Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

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Loop The Loop!

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Ever since the days when I spent my days rolling Hot Wheels cars down the orange track and around the loop, I’ve wondered whether it would be possible to do with a real car; leave it to the guys at Top Gear to pull it off! (VideoSift link)


via videosift.com

They seem to go through a lot of hullabaloo over the g-forces involved, but it seems to me that the 6-g’s would be only momentary, during the transition from horizontal to vertical, then again when it goes from vertical to horizontal; when it’s upside down there’d be nearly zero-g’s. Still something to be concerned about for the structural integrity of the loop, and the car’s suspension, but not so much for the driver. But no more concern than for the riders in a roller coaster.

And speaking of roller coasters, how about this; The Blue Streak — a home-built backyard roller coaster! Only one rider at a time, but it looks like it could be a real rush. The guy who built it did a great job of engineering the track; not overbuilt, but looks like it holds together pretty well. Too bad about the 200lb weight limit though. Time to lose a few lbs maybe!

Posted in Cars!, Fun!, Gadgets | Comments Closed

The Differential; Now I Get It!

Friday, September 18th, 2009

I know my way around mechanical things pretty well, but an automobile’s differential is one of those things that I never quite understood… I knew what it did, and that it involved gears and whatnot, but the principles of operation were never laid out in terms that helped me to really get it. But this video changed all that. I now get it!

Thanks to Deane for posting about it on Gadgetopia. I think I owe you lunch!

Posted in Cars!, Cool Technology, Gadgets | Comments Closed

Josh Wilson — Amazing Grace

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

I almost set the title to Josh Wilson — Amazing Guitar, but that’s not the name of the song…

Yvonne & I attended the Willow Creek Association Leadership Summit today (tomorrow too), and after our lunch break we were treated to a couple of songs by Josh Wilson. Josh is an incredibly talented guitarist who does some simply amazing things with his instrument (and some sort of foot-controlled electronic sampling gizmo on the floor.) Here’s a video of the same song, but in a different venue; have a listen, and enjoy!

(And hey; isn’t that a Mac Pro (or G5) in the background?)

When he was first introduced, I had no idea who he was, but I recognized his second song — Savior Please — just a few measures in. It was just him on stage with his guitar and the same sampling gizmo for this song, but he used a microphone to lay down background vocals with his own voice while performing. The sounds coming from just one guy and those two instruments was just… Wow! Here’s that song, again in a different venue and with his band playing along.

Even though he’s put his music up on Tangle and YouTube, I think I’ll have to go and buy it anyway, just to say thanks. I’d suggest you do the same; here are the iTunes links for Amazing Grace and for Savior, Please.

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Posted in Cool Technology, Faith & Worship, Gadgets, Mac Stuff | Comments Closed

Digital Music Pads

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Here’s something quite cool; the Freehand Systems MusicPad Pro Plus. It’s essentially a Linux-powered keyboardless tablet PC that specializes in displaying music files. It uses a back-lit color LCD touch screen to display the music files that you load onto it by connecting it up to a Mac or PC. It can use music that you scan from sheet music, music files you buy & download from Freehand’s website, or transfer from an app like Sibelius.

The MusicPad Pro essentially replaces the sheet music a musician would use during a rehearsal or performance. It can hold an entire library’s worth of music, and if the user is playing outdoors there is no worry about having sheet music flying around in the wind. The user can also write notes on the music displayed on the MusicPad Pro and save those notes with the music. It’s a great concept, but at the price of $899, probably a little out of reach of most musicians and performing groups.

While I can’t take credit for this concept, it does remind me of something I thought up and sketched out while sitting through one of the kids’ band concerts years ago. I was bored out of my gourd (is it right to say that?) and my mind started wandering, thinking about all the work that goes into organizing sheet music for a band or orchestra; the conductor has the full score and most every player has a different set, and that’s duplicated for every piece the group plays. Just trying to wrap my head around the system needed to track all that paper makes me dizzy.

