Removing Fisheye Distortion

December 21, 2008 by 14 Comments

fisheye

Reader [alex] had a commercial plugin for fisheye lens correction and wondered exactly what kind of magic was behind it. Was it actually doing line detection? He dropped in a square grid to see what it spit out. The warped result indicated that the transformation was completely independent of the photo’s content. Using this result as a guide he was able to create a similar transform using Warp and save it as a script. The script generates almost identical results and now he knows exactly how little magic is involved.

Gas Powered Blender

December 21, 2008 by 22 Comments

gas_mixer1

We aren’t sure what [stubman] needs to blend, but whatever it is, it must require some serious power. [stubman] put together this industrial looking gas powered blender. While gas powered blenders certainly aren’t a new thing, he did add a nice touch with an electric starter. While maybe not as cool looking as some we’ve previously covered, this one would look good in any shop. Why are gas powered blenders so popular? Why not gas powered pencil sharpeners or gas powered can openers? We’ve seen a gas powered vacuum!

Pen Based Input Improvements

December 21, 2008 by 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcE3XBytN-U]

Lately we’ve been focusing on multitouch technologies, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t interesting research going on in other areas of human-computer interaction. [Johnny Lee] posted a roundup of some the work that [Gonzalo Ramos] and others have done with pen based input. The video embedded above shows how pressure can be used to increase control precision. Have a look at his post to see how pen gestures can be used for seamless workspace sharing and how pen rolling can give additional control.

Scratch Built Air Muscles

December 21, 2008 by 9 Comments

airmuscle2

We first talked about air muscles in 2005 while lusting after Shadow Robotic’s dexterous hand. The pneumatic devices are known for being lightweight and compliant. They’re designed to be used in robot arms and legs. [jelengar] stumbled across this guide to building your own air muscles. We’re not exactly sure what the original source is since it reads like a machine translation. The core is a piece of silicone tubing used in aquariums. It’s sealed at one end with a bolt. Braided electrical sheathing is slid over the tube and secured using multiple wraps of 24gauge wire. They say to test it using 20psi, but there’s no mention of what the limits are.

Securing Your Data

December 20, 2008 by 6 Comments

Lifehacker has published an overview of some of the many ways you can secure your data. The post was prompted by recently released browser vulnerabilities: first IE, then Firefox. They cover techniques far beyond just browser security, like how to properly wipe your iPhone. They mention disk encryption go-to TrueCrypt along with password management tools like KeePass. They also suggest using temporary credit cards to mitigate the impact of fraud.

[photo: Rija 2.0]

Hacked Cell Phone Blood Analyzer

December 20, 2008 by 9 Comments

hacked_cell

Lensfree Ultrawide-field Cell-monitoring Array platform based on Shadow or LUCAS for short is an amazing new hack by a researcher at UCLA. This quick little hack involving only some wire, a filter, and an LED might revolutionize blood testing. This hacked camera replaces a unit that is usually the size of a refrigerator and very expensive to run. This is a pretty amazing achievement and should serve as inspiration for hackers all everywhere.

[thanks to everyone who sent us this link]