Hot New Car Paint Is Very Cool

Posted on 21/08/2015 by John Thomas

One of my least favorite things is getting into a steaming hot car in the middle of summer. You can open the windows, turn on the air and start driving to get the breeze flowing and you’re still going to suffer and sweat it out for a while. Well, a revolutionary new paint developed in the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University may be able to solve that burning issue.

The paint is created using the extremely abundant compound silica, which is the primary ingredient in glass. Basically, you cover a metal surface with this new paint and it sends sunbeams that hit it harmlessly back to where they came from. And not only does it keep metal surfaces cool, but also it’s a lot more durable than the paint used on today’s cars. The paint’s creator, Jason Benkoski, says, “It’s almost like painting a rock on top of your metal, and this thing’s going to last for not tens of years, but maybe hundreds of years.” Even better, metal deteriorates more quickly when it gets hot, so not only will the paint last a long time, but the metal itself will have a longer, stronger life.

While I am most looking forward to this paint keeping my car cool during the torrid months, Benkoski, who developed the paint to be used on U.S. Navy ships, says his favorite application will be on metal playground slides to protect kids like his two-year-old son. Brilliant. Unfortunately, we’ll have to sweat it out for a little while still, because widespread testing won’t start for another couple of years.

[ACS via Gizmag via Gizmodo]

DIY Candle Holders Inspired by the Stones from The Fifth Element

Posted on 27/07/2015 by John Thomas

One of the most elemental aspects of the terrific 1997 Luc Besson-directed sci-fi flick The Fifth Element are “The Elemental Stones.” These four tan-colored bricks, which feature grooved patterns, represent earth, air, fire and water and are part of a device that is powerful enough to destroy the Great Evil before the villain annihilates our planet. The Elemental Stones are fairly minimalist looking, but for fans of the film they would make a great piece of home decor.

This is not a collectible you can buy, so if you want to have a set, surf over to instructables.com where you can find very detailed directions on how to create them out of beefy wooden blocks. But here’s the twist – the artist, who goes by the name “antagonizer,” likes his projects to be more than just decorative. Hence, his Elemental Stones are not just replicas of the film’s famous blocks, they are also candle holders. It’s a neat twist that will make this DIY project into an even more interesting conversation piece when you light them on your dining room table at a nerd-centric dinner party.

However, if you’re looking for Elemental Stones but don’t have the time, skill or power tools to build these, Etsy has a couple of artists who have created jewelry based on the Stones that require no hard labor at all on your part to own.

Project Nimbus Projects Images from Airplane onto Clouds

Posted on 08/07/2015 by John Thomas

These days, everybody stores their videos “in the cloud.” Now some clever folks in the UK are actually projecting video on real clouds.

Recently, on the clouds floating over Nottingham, England, residents saw the spooky green image of a man riding a horse in the night sky. The images were projected onto the clouds from a Cesna 172 which was carrying a laser-enhanced version of a very early cinema camera called a zoopraxiscope, which was a simple rotating disc through which light was flashed to simulate movement. (It was developed by photographer/cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, whose subject was often racehorses, hence the choice of what to project.)

Appropriately dubbed Project Nimbus, it was started by artist Dave Lynch in 2007, who got the inspiration when he read an academic paper during his graduate studies that detailed efforts by the U.S government to develop ways to project images onto clouds that would frighten their enemies.

Lynch, however, wants to achieve delight, not fright. According to Lynch, “We specifically stayed away from commercial requests to keep the clouds a sacred space, away from logos and social media stunts, which many are pursuing. We all have a relationship to the clouds, the sense of looking up and dreaming, we hope Project Nimbus inspires people to believe in big ideas and consider that through collaboration we can all push the boundaries of what we know.”

The video of Lynch’s projection onto the clouds shows a lot of potential (and might actually be pretty scary for a kid to see from his bedroom window), but I will say that his desire to keep his technology away from corporate concerns seems pretty naive. As this technology gets sharper and more precise, I can guarantee you that you will begin to see giant corporate logos dancing all over the clouds.

