nasa’s max launch-abort system successfully tested (M-lab)

This is amazing.

Let’s say you’re and astronaut, sitting on the launch pad, or in early stages of launch and you have a serious emergency..

For the first time, you have a chance.

Vid is 3:48 long, launch is at 2:00

Parachute ballet ensues.

LG GD910 watch phone: on sale in u.k this August!!

I’m getting one of these..  and I’m not even asking permission

3 generations of iPhone have passed me by..  Of all the people I know, I deserve one most.

For Damo: next apple store to be in westfield doncaster melbourne.

It looks like Apple is pretty focussed on growing its presence in Australia. Although a few commenters pointed out that new Apple Store was opening in the Doncaster Westfield down in Melbourne earlier this week, tipster Ryan actually sent a tech blog a pic of the upcoming store, making it really real in our mind.

NYC student conducts a robot experiment I can get into.

The tweenbot, a cardboard-bodied, cheerful little bugger, is equipped with a flag stating its intended destination. Since it can only move forward, it depends on the kindness of strangers to guide it and remove obstacles.

In New York City, you might expect the smiley-faced tweenbot to be stabbed, stomped, mugged, or covered in graffiti, but every single one of the journeys was completed without a hitch. Pedestrians would stop and help the little guy when he was trapped against a curb or headed into traffic, and point him in the right direction.

I don’t know about you, but I like to think this project says more about the state of the world than that stupid negative-nancy stock market. It’s just about the warmest, fuzziest thing I’ve seen since the last Muppet movie.

Have traffic lights changed in your lifetime?

We can only imagine that at least a few staffers over at Art Lebedev Studios get paid to do nothing but conjure up ideas, because this one is just marvelous. And marvelously simple, but that’s beside the point. The Luxofor traffic light concept improves upon a nearly archaic design that still relies on spherical fixtures when there’s really no need. Lebedev’s team asserts that using square lights backed with bright laser diodes would make better use of the available space and provide a more noticeable signal to drowsy motorists. The roar of “why didn’t I think of that?” being simultaneously stated is downright deafening.

Calling all smart people.

Gather around.

I’m one of those annoying people. Smart enough to be intrigued by a big question, but not smart enough to answer it. It’s a frustrating place to be sometimes.

Here is a question I heard today that got me thinking, and unfortunately I can’t seem to find a way to stop the thinking (without some help)

Here’s the thing..

Say you have an iPod (hard-drive or flash). It’s full of stuff. Music, data, what-have-you.

Is it heavier than an empty one?

Obviously not.. but then again. It has something in it doesn’t it? Something that can be moved from one place to another. Say it contains a poem. The poem (data) is moved from the iPod into your memory, then deleted from the iPod. Does a digitally recorded poem have matter?

Idea: if the iPod is a hard-drive based one, would it take more “energy” for that drive to be full or empty? If it’s using binary to “store” data. Is empty (0) a “relaxed state”? and is full (1) an “active state”? Using e=mc2, (backwards) matter = energy. Right? and all matter, has density, right?  Is information moved from one place to the next moving quantum weight around ? WTF man ? Wouldn’t that mean my brain would be heavier at the end of each day then (ignoring the fact that I can’t remember how old I am most of the time).

Hey ! Maybe that’s WHY I can’t remember how old I am most of the time. All the podcasts keep pushing the info out the other side!

So, tell me of wise ones. Is a digitally recorded poem “something”, and if so, it has to have weight, right?

I have a headache.

j.

i love bjork

This is for my sister, JoC.

Mc Wi-Fi ? you heard it here first…

 

 

I’m not much of a McDonalds fan personally, but I might just start going into their “restaurants” to hang out like a 16 year old on school holidays (it’s the place to be, apparently) so I can start using their new free Wi-Fi networks.

While a number of McDonalds “restaurants” have had free Wi-Fi supplied by Telstra for a while now, they’re now planning on rolling out their own networks across a majority of their stores across the country. The rollout has already begun in NSW and the ACT, and will progress across the other states, with an expected completion date of late February 2009.

There’s no fudging around with logins or any need to actually buy anything (phew!), but there is a 50MB data limit, so no bittorrent for you. Hopefully we’ll see all the other fast food stores join McDonalds on the free Wi-Fi bandwagon.

MacBook vid.

 

tascam’s-gt-r1 records impromptu guitar & bass jams

For you axe-slingers who (like me) blame your inability to write a new song on the inability to afford a simple, portable recording device, your excuse is officially lame. TASCAM’s ingenious GT-R1 affords musicians the ability to simply plug their guitar and / or bass directly in and record using the built-in amp simulator and effects. Better still, the stereo condenser microphones up top allow users to record ambient noise, vocals, off the cuff jam sessions or anything else for that matter. The unit captures in MP3 or WAV format (16- or 24-bit), includes an SD card slot (1GB bundled in) and a USB 2.0 port for offloading files and charging the battery. Newbies can even queue up an MP3 and jam along, and the integrated metronome / chromatic tuner are just icing on an already über-sweet cake. Word on the street has a price of around €200 ($308), which actually sounds like quite the bargain from here.

The moment they release a 4 track version, I’m in..