So I thought, what if the conductor had the music stored on a central computer — the server — with its display at the podium? And what if each musician had a wireless display — the client — that linked into that central computer & received the music from it? The musicians could tap a button on the screen or click a foot pedal to advance to the next page, or have the music scroll up as the piece progresses. For a stage performance, a tablet-sized screen would be great for the musicians, but when the cost of a display is usually keyed to the size of the screen, how about shrinking the screen down to the size of a recipe card — 3 x 5 inches — and attached directly to the instrument? I remember my older sisters using something like that for marching band back in the ’70’s, and the coronet that I used in junior high has an attachment that allows for that. With the display closer to the user’s eyes it doesn’t need to be very big (just look at the popularity of watching movies on iPods and other handheld devices.)

The difficulty I guess would be keeping the server & client pads coordinated through a performance… There are lots of things that could go wrong, and with a system like this, and going wrong in the middle of a performance… it would be ugly. Actually the real difficulty is in getting the concept to actually work in the real world, and to be able to sell it at an affordable price. The $900 MusicPad Pro is a great device, but it’s overkill for most bands and orchestras, and at that price just isn’t accessible to most primary & secondary schools and private organizations. An exhaustive three minute Google search shows that other than a few software solutions (like Music Reader) that can be run on a Windows or Mac computer, the Freehand device is pretty much the only game in town for digital music pads right now, so I think there’s potential for a system like this to really do well.

But the practicalities of the system won’t be my worry because I don’t know where to even start bringing an idea like this into reality, so I’ll leave the gritty details to someone more capable. I doubt I’m the first person to think of something like this.

Posted in Computers, Cool Technology, Fun!, Gadgets | Comments Closed

Flying Like An Eagle

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Or in this case, a hawk. Very similar experience, I’m sure. I’ve had incredibly vivid flying dreams before, and this reminds me a lot of those dreams…

Anyway, this fella strapped a video camera to the back of a hawk and let it do its thing, and came up with a stunning piece of videography.

For years I’ve had this idea of a robotic suit that allows the wearer to fly like a bird… kind of a single-person ornithopter. Turns out I’m not the only one with that idea. This guy, D.C. George, had the same idea and even committed the concept to paper. In 1972. It seems a pretty well-thought out design, reminiscent of the Icarus story in Greek mythology, although I’m not so sure about the h2o2 power source; I suppose he was counting on a method being developed to separate the hydrogen & oxygen and use them for clean combustion. And no worries about melting wax at altitude.

Posted in Cool Technology, Favorite Things, Fun!, Gadgets | Comments Closed

Digital TV In Sioux Falls

Monday, January 26th, 2009

I’m way too cheap to spend the $30-plus a month for cable or satellite TV services. Besides, the kids & I waste too much time watching TV with the dozen or so stations that are broadcast locally, so why would I want more choices? To waste more time? No thanks.

With the impending conversion to digital TV looming, I finally bit the bullet, applied for my rebate card, and bought the converter box. Thankfully, I had submitted my application some time ago and beat the rush that caused the shortage of rebates earlier this month. The money for the program is gone, so until they get more appropriated, it’s a waiting list.

But I got mine, and after buying the converter box a couple of weeks ago, I wasn’t in a hurry to set it up because according to the clueless salesguy at Best Buy, there were only one or two stations in Sioux Falls that were broadcasting digital anyway. Why bother if that’s all there was? So the converter sat on a shelf, still in the box…

Until last week, that is. I got a burr under my saddle & decided to try it out, and it actually works very, very nicely! Add to that the surprise of finding 10 stations broadcasting locally in the digital spectrum. The expected local stations are there — KELO (CBS), KSFY (ABC), KDLT (FOX), KDLT (NBC) & three PBS stations (your tax dollars at work) — plus a few others that I hadn’t expected. UTV is one (broadcast on a KELO subchannel), KWSD (CW & RTN), and two bonus PBS stations, PBS World & PBS Create. Not a lot more channel-wise that we got on analog, but it’s an improvement. When I first hooked it up, a couple of the stations had good signal but were broadcasting absolutely nothing, and a couple others had very weak signals; I rewired things a little so that the antenna feed was going directly to the DTV box, and that gives us solid signal on all 10, and they all work!