[via New Scientist via Gizmodo UK]

Turn Your Favorite Photo into a LEGO Masterpiece

Posted on 09/06/2015 by John Thomas

Let’s say you have a photo and you want to turn it into a LEGO mosaic. Figuring out freehand what pieces to buy, how many and in exactly the places to put them would basically be impossible. Well, the new Legoizer does that work for you, allowing you to take a special image and turn it into an extra special work of art.

The best part – it’s crazy simple. It literally takes about three seconds. You take any photo, drag it from your desktop into the image slot, and presto, a rendering of the image in LEGO materialized along with an exact shopping list of the kind, color and number of specific pieces you would need to build it.

On a tab next to the shopping list is one for instructions. When you click on it it tells you may many lines are in your creation and asks you which line you want the specifics on. If you simply start with line 1 and hit enter, it shows you just how to arrange the pieces. It may be one of the easiest and most helpful interfaces I have ever seen for DIY art projects.

Even if you have no interest in ever building a photo you love out of LEGO pieces, you should still check it out and give it a test run to see one of the simplest and most elegant online tools of its kind.

[via Imaging Resource via PetaPixel via LEG GODT]

Google’s Project Soli: Gesture All of the Things

Posted on 04/06/2015 by John Thomas

Don’t touch. That should be the motto of Google’s new technology that allows people to control many of their favorite devices without ever laying a hand on them.

Dubbed Project Soli, it’s a radar-based system that allows people to do things like rub their fingers together or tap their fingers in order to interact with the machines they love. Ivan Poupyrev, the Soli project manager, describes it this way in a video demonstrating the amazing new advance: “Capturing the possibility of the human hand was one of my passions.” He goes on to explain that he wants to take the incredible flexibility and dexterity of the hand and use it for myriad virtual purposes.

To do so, he and his team developed a tiny radar system to link your hands’ movements to your devices. In Google’s Soli video, you can see some pretty amazing implementations of the technology – resetting a watch by rubbing your fingers together above the timepiece, and using similar hand movements to adjust volume and change songs on your music player. At times it looks as if a symphony conductor is using his hand motions to control and empower a small orchestra. Soli uses a very small chip, and because radar can detect extremely precise movements, the potential applications of Soli seem wide and deep.

Now only if they could implant a chip in my three-year-old that would allow me to snap my fingers and dial down his wailing when he isn’t getting what he wants.

[via ZME Science]

Here Buds Let You Hear the Real World at Your Preferred Volume

Posted on 04/06/2015 by John Thomas

The next time you see someone walking down the street with a pair of wireless buds inserted into their ears, they might not be listening to their favorite jams.

What could they be they listening to? Well, that’s where things get interesting. New York City based Doppler Labs has mounted a Kickstarter campaign to produce its Here Active Listening System which features a sophisticated digital signal processor. While that sounds highly technical (and it actually is), it basically boils down to having an electronic soundman in your ear who can optimize the noises around you.

There are several ways the device works, all by manipulating an app that syncs with your earbuds. Let’s say you’re on an airplane and a baby in the row in front of you just won’t stop howling. The Here system allows you to tap your app and drown that baby out.

It also has an amazing equalizer setting, so if you’re at a concert and you don’t like the way the music is mixed, you can customize it to your own tastes. There’s also a somewhat silly functionality that enables you to add filters to the sounds you are hearing – like reverb and echo (which might make a really boring lecture sound cool enough to pay attention to).

As we all know, there are a lot of dubious Kickstarter campaigns out there, but this ones really rings true and I would highly doubt it doesn’t hit its goal and soon hit the market. An early bird pledge of at least $179 will get you one of the first Here systems .

Disney Creating Cartoon Robots that Could Prowl Its Parks

Posted on 29/05/2015 by John Thomas

I worked at Disney World when I was in high school. It was not fun and it was not glamorous. I flipped burgers and sold soft serve ice cream. The cool kids I knew had jobs on rides, and the coolest kids were characters. Now Disney engineers are working to create robots whose movements are identical to the cartoon characters millions love, so they can someday let them loose in their theme parks to wow the kiddies.

