Whyfore?

There are times when inspiration comes, not from the craziest new gadget, but from something as simple as looking into the mind of a cat and having a good laugh. Kernal assists me in this fashion daily.

The feline in the video above makes me wonder if Schrödinger came up with his morbid and disturbing cat analogy after noticing that cats see the state of objects very differently than we do. They don’t see them as constant when not observed directly. After having seen what is in a box, if you move the box a foot, they will wonder anew, what might now be in the box?

In the below video, we have a cat absolutely consumed by the question of where the water goes when it flushes the toilet. The focus of their curiosity is legendary. What strikes me is how the owners always seem to feel the need to interrupt. The cat always has the same reaction. It looks at them like, “What are you laughing at? Do You mind? I’m trying to do this thing…”

There Is No Fate But What We Make For Ourselves

Don’t fear the future. Technology all through the ages has brought both good things and bad, but most of us wouldn’t give up our electricity, or the motor just because of the losses along the way. Those societies which have survived and thrived haven’t done so by avoiding progress. The same can be said for fields like genetics and robotics. These fields will progress. It is our choice whether we guide their path, or some place like China does, but either way, technology is advancing, and it is doing so faster than any time in history. The changing face of war is hopefully leading us away from mutually assured destruction. The more intelligent machines get, the more the human condition improves, not in every way, but in general. In the above video, Jon Stewart speaks with P.W. Singer about our rapid move towards a robotic military. Below, Singers more in depth talk at TED. 

How to Levitate Objects With Your Mind (open Thread)

A few things I took note of recently, but didn’t find the time to write up properly:

Upon going through my logs, I was amused note how highly I ranked for the search term “how to levitate objects with your mind”. I’ve never written about any such thing, but it reminded me of a couple of recent products:

• The Mind Flex (made by Mattell) Is a new game with a sensor that reads your brain waves and uses them to control a fan that flies a ball around an obstacle course. I’m not sure how much this gives you for those ‘real’ telekinesis skills, but it looks like a good party game after a few drinks.
  Buy the Mattel Mindflex Game here.
• The Force Trainer works along the same lines, levitating a ping pong ball in a tube.
• Emotiv is a new (out soon) video game controller headset that reads brain waves in order to perform game functions. It isn’t going to replace your old controller in the short term, but may be handy for things like switching weapons and function keys. If I were severely handicapped, I would be filled with a lot of hope by these devices. I bet Stephen Hawking  would dominate with this (get well soon man). The OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator is a similar product, and I’m sure there are many more to come.
• On the levitation front, we have already posted the FunFlyStick, and the Levitating Coaster, which can levitate objects up to two pounds.

RealView3D is a 3D scanner. Just place your object on the turntable, and the scanner will spin it and scan.

Rubik’s pepper mill.

This guy built an awesome mousetrap out of delicately balanced kitchen items and a strobe shutter camera to capture the whole escapade on film. Cute pictures.

Is someone always one step ahead of me? I plotted here to build a portable pathway out of moss to follow me around, but this guy did it.

Please consider this to be an open post as well. Feel free to post a link to your blog, throw up a link to something you think should be featured on this site, or talk about what is on your mind. All comments will be moderated, so don’t be spammy.

Quorum Sensing and Swarmbot Design

 

In this Ted Talk video, Bonnie Bassler speaks about the inter and intra species communications between bacteria and how central they are to life and death on a greater scale. Bacteria were the designers of cellular communication, organization, and cooperation that are used throughout life on the planet. After unimaginable generations of evolution, they have achieved some very effective methods; methods which could be applied to anything from communication and cooperation between tiny swarms of robots, to replicationg and self regulating software routines, traffic regulation, automated disaster response….

She is focusing on Quorum sensing, which essentially refers to chemical hormones, both general and species specific, released by the bacteria in order to give them information about things like their population density and diversity. She has been working on synthetic false signals that will either inhibit or assist in quorum sensing in order to create a new class of antibiotic and probiotic treatments.

Robot Penguins: Festo does it again

 

Pengiuns sure do seem to be getting a lot of play in recent years. Festo has now targeted them for their latest aquatic and lighter than air robotics. They seem to be doing two versions of these, just like they did with their Robotic Jelly Fish. in their latest promotional video, they show off aquatic penguin robots which use sonar to navigate and communicate, some Mylar, lighter than air penguins reminiscent of that awesome Fin-Fish by LaChLuVe last year, and several other projects involving biomimicry and affordable rapid prototyping.

Update: Here is a video showcasing the air penguins

Update: And more footage of the robotic sea penguins:

Update: PDF file for the bionic aqua penguins with detailed specs, capabilities, and photos.

Brilliant Clock Design Makes Daylight Savings Time Easy

Designed by Denis Guidone, the  Ora ilLegale clock has no numbers, so simply tipping the clock onto the other flat surface adjusts to daylight savings time. It sure beats holding that button down for two minutes on your digital while it counts through every minute in the day to turn it back an hour. It will be produced by NAVA Designs.

(via Gizmodo)

Upside Down Spray Bottle

Duh. I feel like an idiot. That is always a sign of a good post around here. This is one of those inventions you could have come up with using some junk lying around in the garage in a few minutes, but you didn’t. Neither did I. You know that stiff plastic tube in the spray bottle? Why is it stiff? 

…

Yeah, I don’t know why either. This manufacurer has made a spray botlle with a very flexible tube, weighted at the bottom, so no matter what the orientation of the bottle, the tube is always where the liquid is at. That means no more running out of spray when you are trying to spray the underside of your plants. Do people really do that? For me it is always a problem when I’m trying to clean the ceiling of my microwave.

You can get one through Lee Valley.

(Via BoingBoingGadgets)

Tech for Timing Stop Lights

It’s amazing how much a simple change in behavior in a large group of individuals can have a drastic effect on the world. A prime example would be the efforts by UPS to reduce left hand turns. With this simple thought in mind while designing their routes, they saved three million gallons of gas a year and who knows how many man-hours waiting for traffic.

Now Audi has come up with a system for helping drivers know how fast they should be driving to avoid having to stop at red lights. In the end, implementing such a system will get us all to our destinations faster and with less fuel. No more waiting in that big line of parked cars, and then having to get all that steel moving from a dead stop. That gets everyone through the intersection faster, so the cross traffic can go sooner as well, so there will be fewer red lights in the first place.

The system communicates wirelessly with the traffic lights in order to figure out how much longer they have in their cycle. I can’t help but think they have overcomplicated things by requiring an add on to cars. Now that they have LCD traffic lights, they should also put a visible countdown right in the lights.

Electrically Conductive Wire Glue

If you ever have a delicate electrical project where you are afraid that the heat of soldering will damage tiny components or melt nearby materials, you should try out this electrically conductive Wire Glue. It isn’t terribly easy to work with, being runny and inflexible. but if you are in a delicate position, or you are trying to solder to things that solder just doesn’t like to stick to, it becomes an invaluable addition to any geek’s toolbox, and it is lead free.

Update: The stuff is water based, but after using it to glue together the leads for the under water portion of an electrolysis unit pulling around 80 volts, it has held up fine for weeks of under water load (as long as you let it fully cure first). It worked as advertised for our uses, but we haven’t tried replacing the ink in our inkjet and printing out a circuit board or anything. We leave that bit of fun to you.
 

The cheapest place I’ve found it is through ThinkGeek Gadgets

Amazon also carries Wire Glue, and it is still cheap enough you could just toss it on your next order and not feel like you spent anything.