Wave of the future or messy addiction? This gizmo uses a shortwave radio reciever to create what they dub very slow scan TV. The machines is a Canvas of ink filled bubble wrap. It is able to create 1 frame of Video per day. At 24 frames per second you can make a 30 second commercial in 720 days, or 1.97 years… AT very low def i might add. with shifty color…

Ok at some point its not tech and its just fun because we can. The scanner travels back and forth across the canvas which is a giant roll of bubble wrap injecting dye inot each bubble. The problem is that TV is don in RGB, percentages of Red Green and Blue, as the three primary colors of light. Pigment doesn’t work that way so they need to use Cyan Magenta and Yellow dye to create similar colors. CYM. Which is the same set of basic inks most printers use. Bigger images and a video of the contraption in action after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

I love Thinkgeek… There I’ve said it, again. Not only do they once again provide an outlet for the awesome geek cruft from all over the internet. But now they’re enabling the printer happy set to print their own valentines cards, for free. Or if you’d like to save a tree, sign the pdf and send it along. They have 4 different cards available to go along with their tons of other awesome stuff.

ThinkGeek

One of my problems with Apple is that they provide very few options to keep old machines current. It’s called planned Obsolescence, your machine will not only be out of date soon, but the OS might not even run on your machine in a couple of years. And since Apple updates their OS nice and often the third party vendors choose to support the latest incarnation. For Apple lovers this is a double edged sword.

First off their OS becomes much slimmer since it doesn’t have to support older machines. However Apple’s are also usually built well. I have a 10 year old machine that still runs, and it was an everyday machine for 3 years. I have a 6 year old machine that is in mostly working order, only 1 usb port isn’t working, and this machine was very roughly used.

The problem ends up being that the machines are built well enough to last but shuffled off to the also ran pile due to upgrades.

What to do with the old machines then? One example is the timepiece to the side, but i think a $1,500 time piece is a bit outlandish don’t you? What would you rather have? A passable Machine that lasts a bit, but has a long tail for OS 3rd party app compatibility?  OR An extremely well made machine which will soon be forced to backup status by frequent os / New 3rd party software compatibility issues?

SlipperyBrick.com.

You wouldn’t think it but bricks are particularly complicate things to make. But they are, You need to harvest and process the clay, strain form dye and fire them, and the you’re left with a marginally effective building material. Despite the Little piggies obvious success using them, there are much better materials out there, just non as readily available and inexpensive.

Imagine a world where the primary building material were mushrooms. Well it might not be too far off. When mushrooms grow the tiny fibrous root system that supports the fungi is called Mycelium. Apparently when dried this stuff is tougher than any proverbial nails. Non toxic, water resistant (something most bricks really aren’t) and mold resistant to boot. So in reality it could be used as support beams and insulation i the same home. Smurfy! A company called Ecovative is trying to bring this unusual building material to the public.

Futurismic

One of the biggest buzzwords lately is Green Tech. But the problem with generating power is that quite frankly its a bit hard to do. Solar energy is by far the most talked about alternative energy source but Solar energy is operating at around 20 % efficiency. That means for every 10 units of energy collected by the panel you get 2 usable portions out.

Wind energy is a lot more efficient, the only problem being that its much harder to find a sustainable wind source than a sunny day. Portable wind generators, provided they don’t need a ton of sustained wind would be a huge boon to emerging societies, relief work in remote locations or just being awesome all by your lonesome and blogging on a mountaintop.

While just a concept piece the Eolic looks like it might have a horse in that race. Carbon Fibre and a small footprint could make this an interesting design to watch, and it looks just plain awesome, lets admit it.

EcoFriend

Over at the Good Human they are giving away a nice gift basket full of Fair Trade Goodness.To Enter head on over there to read the article and leave a nice comment. Enter and join in the Fun!

I love fair trade coffee, i’ve just never had the opportunity to enjoy fair trade Chocolate. For some reason the Coffee has gained more traction around here while people are content with buying Chocolate from the same old companies.

Coffee it seems has started to transcend the role of a common commodity, which is awesome for me. The more places that have different coffee’s for me the better. While specialty products are available for almost anything, even special milk, eggs ect. Chocolate is only in its infancy in terms of widely available alternate product sources. I can’t wait to see where this goes.

Either way be sure to check out The Good Human’s Valentines day contest!

I know I’ve put a moratorium on new mugs in the house, but i might have to either break the moratorium or snap a couple of mugs. These new offerings from Thinkgeek are pretty dang awesome. Take the power of retro and the cool factor of the temperature sensitive paint and you get one spiffy mug. Space Invaders or Pacman flavors are available, for $7.99 each. I’m definitely a PacMan guy myself so this mug might end up in  Sop now i just need to find out which one of the current soldiers is getting retired.

ThinkGeek

A simple enough hack but ingenious. Take one part Wifi Detecting shirt from Thinkgeek, subtract fabric with scissors. Add in your car and shake and bake till it looks awesome. I’m not sure announcing your intent to go wardriving is the best practice considering the overall attitude towards borrowing another person’s poorly secured internet connection.

But don’t tell that to MACGEEK. All thats left is to have a ipod doc on the license plate, and the need to replace the car every year to something with less buttons. All snark aside; I’m a sucker for crazy license plates so this hit a couple buttons here.

SlipperyBrick.com

My thought has always been that guns are not inherently bad. Bad people use guns to spread their malfeseance and careless people leave them out where accidents can happen. If you own a gun, your right isn’t just to own it but but rather should be contingent on your care and propper treatment of the weapon.

A new idea in the realm of gun safety has emerged. Armatix is now selling a .22 caliber handgun with an external safety. Basically if you’re not wearing this obviously styling watch the light on the gun doesn’t turn green. And as we all know green means go; its not go time unless you have your watch on. There is a proximity detector in the gun which enables all of this.

I can’t imagine a more useful application than for police. If it  works as advertised it would basically eliminate the possibility of an officer’s weapon being stolen and used against him. However you also have to wonder about adding an extra layer of possible failure in between a cop and doing his job or protecting himself. Its interesting to see the tech non the less

Also no one is suggesting cops would be toting a .22 around either. Just some food for thought.

SlipperyBrick.com

Although just a design concept these shelves are just awesome enough to get me thinking about how i should properly decorate the CaffiNation Lair. The idea looks simple enough to implement. I can’t help but think these shelves, depending on their price would be a huge hit in many a geek lair.

The Obvious end to this would of course being some truly smart geek finding a way to use conducive paint, or hidden wires, and make the shelving actually do something… The walls the limit here

OhGizmo!