…what the f#$k is up with the Japanese? Tentacle porn as charging device:
…and mechanical tumors…
All the brainchild of Mio Izawa.
1 October, 2010
1 October, 2010
Here’s the 15 finalists for the James Dyson Awards — yes, the vacuum cleaner guy with the proper amount of suction…
Minotaur Fire Nozzle System (New Zealand): Instead of holding a fire hose, the Minotaur Dire Nozzle is strapped onto fire-fighters with a harness. This counteracts the opposing water pressure and makes it easier to control.
Water Donut & Ultra Pipe (Germany): A pipe that purifies contaminated water with UV light. During sunless periods, the Ultra Pipe can filter the water through a pressure driven membrane.
Flo2w (Ireland): A new way of delivering oxygen to a hospital patient. The device is fitted on the patient’s head using an adjustable headpiece. Flo2w is more efficient and comfortable than a big, intimidating one-size-fits-all mask.
Reanimations (Switzerland): A resuscitation vest that compresses a patient’s chest as regular intervals and pushes the blood into the brain more effectively and evenly than with a manual cardiac massage
Butterfly Micro Scooter (Switzerland): Butterfly is a compact mobile micro scooter that can be folded away so it fits into a bag. When closed, dirty wheels are enclosed inside a smooth outer shell.
Seakettle (US): A life raft that provides shelter and fresh drinking water for those stranded at sea.
Mantis (US): A portable dental chair, that collapses into a trolley so it can be used to transport heavy equipment.
The Copenhagen Wheel (US): A sleek red hub in the rear wheel contains a motor, batteries and an internal gear system. It stores pedal power to power a hybrid electric motor – and can be controlled from a smart phone docked on the handlebars. Cyclists can use data to plan bike routes and see traffic and pollution levels ahead.
Tablet seed (Japan): A capsule made from water-soluble manure that contains vegetable seeds. When the tablet seed is buried in the ground, surrounding soil dissolves the capsule and chemical changes occur in the soil to promote growth.
Move-it (UK): A simple kit of self-adhesive cardboard parts, which the user sticks on to a cardboard box, turning it into a lightweight, easy-to-use trolley.
Air Free Intravenous infusions (UK): A drip chamber which prevents air entrainments in intravenous drip lines, reducing the chance of fatal air embolisms. It gives visual warning when an infusion has stopped.
Long Reach (Australia): A hand held device which expels a compressed emergency buoyancy aid up to 150 metres out to sea. Longreach helps people remain buoyant during an emergency situation.
BIQUATTRO (Austria): A pedal-assisted electric bike that can be turned into a tricycle when you need to carry a heavy load.
Wanderest seat (New Zealand): A seat designed to be strapped to public spaces such as a lamp post. It is portable so can be easily carried by the elderly.
Pure (UK): UV sterilization water bottle: a water bottle that filters and sterilises the water from a lake or a stream in two minutes. An outer chamber of the bottle is filled with dirty water from a lake, stream or puddle. The inner chamber plunges through the outer chamber, filtering water particles as small as four microns. Once the water is clear of sediment, it is sterilised for 90 seconds using a wind-up ultra violet bulb.
30 September, 2010
…maybe. Actually, in many way, not habitable for us, in all likelihood.
Gilese 581g orbits a red dwarf 20 light years away and is tidally locked (or close to it),which would create sharp environmental zones ranging from 160 to -30F, depending on which side of the planet you were on. The terminator — the area of twilight on the planet — would be most livable…if you’re Eskimo or Norwegian, maybe, with a balmy -10 to 20 degree F climate. It’s three times the size of Earth, and if the composition is right, might not have devastatingly high gravity and should be able to hold an atmosphere.
Buy your ticket now!
29 September, 2010
Not content with updating his “masterpiece” with new effects a few years back, George “Toy Boy” Lucas is set to ruin your childhood memories of the first Star Wars trilogy some more.
Now the trilogy is being released in 3D!
Maybe Han will shoot first in this go-’round. I, for one, am done with the Wars.
29 September, 2010
They Call It “Agnosticism”
Posted by blackcampbell under General Ramblings | Tags: possibilian |Leave a Comment
David Eagleman writes in New Scientist that he is a “possibilian” — a sicentist that doesn’t refute God, like most atheist scientists, nor is he necessarily a religious man. His article is here, if you want to read it, but rather than coining a new — and inelegant — term, try one that exists…
Agnostic – noun. 1. a person that holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly: one who is not committed to believing in the existence or nonexistence of God or a god.
