Thursday, February 5, 2009
HUGE TETRIS GAME PLAYED ON DORM BUILDING
Large tetris games have been seen here before, but this one is actually real. The old one was a bunch of Russian students (probably drunk on potato vodka) running around their dorm flipping lights on and off. This one was actually programmed professionally and is being played by a person on a cell phone. It's called the Mikontalo Lights Project and was "created by the students of Tampere University of Technology in Finland to gain global visibility for the university and highlight its rich student culture." Now I'm not totally sure how this is displaying a "rich student culture". I could think of better ways of displaying a rich student culture. Like, oh, I don't know, a chili eating contest.
UPDATE: It turns out the video is so damn shaky because the crazy bastard filming has it attached to his head. There's another video of Space Invaders being played after the jump.
ERAZER ERASES YOUR NAUGHTY FILES FOR GOOD
The Drive eRazer is a stand alone device (so you don't need a functioning computer to use it) capable of erasing all the files on a drive by writing a data pattern over the entire disk. It costs $100 and can clean a 250GB drive in just short of two hours. For an extra $50 you can get one that makes multiple passes on the disk and writes random characters over the whole thing. You know, I'd consider one if I my current girlfriend was any smarter and I was worried about her discovering any of the "private pictures" I have on the computer. Fortunately for me she doesn't know what the hell a computer is. Just yesterday she mistook my laptop for a waffle maker. Luckily I caught her before she poured any batter.
WiebeTech Drive eRazer [ohgizmo]
AVAILABLE NOW..CELLPHONE WATCHES FROM THE FUTURE
You may recall the Hyundai Cameraphone Watch we reported on in October. Well this isn't it. But it is a cell phone watch. Available from thinkgeek for $200, it's an unlocked GSM cell phone and PDA all packed into a package you wear on your wrist. You'll need service with AT&T/Cingular or T-Mobile for the little guy to work (sorry for now Verizon and Sprint users). It comes with a whopping 60MB of built in storage, with no extended memory supported. Read: Suckage. But for those of you that are itching for a phone to wear on your wrist, maybe you can look past that. I'm holding out though. I had a guy that runs a clinic out the back of a local Chinese restaurant offer to install a cell phone in my brain for only $400. I've just got to remind him to clean off his instruments before operating. Because when he fixed up my broken leg last time I think he left part of an eggroll and a few wontons in there.
A picture of the included accessories and a huge list of specs and features after the cut.
WORLDS HIGHEST TENNIS COURT IS IN DUBAI
Yes the picture's real. Burj Al Arab in Dubai is home to the world's highest tennis court (at times). At 210 meters (about 690 feet), it's pretty far up there. Way higher than I'd feel comfortable running around hitting a ball. The court doubles as a landing pad when there aren't any matches being played, and as a place to shit your pants the rest of the time.
Video of Andre Agassi and some other guy playing tennis up there after the jump. I like how at the end they just start wailing balls off of the side trying to hit things. Because that's what I would do
USB BUSINESS CARDS MAY BE COMING SOON
The M++CARD is no ordinary business card. No sir, this thing has memory storage on the back, allowing a potential employer to attach a USB adapter and peruse all the information (resume, portfolio, etc.) stored on the little bastard. They're definitely slicker than the portfolio DVDs I was handing out to companies last year. Of course it didn't help I was giving out the wrong disks the whole time. Portfolio and Pornfolio really look similar when you're reaching into your briefcase for a DVD. Luckily the puffy-paint I used to decorate the tops made a lot of them unreadable.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
SCIENTISTS DESIGN GIANT ELEVATOR TO THE STARS
Wed, Oct 1, 2008
Image: Splorp
Written by new contributor Cole Hendricks
Since time immemorial, we have imagined what it would be like to climb to the heavens. With the advent of modern rocketry, a few brave souls, and many more brave robots, have managed to slip the surly bonds of Earth.
But what if, instead of an expensive and perilous ship that only a few could find passage on, we built a bridge to the stars that anyone could cross. Imagine that, instead of having to strap yourself to thousands of tons of rocket fuel, getting into orbit was a simple as boarding a train, albeit a train that goes straight up for over 100,00km (62,000 miles) and happens to be by far the most ambitious structure humanity has ever imagined creating, but a train nevertheless. For the last several decades, this is exactly what many scientists, engineers and futurists have been not only imagining but designing and even, to a certain extent, testing.
Image: Superm401
The first complete description of the possibility of a modern tower of Babel is attributed to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a nearly deaf Russian rocket scientist who is considered by many to be not only the progenitor of the idea of a space elevator or as he called it, the ‘heavenly funicular’ but also the father of the entire field of manned space-flight.
In his 1895 paper, ‘Day-Dreams of Heaven and Earth’, he wrote regarding his Funicular:
“As one went up such a tower, gravity would decrease steadily, without changing direction; at a distance of 36000 km, it would be completely annihilated, and then it would be again detected . . . but its direction would be reversed, so that a person would have his head turned towards the earth…”
Image: NASA
Since the publication of Tsiolkovsky’s ideas, the concept was generally accepted as a fascinating thought but an engineering impossibility. No known material was strong enough to withstand the astronomical forces that such a structure would be exposed to. However, as material science has progressed enormously even to the point that we are able to build custom molecules and materials on an atom by atom basis, and particularly with the discover of the immense strength of fullerene carbon nanotubes, the difference between what we know how to do today, and what we would need to know in order to build the Heavenly Funicular, are small enough that engineers and scientists and governments around the world are taking a serious second look at what it would take to build a train to space.
Image: Superm401
The main reason that a space elevator is so compelling is the dramatic reduction in energy costs it would provide. It currently costs about $20,000 USD to put 1 kilogram into orbit, a space elevator could lower that cost down to an estimated $250/kg essentially opening the door to space wide open. Understanding this value, one nation has even taken the very recent step of claiming that it will build a space elevator and is setting aside a significant amount of money to do so. The Japanese government, has very recently stated that they are budgeting $9 Billion USD towards a concrete proposal to overcome the theoretical obstacles to elevator construction and eventually begin the assembly of the 100,000 kilometer tall device. This announcement is highly significant in that many experts estimate that a functioning space elevator with a budget of $10-$15 billion could be completed in as little as 12 years. The Japanese have scheduled a conference in November 2008, bringing together experts from around the world to further develop their plans for an elevator to the stars.
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