 videos on astronomy and cosmology. At about ten minutes each, the offerings are fairly near 400 hours of educational material. The site also is beginning to add assessment tools and there are some schools in the Peninsula that are trying it out as a complement to their standard materials.
The second, which I only heard about today, is http://quizlet.com, a flash card creation tool, that actually does several things I’d wanted to do in Flash, namely games and tests with packages of material. But perhaps the coolest aspect of this site is that the community is building these flash card sets, and thus there are literally thousands of sets. Also, your progress can by measured against the community: speed tests are ranked, items with the most errors are shown, and so on.
Both are currently free. Let’s hope they stay that way!
Sloop v. Xebec
May 2, 2011 – 9:43 am
It’s been many years since I read Master and Commander, but I distinctly remember the battle between Lucky Jack Aubrey, newly made Commander of a sloop (was it called Sophie yet?) and an Ottoman xebec far larger and more capable. I need to read those books again!
But I never knew upon whom this story was based, and today, pretty much randomly, I stumbled across the Wiki entry for Thomas Cochrane, clearly one of the inspirations for Aubrey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_Dundonald
RC Heli with Mind Control
April 18, 2011 – 12:11 pm
How cool is this? When I first saw the title, I was like “right” but the video explains practically exactly how it works. I’ll have to search around to see if there are any videos of extended flight or fine control. (I have enough experience with macros to know that they can be very limiting.)
Hiding Fine Art Inside Popular Art
April 11, 2011 – 3:00 pm
I came across this piece in the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/arts/design/woody-woodpecker-and-shamus-culhanes-animation.html
I’ve long known about animators inserting cameos in their work. But this was quite new. And the idea of inserting different kinds of art as transitional backgrounds or tonal matte paintings is a great one. I’ll have to think on that a bit!
Egg Decorating Robot
April 7, 2011 – 10:36 am
Evil Mad Scientist's Egg-Bot.
Toddling around an Instructables email (totally wonderful daily distractions!) I came across the EggBot. This dandy device can do awesome decorations on eggs. Just in time for Easter! More info at Evil Mad Scientist’s site.