The robots begin as animated 3D mockups and then progress to 3D printed robots employing servos and animation software to make them come to life as replicas who can walk on their own. What makes these ‘bots really special is that they walk much more like cartoon characters than typical robots.

I will say this – knowing kids these days, the folks at Disney had better give these robots some bodyguards, because if they don’t some disgruntled little Magic Kingdom guest is gonna knock them over pronto just to watch them flail on their side. I’m not saying I would have done that as a kid, but I’m just saying.

[via Gizmodo]

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Return to SNL Weekend Update Desk… Sort of.

Posted on 27/05/2015 by John Thomas

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update is one of the great comedy franchises in history, and some amazing talent has sat behind the anchor desk. The show’s professional news mockers have included Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Jane Curtin, Dennis Miller, Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon. But for my money, the sharpest ones were the brilliantly snarky and energetic duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. And now the two are coming back to SNL’s anchor desk – in a manner of speaking.

Bif Bang Pow! has announced that they are creating a set of 3-1/2 inch action figures of the two comedians in their anchor suits, and they come in a box that opens up to become the iconic SNL Weekend Update desk. The pair, which will cost $29.99(USD), will not be easy to acquire, however. Only 2,400 will be made, and people attending the San Diego Comic-Con in July will get first dibs. You can pre-order yours from Entertainment Earth now, but if they sell out in San Diego, you’ll be out of luck. My prediction – if you’re not going to the convention and you want this set, you’ll be getting it off eBay for a lot more than 30 bucks.

[via Splitsider]

Google’s Patent-pending Robotic Stuffed Animals: Cute or Creepy?

Posted on 25/05/2015 by John Thomas

I just saw a post on Time.com about a patent Google has filed for a high-tech Teddy Bear. (Hey, it had to happen sooner or later.) So I clicked on the link to read the patent application and what I found was pretty darn freaky.

At the bottom of the first page are line black and white line drawings of both a Teddy Bear and a stuffed bunny rabbit. The pair look, well, not like the friendliest kids’ toys I have ever seen (I’d describe the look in the bunny’s eyes as borderline demented). The drawings also show where motors, microphones, cameras and speakers would be mounted or inserted into the plush toys. So at first glance it looks like they’re probably going to dance, sing, talk and keep an eye on your kid.

But the abstract of the patent goes a bit deeper into exactly what Google is up to with these creations. It describes them as, “An anthropomorphic device, perhaps in the form factor of a doll or toy, may be configured to control one or more media devices.” It goes on to explain that when spoken to or gestured at, the toys will then cause a “media device to change state.” To me what that sounds like is that Google is developing a new remote control interface in the form of a baby toy, which seems pretty low on the list of things currently needed by most of mankind. There is, however, no reference in the document to whether or not the bear or bunny will be able to run to the fridge and get you a snack.

3D Printing Heads to the Kitchen

Posted on 24/05/2015 by John Thomas

I have seen a lot of really cool stuff come out of 3D printers. But all of that was just a morsel compared to the crazed creations the ChefJet Pro from 3D Systems can churn out using food.

Instead of plastic, the machine, which looks like a microwave oven, uses raw materials like sugar and frosting to output its candies and edible decorations. First you load the exact dimensions of what you want into the ChefJet. It then takes that information, mathematically slices it up, and then recreates it by putting a series of very thin layers on top of one another so that the 3D likeness can be as precise as possible.

They have a bunch of examples of what their invention can churn out featured on their site, some of which are bizarrely intricate. My favorite is a sinuous snow white sugar skull that’s made to dissolve in a cocktail (Keith Richards would love it).

But if you really want to see something amazing, watch their video in which they collaborated with Ford to make a small chocolate candy replica of the 2015 Mustang. It will blow your doors off.

[via Chicago Tribune]

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