Another thing I hadn’t expected was the picture; much better than standard broadcast TV! Many of the channels broadcast in HD, and although ours definitely is not a high-definition TV, it does make a noticeable difference. And the functionality of the little set-top box is pretty incredible. I got the Insignia brand box, and the remote that comes with it can be programmed to turn the TV on & off and control the volume; it only controls the volume of the audio signal going to the TV, so it’s still necessary to tweak the volume on the TV from time to time, especially when using the DVD player. The really neat feature with this box and digital TV is you can push a button on the remote to get TV-Guide-type info on the fly. You can scroll through the channels without leaving the one you’re watching and see what’s on now and what’s coming up next. If you see something you like, push another button (just one) on the remote, and you’re there! So cool!

So all in all, things are looking good for digital TV in Sioux Falls. Many who are already using cable and or satellite TV with newer TV’s probably are thinking, , but for someone like me with a 6-7 year old TV, and is too cheap to buy cable, it’s a great thing. My kids even like it!

One last thing; found a nice listing of broadcast TV info for the Sioux Falls area at RabbitEars.com. Not complete, but helpful.

Posted in Cool Technology, Gadgets, Geek, Home Life | Comments Closed

Do The Math; It Isn’t That Difficult

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

I got this email from several people a while back; you may have seen it too:

This makes sense to me…read and see if you agree…

OK…..here’s a plan I could live with. I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG. Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a “We Deserve It Dividend”.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens over 18. Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00. My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a “We Deserve It Dividend”.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam. But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket. A husband and wife team has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family? Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved. Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads. Put away money for college – it’ll be there. Save in a bank — create money to loan to entrepreneurs. Buy a new car — create jobs. Invest in the market — capital drives growth. Pay for your parent’s medical insurance — health care improves. Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean — or else. Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back and, of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it… instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 (‘vote buy’) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President. If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG — liquidate it. Sell off its parts. Let American General go back to being American General. Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up. Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.

Sure it’s a crazy idea that can ‘never work.’ But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party! How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion “We Deserve It Dividend” more than do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC.

And remember, the plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

What do you think?

What do I think? I think someone needs to check the math. Dividing $85 Billion amongst 200 million people yields $425.00, not 1,000 times that. I think somebody put the decimal point in the wrong place.

You know, passing an email like this along is understandable — on its face it sounds pretty good, and because it sounds good, certainly whoever originally wrote it had a calculator or computer or something to check the figures, so it must be right, right?

The funny thing was this; not long after seeing that message, a talk radio host brought it up on the air. Someone else on the show later pointed out that he might want to check the math; he said he tried, but his calculator couldn’t hold that many digits! I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet a large amount of money that he had a computer on his desk with a copy of Excel installed. And in the unlikely case that he didn’t have Excel, he most certainly has a calculator that was installed along with the OS. Surely people know that software tools can do the same thing as a desk calculator, only better; don’t they?

That made me think of something that has bugged me for a long time; how many people have a computer on their desk, and a desk calculator right next to it? Every operating system I’ve seen installs a calculator application by default. That calculator is far more capable than most any desk calculator; that combined with the fact that most desktop computers have full-size keyboards with numeric pads, why would anyone want a desk calculator? I don’t know about you, but my desk is cluttered enough without adding another gadget to it. I’ve used nothing but the calculator in the computer since, oh, about 1993. What’s so difficult about it?

I think it goes back to the age-old problem that people are basically technophobic, and they learn only what they think they need to know to do their jobs. It’s a rare individual who will stretch beyond what they need to know to understand the capabilities of the tools their employers provide. But since so many are averse to change of any kind, I guess I can’t expect too much.

