Morphing wings

Wingwarping to the extreme – current wings use leading and trailing edge slats to change their shape in order to create more lift at different angles of attack (angles of aircraft and thus wing pitch into the airflow). This usually creates 3 seperate surfaces for control, but if you look at the way birds reshape their wings, it’s a much more fluid and precise process.

So these guys are building morphing wings on aircraft with wing spans less than 2 feet (probably due to structural integrity issues). It’s a cool beginning to this technology, and the site has videos etc.

Sliding Doors

Well, you could have the whole door open left and right… or you could do this:

The door is segmented into multiple strips and opens minimally according to the shape of the individual, animal or object that has to pass through

Good stuff!

Never see a red light again

The MIRT, or Mobile InfraRed Transmitter for Emergency Vehicles (Which is MIRToEV really, but oh well) is a traffic signal pre-emption transmitter. These have today been outlawed in the UK, making me wonder, will it work in the rest of mainland Europe? If so, I want one, and if so, what frequency does it broadcast on, as you must be able to make one for less than $ 399,.99!

Or maybe there’s just other manufacturers I can’t find right now…

Ah… From The Tech FAQ:

The transmitter is an infrared light which is flashed at the receiver. The transmitter inside the vehicle may transmit a low-priority signal (10 Hz) or a high-priority signal (14 Hz).

Climate warning as Siberia melts

THE world’s largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

[…]

What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Kirpotin suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed, triggering the melting.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725124.500

Keyboards

Well, I was going to do this thing on the fabulous Fingerworks TouchStream vs the new thing I found, but it’s turned into an obituary for Fingerworks – they must have priced themselves out of the market 🙁

Important note!

FingerWorks has ceased operations as a business.



Always wanted one of those, but can’t even find them on E-Bay, don’t know when the company bust (so maybe they haven’t sold the liquidation yet?)…

Anyway, the new bright (literally) thing, is the Optimus programmable keyboard: you can program the keys to show what you like, and they’ll release it with an open source API so you can add iconsets and functionalities and share them around… cool!

Film inspired reality!

What was that film where the guy invents a spray that freezes and dissappears dog poo?
Well, these guys have a spray that does something scarily like it…

Garrick Hamm, Creative Director, Williams Murray Hamm and D&AD Education Chairman adds, “I always hope to come away from student judging with the names of a couple of new, exciting creatives, or a killer idea to share with the rest of my studio – but nothing prepared me for dog shit! Not only was this a clever, environmentally useful idea but it was extremely well thought through and the execution was slicker than an Italian racing driver. If these creatives haven’t got jobs by the end of the summer, please send me an email…but I have a funny feeling they will be busy

There supposed to be something on here as well

Giant Spaghetti Monster

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

All Hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

http://www.venganza.org/