According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the World will hit 6,666,666,666 people on may 10th, 2008. that’s tomorrow!! go breeders! that’s six billion, six hundred and sixty six million, six hundred and sixty six thousand, six hundred and sixty six people (please do correct me if i’m wrong on reading that number). right now as i type this at 01:31 GMT (EST+5) the world population is at a projected 6,666,648,651 people!!! wow. oddly, my car is about to hit the 66,666 mile mark too. awesome!
check out this video titled Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote. it’s quite impressive! you can watch the whole video and see how the virtual reality & headtracking is accomplished. or let the video load and skip to the 2:30 mark to see the vast difference between a normal display and a virtual reality headtracking display. amazing! excellent work & video by johnny lee! & thanks goose for the link!
if you have just shy of 7 minutes to spare you may enjoy watching this amazing youtube clip titled Ants! and that’s what it’s about - ants. more specifically, the vast subterranean ventilation system and structure of an ant colony. it’s very fascinating. the researchers poured cement into the openings of the ant colony to create a casting of how the ant tunnels looked. that process took 3 days and over 10 tons of cement! excavation of the casting took over a month! now as a former ant, i can say that having cement poured into one’s home is really jacked up. but the end result is quite amazing.
the swiss chemist most noted for discovering LSD albert hoffman died this last tuesday, april 28th, of heart failure at his home in switzerland at the ripe old age of 102. seems like only yesterday we were celebrating LSD’s birthday. albert hoffman was born january 11th, 1906. rest in peace, mr hoffman!
brain scientist and neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor spoke recently at the TED conference. the speech she gave is available on the TED talks site. what she talks about it is very fascinating, beautiful, and moving. from the TED talks website: One morning, Jill Bolte Taylor realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. it’s friday and it’s time to enhance your brain and perspective on your life, your mind, and your world. please enjoy Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight. it’s great!
the bright minds over at luxim have created an incredible new light bulb that is the size of a small pill and turns out 140 lumens per watt. that’s pretty damn amazing!!! quoting the post on treehugger about the luxin plasma bulbs: “At 140 lumens/watt, these pill-sized plasma light bulbs by Luxim are a pretty awesome contender for “light of the future”. They are almost 10 times more efficient than traditional incandescent light bulbs, twice as efficient as current high-end LEDs, and they also beat CFLs, most of which are around 50-80 lumens/watt.” that is great! mass produce them now please!
dean kamen along with his company DEKA has been busy developing an advanced prosthetic robot arm modeled after on the replacement robot hand for luke skywalker from the science fiction movie the empire strikes back. watch the clip Dean Kamen’s Robotic “Luke” Arm to see something nothing short of amazing. the robot prosthetic arm was developed for iraq war veterans who lost limbs in the war. such an advancement in robotics to ease the struggle of other is just spectacular!
“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water, but Enceladus is only whetting our appetites for more.”
for spring break week, it’s taxidermy gone wild! yes, monday morning bringeth the beaver jokes with the most awesome beaver case mod ever (maybe the only beaver case mod ever). built by kasey mcmahon. for steaming PC action, check out the specs on that hot beaver too! a very nice beaver at that! some pics of the amazing project below. awesome job kasey! i think i love you!
interesting + amazing + creepy + fascinating + ‘it’s coming to get me’ new footage of boston dynamic’s big dog pack mule robot traversing through the woods and snow. while it looks like two actors in leotards performing an elaborate mummenschanz show, it’s not. it’s a robot, built to walk & deliver supplies, and it can’t fall down. in fact, i can hear it approaching right now … yikes … gotta go!
tomorrow night, february 20th - 2008, a total lunar eclipse is occurring which will be very visible in north america (as well as south america). the moon will appear to change color & turn orange to blood red. for those in california/Pacific Standard Time zone, the partial lunar eclipse begins at 5:43pm, then moves into total eclipse at 7:01pm and out of total eclipse at 7:51pm, then out of partial eclipse at 9:09pm. that gives you about a 3 hour window to see some sort of lunar eclipse happening. so be sure to watch it! awesome lunar eclipse photo via mr.eclipse.com.
meet the two new meat eating dinosaurs that were unearthed in niger, africa back in 2000. first, there’s kryptops palaios, which means “old hidden face.” and second, there’s eocarcharia dinops, or “fierce-eyed dawn shark.” both of these predators measured over 25 feet in length. their discovery is part of a larger expedition led by University of Chicago paleontologists in the year 2000.
finally, a non-lethal weapon that is fun at parties too! introducing the LED Incapacitator, a flashlight-like device that emits a nauseating strobe light to the effect of making its targets throw up. that is correct: we have a barf gun! point this flashlight in the face of an attacker - or even a friendly work acquaintance or loved one - and the blinding light combined with the continuously changing colors and pulses of the LED capacitator will make them temporarily sick and vomit! great for parties, boring powerpopint presentations, and halloween. i’m ordering 4 right now!
on a trip from san francisco to new york back in october of 2007, i took the opportunity to fly the then new virgin america. the cabin interior is really great - very slick and very comfortable (as in roomy with great seats & well lit). each seat has a touch screen kiosk with a wired remote control/mini-keyboard in the back. with the kiosk system, you can watch videos, buy food, text/chat with other passengers, play video games, and all that. very convenient and very cool! shortly after take off, my kiosk froze up (very highly possibly due to my spazzing out on the typepad) and had to be re-booted. when the startup scripts where running, i got to see that virgin america uses linux to run their in flight kiosk system. i liked that too! with the kiosk now up & running, i cued up a big daddy kane video and ordered some drinks. thanks virgin!