Or as I like to put it: atheism requires a certain and commitment I don’t have.
28 September, 2010
BLIO and Calibre: A Bunch of Fail
Posted by blackcampbell under Technology | Tags: blio, calibre |Leave a Comment
I downloaded Blio — a new ebook reader/store that was promising a superior experience. While I wasn’t falling for the hyperbole, I did like that it was available for the Windows 7 platform. Problem: there’s no matching app for readers; you have to read your shiny ebooks on a computer.
There’s a lot of people that have computers and no reader — this program is for them. Unfortunately, much like iBooks, there’s not real selection.
I downloaded a couple of free books that caught my eye and was going to use Calibre to transfer them over to the iBooks program on the iPad. I hadn’t used Calibre for a few months, and was displeased to find the program couldn’t find my iPad with its new iteration. When I hit the online FAQ, I found that you had to shunt any ebooks set up through Calibre had to go through a proprietary reader on the iPad, rather than the very simple prior system. I understand that this is to better service other readers, but it’s a pain in the ass — I already have several reader programs and the last thing I need is another app to read a book (especially as it’s in the same bloody format iBooks uses.)
In other words, Calibre and Blio…a duo of FAIL. Honorable Failure Mention goes to Nook, Barnes and Noble’s reader for iPad. It crashes more than one of those old three-wheeled Reliants from the 1970s.
22 September, 2010
Quick Review: Pantech Jest
Posted by blackcampbell under General Ramblings | Tags: pantech jest |Leave a Comment
The Samsung flipphone I had was dying — crappy battery and was doing strange things like not receiving my voicemail and texts. Since I was about due to reup my Verizon account, I decided to try something outside of the flipphone (especially as Verizon and other carriers are trying to force peple away from simply voice & basic text devices.) The only one that really caught my eye after a bit of reading was the Pantech Jest — mostly because I want a free phone if I’m locked into a contract.
The Pantech is nicely sized and fits into a pocket well. It’s got a handsome colorful screen that looks nice, but washes out something fierce in the sunlight. It doesn’t help that the screen gets scratched up pretty quickly — or did just sitting in my mesh motorcycle jacket pocket for a few days. There’s a slide out QWERTY keyboard that works decently for texting (the main purpose of the phone, I suspect), but it can make dialing a number a bit of a hassle, and is a real pain in the butt when you have to deal with phone menus at your bank or what have you. Build quality is solid: my cat spilled milk all over the phone and knocked it off the counter, but a quick bit of paper towels and snapping the battery back in, the phone did well. (I did have to pull the battery a few days later to get the phone to accurately read the battery gauge.)
Voice quality is so-so; turned up to the maximum microphone and earpiece setting, people do have trouble hearing me if there’s a lot of ambient noise and vice-versa. Just using it for the occasional phone call and text, I get about a 4-5 day charge on the Jest; I traveled through Scotland with the phone charged and off, so that I would have comms on returning to the States, and after that time, it still have a 2 or 4 bar charge. (It had been on for two days, so it kept trying to find a network in the UK — more on that later.) Heavy phone and text use will drop your time, and internet services will most likely kill a charge in less than a day.
The phone does have the ability to web surf, be used as a navigation tool, but I don’t tend to use those features. You can play music on the Jest, and there’s a dedicated note button for the feature. I’ve only tried it, but with headphones the sound quality isn’t bad. It’s not replacing my Sansa clip-on MP3 player soon.
The phone buttons are locked when the device is closed, you have to slide the keyboard out to unlock and use the device. This also turns the phone on from sleep mode and can be done by accident while removing it from a pocket, or shifting it around in a backpack (hence why my phone was on in the UK when it ought not to have been.) The control mechanism is a circular pressure or optical sensitive OK button. It works well sometimes, and other times make you want to dash the phone off of the nearest hard object. Even changing the sensitivity settings, I’ve had a devil of a time getting it to function well.
As a free phone, it’s a great little device. Had I had to pay more than $50 for it, I’d have been a bit upset. It looks nice, functions adequately as a phone and better as a text device, has decent battery life, and a very good 2mpx camera (no flash.) It’s a gateway phone, designed to give enough functionality to the teen social networking crowd to lure them up into a smartphone.
22 September, 2010
A review of Supernatural RPG from Margaret Weiss (a friend loaned me a copy.) A few NPCs for your BSG campaigns. Other bits of whimsy as they occur…
The Black Campbell 