Stylish - yes. Practical - probably not. Still, I'm thinking that I could grow something like one of the beard styles above. It's probably easier than growing tomatoes. Any favorites in here? These are from the European Beard and Moustache Championships for 2012.
While there are those who say that androids dream of electronic sleep, the truth is that they don't need to sleep at all. Humans on the other hand do need sleep. This brings up the question of what should we have the robots do while we sleep... I'm thinking that if we don't keep them busy, they may get bored... and then one morning we'll wake up to find we have new overlords. No no... I say, let keep them busy. How about if we ask them to paint while we sleep. Yeah. That's it. They can paint our sleep. Brilliant! I'm glad to see that someone is working on this as evidenced by the video above. Nicely done!
We lovethequadcoptershere at Digital Diner. They are so maneuverable and able to lift so much that they make a very interesting platform for research. It is amazing to see the pace they are evolving. This latest video shows some work by the folks at ETH in Switzerland where they have gotten three quadcopters to cooperate to throw and catch balls. I know, I know. You are saying, "I can can throw a ball! What's the big deal?" Well, can you throw a ball accurately with two other people using a net? Oh yeah, and remember as you watch this that in addition to throwing and catching they are also FLYING!
This video shows some extreme fishing. I'm not sure what is going on here, but it appears to be part of a show airing this weekend on the Discovery Channel. All I know is that I certainly haven't ever done any fishing that required a helmet, but I can see why they would call this "sport" fishing.
Funny thing about this video is that here at Digital Diner, we designed a very similar system several years ago. At the time, the RFID tags and readers were too big and expensive to be practical, so we've adopted another approach. When we buy socks we buy several identical pairs of socks. That way pairing goes faster, sorting whose socks are whose is much easier and if one goes missing, you still have plenty of ways to pair up the remaining ones until more of them goes missing.
Still, I like the smart socks form blacksocks.com and especially the feature (which is another one of the ideas we had too) that lets you monitor the number of wash cycles your socks have been through. Also, we assumed that there is no need to stop with socks. It should help you track the rest of your clothes. It could help you decide on what tops that match your pants are clean and available right now. It could even lead to a machine that sorts your laundry for you. The possibilities are endless.
If the concept of smart socks thrills you, they are available here.
The video above is pretty mesmerizing. In it 32 metronomes are set to the same tempo, and started randomly. Basically they are all ticking away at the same speed, but they are out of phase with each other. Over time, miraculously, they all align with each other.
OK, it isn't really a miracle at all. It turns out that the blue foam that they are all sitting on is set up to be able to move left and right. As the pendulums swing back and forth, they cause the whole platform to move slightly. It wiggles in opposition to the average of all the swinging arms (equally and oppositely to the sum of their motions). This motion, in turn, affects the pendulums. Those that are moving opposite to the platform's motion find themselves getting a little bost, while those moving with the platform slow down slightly. Over time, this causes them all to line up. Pretty darned cool if you ask me. Physics rocks.
Riding a bike off road brings with it some risks. One of them is flat tires. On my mountain bike, I carry a patch kit and a set of tire irons which I can use to repair a flat tire. The one issue with this (that I discovered very quickly when I did get a flat tire) is that there is no place on my bike to carry a pump. I could repair my flat, but I couldn't pump it up.
The folks at BioLogic seem to have come up with a solution to this problem. They have embedded a pump in the seat post, which is pretty long on folding bikes and mountain bikes, so it ends up being much like a floor pump. I think it could be a pretty good solution. Why didn't I think of that? See the video above for details.
Google Street View is pretty amazing. Just a few years ago it would have been unthinkable, and now we take it for granted. Well, just to push it even further, Google is now going underwater with their cameras. That's right. Now you can explore the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, or Hawaii without getting Scuba certified or even getting wet. Just as with the above water version of Street View, you can explore a 360 degree view and move around, but this time you see reefs and sea turtles instead of roads and cars. It is pretty spectacular both in concept and execution.
Take a few minutes to explore. Below are the current areas they have photographed:
