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06.26.08 by Widge @ 6:00 pm The Bowes Museum is in North East England and has, among its collection, a silver swan automaton that dates back to 1773. It was purchased for £200 in 1872. Not a bad price--they should have bought two, it might have been cheaper. Anyway, twice a day it goes through its performance of eating a fish in a bit that lasts forty seconds. Showing here: The obvious question is: why just two a day? Surely a clockwork swan needs more sustenance than that? The answer: clockwork fish are in short supply having been overfished nearly out of existence in the early 20th Century. Plus, salt water is hell on their internal pieces-parts. For more and perhaps less suspect information, go here. Categorized as: Tech
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06.09.08 by Widge @ 12:00 am Okay, so the signs are all coming together: Skynet will be among us any day now. And not content to rule the land, robots will soon be swarming the oceans. How do we know? Because they always start off so cute and cool...like in toys. Direct link for the feedreaders. Those are lifelike robotic jellyfish that are made by Sony. I did look around for them on sale in the U.S. and I don't think anyone has them yet. If somebody knows something to the contrary, please let me know and I'll post it here. Found at C00l Stuff via Dark Roasted Blend. Now if you aren't content with jellyfish that mimic life and you figure, hey, if we're going for robots I want to see robots...I got something for you after the break. Categorized as: Tech
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06.04.08 by Widge @ 3:26 am This nice gentleman will explain everything. Please take notes if you feel the need to do so. And remember: nothing changes until midnight on Saturday. Categorized as: Tech
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05.11.08 by Widge @ 4:43 am  I'm sure we've all lost data at one point or another. Sometimes you lose data that you really can't afford to lose and you have to get an expert to go in and literally resurrect the data from the hard drive. I had a friend go through this recently--and it ain't cheap. But I think this trumps all: a company recovered data from a hard drive that had been onboard the Space Shuttle Columbia when it exploded back in 2003. "When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted," said [Jon] Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. "It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot."
Using the data they found intact on the drive, they were able to let researcher finish and publish an experiment. You can also see why DOS is still your friend by reading the full article. Categorized as: Tech
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04.28.08 by Widge @ 1:55 pm Perhaps one of the coolest terrestrial things NASA has done in a while (since non-terrestrial things like escaping the freaking gravity well never lose the ability to be cool) is to set up the AresTV ID on YouTube. They're posting their quarterly updates on the Ares Project's progress. For those not already geeking, the Ares is the replacement for the U.S. space shuttle. First test flight is a year from now. Full-on flight operations scheduled for 2015. In this most recent episode, the seventh, you can see the parachute testing of their reefing (opening) method, otherwise known as Reefing Madness. Also: they do calibration and testing of...The Nozzle. Categorized as: Tech
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