meet the world’s largest wind turbine! it’s the enercon E-126 made by enercon. this beast is gigantic! The length of each rotor blade measures 413 feet (126 meters)! the first E-126 wind turbine was setup near emden, lower saxony, germany in november 0f 2007. though it’s rated to generate 6 Megawatts of power, it is expected to go much higher - up towards 7+ megawatts (20 million kilowatt hours per year). with those figures, enercon expects one e-126 wind turbine to generate enough power for 5,000 households of four in europe. awesome!
a very interesting and informative article from tech author nicolas carr via his blog rough type titled Google, Apple and the future of personal computing. the article discusses the future of personal computing based on the developing partnership between google and apple. the future would have apple building the front end of sleek gadgets, devices, & handhelds that easily integrate with each other (phones, computers, etc) and google providing the back end of a networked supercomputer to provide the bulk of the data-processing might and storage capacity for the devices. it’s brilliant. what would such service and computer setup like this mean for the user? according to the article, computing will be cheap, highly energy efficient, very low maintenance, and it will be flexible. for more in depth info, please check out the original article (and the comments too).
very cool time-lapsed video clip of what is called an automatic graffiti robot. the art is created using a spray can attached to cables running on a X / Y axis. the cables control or press the nozzle on the spray can at precise moments. the cable are moved & controlled by a computer program. it reminds me of a giant plotter printer. very cool idea! the clip is from 2006 but i haven’t been able to find any other info on this artist other that the video. anyway, enjoy!
ever been in a situation where you were bitten a lot by mosquitos but your friends around you were never bitten? me too! turns out i’m hella flavorful to mosquitos. no really. be sure to read the post titled Why some people are prone to mosquito bites on the telegraph.uk. quoting the article: Specific cells in one of the three organs that make up the mosquito’s nose are tuned to identify the different chemicals that make up human body odour. To the mosquito some people’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odour. awesome! this research will more than likely lead to developing a new generation of repellents that stop or prevent a mosqito’s nose from ever smelling (and thus detecting)a human. wow.
a very amazing lecture and demo video from TED talks by software architect blaise aguera y arcas showing the incredible new photo technology called photosynth. from the what is photosynth page on the microsoft live labs website, photosynth “takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.” please watch the video (also on the clip-a-day website) to see what that entails - it’s pretty incredible.
an exciting article over on sciencedaily covering a breakthrough in solar technology. researchers at the new jersey institute of technology (NJIT) have found a way to make inexpensive flexible solar panels that can be printed out or painted onto a surface, making them very easy to produce. awesome! lead researcher Dr. Somenath Mitra states “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.” the new solar cell technology uses cylindrically shaped carbon nanotube complexes combined with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to harvest the sun’s energy. read more about the science behind the new solar panels at sciencedaily or at the NJIT website.
i am really liking the homebrew biodiesel processors for sale over at biodiesel warehouse. for the price of a new laptop ($2,000) you can get a complete biodiesel processing system that generates 55 gallons of biodiesel fuel in just 3 hours of hands-on processing time. if you’re not liking the hands-on approach, they offer a fully automated biodiesel processor model costing $7,000 but there’s no measuring or mixing of materials required (processes 50 gallons of fuel in about 60 hours). so nice to see these alternative fuel systems becoming much more accessible to the general public.
the 2nd annual maker faire is going on this weekend. saturday, may, 19th from 10am to 6pm and sunday, may 20th, from 10am to 5pm. happening at the san mateo fairgounds. here’s a link with directions to the fairgrounds and here’s a pdf link of a map of the makers faire. am i going? hells yeah! lots to see! just check out the schedule! i am definitely going to check out chicken john’swoodgas pickup truck, the arts, the crafts, the mad science & scientists, hacks, mods, robots, solar inventions, tiny houses, and did somebody say sock monkey madness? yes they did. dammit - why aren’t you going?
“Our work knocks down a big barrier in developing quantum-dot-based photovoltaics as an alternative to the conventional, more expensive silicon-based solar cells.”
the essence of the new quantum dot recipe developed by CBEN produces quantum dots where more than 90 percent are tetrapods (which are many times more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity). the new process is cheaper and safer than previous methods too. read more on about this via rice university’s article. and you can read more information on quantum dots here via a 1999 article at lawrence livermore national labs.
“I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD,” he said at a symposium in 2006, marking the centennial of his birth. “It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.”
“As a research scientist I am always hesitant to speak of a cure, but the initial results have been good and show the importance of conducting more trials.â€
Yves Rossy has made history. the former swiss military pilot was the first man to ever fly with wings - a homemade four engine winged jet pack - strapped on his back! after ascending in a plane to 7,500 feet, yves rossy unfolded the 8 foot rigid wings, jumped from the plane, then after a slight free-fall, triggered the four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles per hour! rossy steered the winged jetpack with his body, performing loops, rolls, and dives! the flight took place on May 14, 2008 in the southern swiss alps near Bex. photo slideshow of the the winged jetpack on yahoo. & thanks jamie for the video link!
a very interesting and informative article from tech author 
ever been in a situation where you were bitten a lot by mosquitos but your friends around you were never bitten? me too! turns out i’m hella flavorful to mosquitos. no really. be sure to read the post titled 
a very amazing lecture and demo video from TED talks by software architect 
