[Mark] had a broken TI-83 graphing calculator and an overwhelming urge to play Pokemon in math class. The solution to his predicament, obviously, is to hack a GameBoy color into the body of his TI-83. He gutted the calculator and connected the front buttons to the contacts on the GameBoy. After some cramming and taping bits together, he got it all working. Now he just needs to find a way to make the cartridge a little bit less conspicuous.
[via Make]
A new breed of tire has been developed that won’t go flat, even if it gets bombed. Resilient Technologies L.L.C. has started making these decidedly cool looking tires for the military. The honeycomb of stiff but flexible plastic acts as a shock absorber just as an air filled tire would. Unlike a normal tire, it won’t pop. You would have to completely destroy the tire to stop these. The article mentions that this isn’t the first of its kind. Michelin has made the “tweel” for industrial uses, but you may recall the video of the Audi driving around a course using them. If not, check it out after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E8vsQB4pug]
Scratch input allows us to use solid surfaces as an input devices by capturing the sounds they produce. Using a stethoscope and a high pass filter, they capture the unique sounds of specific gestures. Custom software then translates this to actions for applications. The video shows some really cool stuff, like turning an entire wall into an input device. It goes around corners and past doorways. They even talk about potential using your clothes to capture input.
[via Procrastineering]
We first spotted the Stribe music controller at Maker Faire. [Josh Boughey] has since refined the controller’s design so that it can be constructed in a modular fashion and it’s being sold in kit form by Curious Inventor. The kit has two columns of 64 LEDs and a Spectra Symbol SoftPot for control. You can daisy chain eight modules together using a ribbon cable. It uses SPI control, with a separate wire for the data line (not in the ribbon). An Arduino is used to hook the controller to programs like Max/MSP.
[Stillboy] alerted us to a flying car that runs on biofuel. Flying cars have been the mainstays of science fiction and technological wish lists for years, but they elude production, as expenses, fuel, and gravity get in the way. [Gilo Cardozo], a paramotor manufacturer, managed to overcome those hurdles by thinking simply. He attached a paramotor to his car, which is powered by a Yamaha superbike engine and a gearbox from a snowmobile. His modified Rage Motorsport buggy is street legal in the United Kingdom, and in the air, can get up to 80 miles per hour. It will be fully tested in January, when he and his chief pilot and expedition organizer [Neil Laughton] drive and fly the car to Timbuktu.
Other flying cars are also in the works. DARPA recently announced their Personal Air Vehicle Technology project that will hopefully lead to a military-suitable flying car that can get up to 60 miles per hour on the ground and 150 miles per hour in the air. Moller International claims that a flying Ferrari is in the works, and could be available for purchase within two years. Are jet packs next?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVnGLCG9Nzg&feature=channel]
Take a tour of the Mutex laboratories, where mutants are made and nothing could possibly ever go wrong. [Steve] directed us to these videos of the Halloween set up he did with his son this year. Neighbor kids got to go on an action packed tour where mutants break free from their cages and have to be neutralized with special ray guns. Wow, why didn’t this guy live near us when we were kids? Check out a behind the scenes walk through with some good technical stuff after the break.
The Washington Post is reporting that the shutdown of one hosting company has caused the total volume of spam to drop by 2/3rds. The company in question is McColo Corp. Both Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing pulled the plug today after a damning report revealed a number of illegal activities happening on McColo’s servers. McColo already had a reputation with the security community. When contacted about abuse, the company would often shift servers to new IP ranges instead of shutting them down. Although not the main source of spam, the company was host to many botnet control servers and phishing sites.
[photo: mattdork]
[via Waxy]
