Category: Nerdy Stuff

Put a satellite into orbit for $8,000

posted by under Nerdy Stuff

MAsmall
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/air-space/8k-personal-satellite-and-other-space-adventures

this company will send a satellite into low earth orbit for $8K
I got a few K in the bank… you wanna do something awesome?

TEsmallI got a few k also. no ideas, unfortunately.

MAsmallno ideas either, but SHIT

TEsmall

you do, of course, also need to provide the satellite

MAsmallyeah whatever, details

TEsmallthat’s why you’re the mayor

MAsmall

FUCK YES

Siftables

posted by under Games, Nerdy Stuff

Siftables are a collection of small, self-contained input / display devices wirelessly link together to form an independent mini-network, or a control system for a PC. The cubes feature OLED screens, a 3-axis accelerometer, Bluetooth, flash memory, and a haptic actuation driver, and feature additional ports for attaching other devices.

Early Siftables Interaction Demos from Jeevan Kalanithi on Vimeo.
There are more videos here. Visit their site here.
Here’s a TED talk about Siftables:

Mobile Blogging

posted by under iPhone, Nerdy Stuff

The guy in the back seat is looking at MayorAwesome.com on his mobile phone. About 20 seconds before I took this picture he hung out the window to tell me. So I snapped a picture and posted this while driving. Then I promptly missed my exit. Don’t tell my mother I was blogging and driving.

I <3 technology.

Topobo Kinetic Robot System

posted by under Nerdy Stuff

topobo
Now here’s a toy worth goofing around with. Although crazy expensive, it might be worth it, if only to have something to annoy my cats with. From BoingBoing Gadgets:

Topobo is a construction kit with “kinetic memory”, which mostly means that you teach the little motors in its joints how to move by physically twisting and shaping them with your hands. Some parts will respond directly to your ministrations, while others are slaved to “queen” parts and mimic her movements.


[via BoingBoing Gadgets]

Guy Building Giant SpiderBot In Vermont Wilderness

posted by under Design, Nerdy Stuff

From Bot Junkie comes a (long) series of videos of a REAL man. If the zombie apocolaypse happens (oh, and it will happen), I’m going to this guy’s house. He’s basicly building a giant hexapod robot that he can drive around in. Here’s a picture of his plans:Giant Robot Guy's plans
Check out his website. I havent’ gotten through all of the videos, but in order to build his robot, he first has to build a workshop. So he starts there. Did I mention that’s he’s completely off the grid? Yeah. Dude is making this robot from scratch, with very little resources. 
 

 
[via BotJunkie]

Shouting at Disks Causes Latency

posted by under Nerdy Stuff ,

Here’s something I’ve experienced first hand and it was a head-scratcher to be sure. I was video taping a concert with my camera (Canon HG20) and after a while, it would freak out. It would complain of a buffer overflow. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I asked myself. I was trying to trouble shoot it while loosing some really nice footage of a live concert. I downgraded the data rate on my camera for a while and broke out my phone in the mean time to try to figure out what was going on. I found this guy’s blog who had a similar problem. Basically, the noise from the concert was causing the hard drive to vibrate. The fellow on that blog theorized the drop sensor was kicking in, and causing the hard drive to park itself, and video to go into a buffer. It happened so much the buffer would fill up and the camera would have to stop recording. I tried turning off the drop sensor (in addition to lowering the data rate). It might have helped the situation a little bit, but it still happened. I think the only solution to recording a concert or loud event like that with a hard drive camera is to get some foam padding around the camera and cover everything up except the lens and get an external mic for the sound.

To demonstrate this theory, check out this video: