September 2009
123 posts
If you are curious about the technical details of designing and laying out gears and gear trains, you can download a complete, free, public domain copy of the 1922 edition of the American Machinist Gear Book from Google Books right now. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Retro | Digg this!
Submitted By: Jan V
Nap time with Jesus… at Dreaming of Kittens
My 13 year old niece convinced my parents to adopt two kittens… It Made My Day
This one’s dreaming of hot dogs Dreaming of Puppies
When nature calls Fail Dogs
I just ate a smurf My First Fail
Beary Necessary Epicute
Connecting a keyboard to a microcontroller project could be a useful addition. Even if it is to be used as a code input device it could be more convenient than using a key matrix. The guys over at Nerd Kits have put together an informative video that is based on the NerdKit however it is applicable to any microcontroller.
“The PS/2 Interface is quite easy to implement. To send a key...
IT’S BEAUTIFUL!
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This mechanical tumor by Mio I-zawa is actually a visualizer that shows CPU usage. It’s meant to give an indication of the computers ‘stress level’. I love the creepy organic aesthetic, but it seems like the tumor should only be monitoring the unwanted parts of your CPU load. Perhaps it could be made to monitor spyware and botnet activity on your computer? [via pink tentacle]...
The breakup of the Soviet Union had many unintended consequences. The fabled Russian space program has been one of the most high profile victims of the nation’s shift to capitalism. Simon Saradzhyan at Space.com recently wrote, “A career as a cosmonaut—once the dream job of a lifetime for millions in this country—is increasingly less attractive because it is no longer the ticket to...
lurking_giant writes “Well, Microsoft has done it again with the YouTube Windows 7 launch party video that is turning the stomachs of even the mainstream press with its clueless and campy marketing style. A Washington Post reader was quoted as saying ‘If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead...
This steampunk enthusiast created his own retro-submarine themed steampunk house. While the look of steampunk is pretty neat, this house might have gone too far by recreating a shipwrecked submarine. The engineer from Canterbury, New Zealand themed his playroom with his submarine shipwrecked on a deserted island.
Built at an absurd cost of $100,000, the 12-metre by 5.5m personal den...
Great overview - Making the most of open-source hardware - Electronics Weekly - Gerald Coley, Texas Instruments… AT A GLANCE * Open-source hardware offers an advanced start on your design. * Open-source software complements open-source hardware. * Open-source hardware prepares your PCB (printed-circuit-board)-fabrication and -assembly houses for high-volume production. * You may want to...
I keepz ur beerz till I getz toona
i mite as well crak dis wun open 4 mahself.
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Books falling over? Here’s a simple bookend project. Total cost under a buck, and you can make them in just a few minutes. The symbols on these particular bookends are in bra-ket notation, which is very common in many fields of physics related to quantum mechanics. Obviously, you can use other symbols as well— we put /* and */ around our programming books.
We said that it’s...
Do you remember the magnetic card spoofer in Terminator 2? It was a bit farfetched because apparently the device could be swiped through a reader and magically come up with working account numbers and pin numbers. We’re getting close to that kind of magic with [Jaroslaw’s] card spoofer that is button-programmable.
Building off of a project that allows spoofing via an iPod and...
Submitted By: Gary L
Students in Rhode Island school attacked by wasps
The class-action lawsuit against Dannon alleging false advertising of their Activia and DanActive products has finally been settled. As you may recall (but probably don’t), the suit was filed back in January 2008, and accused the company of advertising yogurt-induced health benefits that may or may not actually exist. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to make changes to the...
Nyall writes “So a bunch of TI calculator programming enthusiasts got together to factor the keys Texas Instruments uses to sign the operating system binaries for the ti83+ (a z80 architecture) and the ti89/v200 (a 68k architecture) series of calculators. Now Texas Instruments is sending out DMCA notices to take them down.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Looks: Exactly like the ad. (As you can tell, this does not make for interesting reading.) 5 out of 5
Taste: Like mealy sticks of depression. If you don’t eat McDonald’s fries within 30 seconds of them exiting the fryer, you will quickly begin asking yourself “Why are they so hard? Why don’t they have a taste? Why did I even buy them? Why can’t I stop eating them?” They did earn 1 point for...
“False eyelashes are super cool if you like spider-phobes to scream and swat at your face.”
- Allyson
Mavis became a little concerned when the fleas discovered tactical nuclear weapons…
just b glad dat dey dont haz satellite yet.
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Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters, Web
Time Fcuk might have been better named if the word “time” in its title was swapped for the word “mind”. In the game you play the part of a cute little robot-like creature, who is contacted by yourself from 20 minutes in the future. You are told to get into a box, and from there you enter a world of strange puzzle rooms, where...
We knew it was going to happen, but we’re still stoked to report that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski formally proposed a set of net neutrality rules this morning, calling them “the fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the internet.” There are two big new rules, which say broadband providers of any kind can’t discriminate against content or...
Have you ever wondered what horizontal cross sections of the human body look like? Here is an animation of a full-body MRI from head to toe! Don’t blink or you’ll miss a vital organ. Link -via Blame It On The Voices
Have you ever wonder what Ember Days are? Before I started going to the Traditional Mass, I had never heard of Ember Days. Here, copied from my Church bulletin, and posted for your education and edification, is a little explanation of what Ember Days are and how they are traditionally celebrated: Ember Days
The autumn Ember Days fall on Wednesday, September 23; Friday, September 25; and...
Neuroscientist Craig Bennett bought a salmon to test an fMRI machine and work out some protocols.
So, as the fish sat in the scanner, they showed it “a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations.” To maintain the rigor of the protocol (and perhaps because it was hilarious), the salmon, just like a human test subject, “was asked to determine what emotion the individual...
The class-action lawsuit against Dannon alleging false advertising of their Activia and DanActive products has finally been settled. As you may recall (but probably don’t), the suit was filed back in January 2008, and accused the company of advertising yogurt-induced health benefits that may or may not actually exist. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to make changes to the...
Was it a freak coincidence or proof of a vast lottery conspiracy? In Bulgaria, the set of 6 winning numbers were drawn twice in a row:
Sports Minister Svilen Neikov ordered an investigation after the numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 were selected, in a different order, by a machine live on television on September 6 and 10. The results caused suspicions of manipulation.
An investigation found no...
As seen by Kotaku reader Nazraen.
christian.einfeldt writes “Everyone is familiar with the Linux video ads created by IBM, Red Hat, and Novell, but until recently, there have not been any professionally backed forkable radio ads. Now, Austin-based Linux advocate Ken Starks has obtained the services of a professional radio talent in creating a high quality voice track, which can easily be adapted by local providers of Linux...
I found Narnia! and some pizza crusts
i foundz sum ink cartridges.
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Where does the time go? Whether you need to know for billing purposes or just want a better idea of how your work day is split up, you can always answer that question with a good time-tracking application. Photo by judepic. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite time-tracking tool, and now we’re back with the five most popular time-tracking applications to help you track the...
theodp writes “At MIT, an experiment that identifies which students are gay is raising new questions about online privacy. Using data from Facebook, two students in an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. The project, given the name...
I could make that.
sumwn git teh stek sauce redde.
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Google has acquired reCAPTCHA and plans to use the system for digitizing books. Wait… what? CAPTCHA is the method of requiring a user to type in a visually obscured word to prove they are human. How can this digitize books? The answer is a bit obscure and takes some time to discover, but you’ll have fun along the way.
The Google blog links to a Google TechTalk video on Human Computation as an...
Submitted By: Mushler
News reaches us of a dastardly crime against one of our own, details below, courtesy of redturtle on the brassgoggles forum:
Thomas (of Brute Force Studios) suffered the theft of a monocle during DragonCon this year…a one-of-a-kind piece that was going to be displayed in the Steampunk Exhibit in an Oxford museum in October.
Here is a link to a post he made about it:...
When a Florida man suffered a heart attack, he needed to leave his job. Between everyday expenses and medical bills, he fell behind on his mortgage and other bills, and debt collectors began calling. And calling. And calling. Eventually, a lawsuit alleges, the stress from the harassing and abusive phone calls led to the man’s death. Frivolous lawsuit? Maybe not. The Florida law firm Morgan...
PROOF Bunnies Come From Tomato Patches
dey nawt cum frum lettus?
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Like this post so much I went out and bought the movie
Submitted By: Marie M
Create the illusion of a miniaturized world with this photographic technique.
Thanks go to Dennison Bertram for the original article in MAKE, Volume 09.
To download The Tilt-Shift Photography video click here and subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Tilt-Shift Photography article in MAKE, Volume 09 and you can see that in our Digital Edition. Read more | Permalink | Comments...
To celebrate the International Talk Like a Pirate Day this Saturday, September 19th, Telltale Games will be giving away the first episode of the new Tales of Monkey Island series for free all day. In the first of five episodes, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal marks Guybrush Threepwood’s long anticipated return and sees him once again washed up on a beach, away from his wife Elaine…
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office is gathering information in order to file fraud charges against some BoA executives over what they knew, and what they hid, when they acquired Merrill Lynch & Co. a year ago. Earlier this week, his office subpoenaed 5 board members to find out “what they knew regarding the mounting losses and bonus payments at Merrill before the deal...
Because this is what you want to smell like:
A creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark, unfathomable waters.
Available from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the scent of Chtulhu is $15 for 5 milliliters or $25 for 10 milliliters. Link -via Simply Left Behind
The gentleman on the left, if you don’t recognise him, is Nicko McBrain. Drummer for Iron Maiden. Here, though, he is not the drummer for Iron Maiden. He’s the drummer for The Beatles. [via Dtoid]
Sure, Half-Life 2 is a shining example of how to do sound effects right, but still…sometimes it’s OK to have a little fun with it, and replace those mechanical sounds with something a little more human.
Hugh Pickens writes “Wired reports that scientists have discovered that insects from cockroaches to caterpillars all emit the same stinky blend of fatty acids when they die and that the death mix may represent a universal, ancient warning signal to avoid their dead or injured. ‘Recognizing and avoiding the dead could reduce the chances of catching the disease,’ says Biologist...