Posted in Computers, Gadgets, Geek | Comments Closed

Review — NuShield AG™

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

My apologies to those who have been asking for this follow-up review; it’s been a long time coming. Since I wrote about the new iMac that was purchased for work and the trouble with it’s glossy screen (link), it’s been a crazy busy time at work with a major system upgrade, followed closely by the Christmas & New Year holidays, and trouble getting decent photos of the film installed on the iMac (and I’m still not happy with what I’ve got…) Now, finally, the planets seem to be in alignment and everything is coming together; if only I could sit down for more than a five minute stretch to finish this…

I ordered two NuShield AG™ Antiglare Screen Protectors for 24″ iMacs ($35 each) and one for my G4 PowerBook — it was inexpensive ($15) and I thought it might help avoid the scuff marks the keyboard was leaving on the original. They all arrived in a sturdy cardboard tube a week or so later, and I installed the film on my PowerBook that day, and the iMac the next day. The PowerBook went pretty smoothly; clean the ‘Book’s screen, clean the NuShield, pop the sides under the edges of the display bezel, and you’re done. The iMac? A little more involved.

The display fronts on the new-generation iMacs are flush with the aluminum case, so the NuShield film, as packaged for the iMac, is basically a rectangular sheet of their antiglare material with narrow adhesive strips around the perimeter that holds it in place. It’s cut to the same width as the display area on the front of the iMac, but the height is just a little shorter than the display to keep it from obscuring the iSight lens at the top-center of the screen. Of course the documentation accompanying the film says nothing about where it should be positioned, so it took a few tries to get it aligned just right. The CSI team would have no trouble figuring out who installed it; my fingerprints are all over that stickyback.

The fit & finish of the installed product was less than impressive. When examined up close it looks exactly like what it is — a piece of film tacked to the display. From a distance it looks fine, but up close the edges of the film stand out against the glossy black of the display frame, and the adhesive strips are easily seen. The corners are cut square, and at the bottom the corners extend past the black frame to overlap onto the aluminum case. You’d think it’d be an easy matter to match the radius of the display’s corners at the bottom; that would give it a more finished look.

After all the futzing around trying to get the thing on straight, I’m still not totally convinced that the sheet is cut square; no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get it quite straight. The edges still look like they’re not parallel with the adjacent display edges. After several attempts, I gave up & left it at somewhat of a happy medium that I’m not terribly happy with. But then again, I’m not looking at it 8 hours a day either.

Getting it positioned was about as easy as making sure that it & the screen on the iMac were dust free; as in, not very. I have to admit that I handicapped the process a little, as this particular user isn’t known for her housekeeping abilities and I didn’t take the time to clean the area first. It’s necessary to lay the sheet out flat during the installation, and any little speck of dust gets sucked right to the static-filled film. Note to self: if ever installing one of these again, make sure the desk and surrounding area are thoroughly cleaned first. And if I’d been thinking, I would’ve borrowed some dust elimination tools from our platemaking area; they used a roller with a slightly tacky surface to remove dust from plates, film and the vacuum exposure unit before exposing. That was all before we purchased a digital plate imager, but the roller is still around. That would’ve worked a treat for this! Next time. Yes, next time.

But once the film was installed, it did do a decent job of reducing the glare produced by the standard office lighting. Personally, I wasn’t too bothered by the glare, but the user for whom this iMac is home was bothered, and I haven’t heard a peep from her since installing the NuShield regarding glare, so that’s one measure of success.

There is a side effect produced by the film that is a bit bothersome; to reduce the glare, the NuShield film has a bit of a graininess to it — I suppose it’s the grainy surface that breaks up the reflections that would otherwise appear as glare to the user. But when the grainy surface is against the glossy front of the iMac, it produces a moiré-like pattern. Unfortunately, photographing this pattern is beyond the limited abilities of my equipment and me, so I can’t really show it well. But the graininess of the film and display’s pixels work together to make strange patterns on the screen. The severity of the pattern seems to vary according to the color on the display and how busy a pattern is displayed. To me, personally, this issue is more of a nuisance than the glare. But again, the user doesn’t seem to mind it at all. So for this particular installation, it does the job.

All in all, if the glare produced on your new iMac is an issue, the NuShield is an ok option. Not wonderful, but adequate. Were the glossy-screen iMac my primary computer, the glare would need to be pretty bad to make me want to install this product; the attachment method and moiré-like pattern produced by the film are big negatives to me, and the need for glare reduction would need to be pretty dire to offset those negatives. But again, that’s just me. A couple of small things NuShield could do to improve the product…

  1. … put a radius on the bottom corners of the film to match the display. I suppose I could do that myself, but…
  2. … the installation instructions that came with the film were pretty generic and didn’t cover the adhesive method used on the iMac at all; lots of room for improvement there.

The dearth of instructions specific to the iMac gives me the feeling that this is fairly new territory for NuShield. At least I hope that’s the case.

Since that first article I purchased and installed a second 24″ iMac with the glossy screen — I ordered the second NuShield knowing this purchase was coming up. However the guy using the second iMac isn’t bothered by the glare, so the film is still in its container. I’ll probably hang onto it in case we get another iMac that needs de-glossing.

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Posted in Computers, Gadgets, Geek, Mac Stuff, Work | Comments Closed

My RJ-45 Zipper Pull Mod

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Last spring, the zipper pull broke on my light jacket. I used a paper clip as a temporary replacement, but that looked pretty nerdy. I wore it last week, and felt a bit self-conscious about it, and was careful to keep the clip hidden while out & about, and was thinking seriously about replacing it. After all, it was getting to be several years old, and not exactly the peak of winter fashion.

But last Friday I walked in the front door carrying my tool bag, I had a sudden burst of inspiration; why not use a bit of wire and an RJ-45 plug for the zipper pull? It’d be the perfect geek accessory on the jacket!

So here is the final result. I’ll call it Version 1.

It was pretty simple, really; I took a length of Cat. 5 cable about 4 inches long, pulled the twisted pairs out of it and threaded two pairs through the business end of the zipper. I then doubled the wires back, straightened them out — being careful to arrange the colored wires in an aesthetically-pleasing manner — and clipped them off about 2 inches from the zipper. Then the RJ-45 went on the end and got crimped down, and there you have it!

The same thing could be done with an RJ-11 plug and a single twisted pair, but the RJ-45 allows for two pairs, and presumably double the strength.

A couple of afterthoughts about this mod upon completion; a much cleaner installation could be achieved by slipping some Cat. 5 cable jacket or heat-shrink tubing over the wire before crimping the connector in place… Just enough to fit in between the zipper and the crimp. As it is, the small amount of exposed wire doesn’t really present the effect I was hoping for. Another option would be to use solid color wire, and the same color on all four strands. That would allow the color to be coordinated with the jacket, giving a more pleasing color combination. Or maybe just wrap some black electrical tape around the exposed wires… It’d be nice to have a molded end on the plug, but that’d probably involve a used cable as most of those are molded with the cable in place. There you’d have to do some kind of twisting and/or soldering on the backside of the zipper to keep it in place. But then again I have seen some patch cables that have hoods that aren’t molded in place and could be slid onto the thing; I’ll have to keep my eye out for one of those for Version 2.

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Posted in Fun!, Gadgets, Geek, Just Stuff | Comments Closed

Animusic Pipe Dreams

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

Miss C. posted this video on her site over the weekend, referring to it as, “An oldie that never gets old”. Well, it may be old in Internet terms (2006) but I’d never seen it before, and it’s truly worth watching. And it turns out the animators — Animusic — has put out two videos with similar content. Too cool!

Watching it, I can’t help but appreciate the time and thought that had to go into this piece… I’m sure the animators started with the music, and then worked backward to synchronize the balls striking the instruments, then figured out where the balls would go afterward. The timing, the creative use of percussion, the movement through the 3D space… Very, very cool. Had to be done in animation, cuz it would never, ever work in real life. You’d have extra noise from the balls rattling through the PVC and balls flying everywhere; no way could you aim balls coming out of a common tube to strike instruments in different locations. But I guess that’s where the name comes from!

Never mind my geeking over the details; just enjoy!

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