JellyFish In Air : Festo's AirJelly

Similar to the AquaJelly, only this time, AirJelly moves through air. Basically, the same mechanism from AquaJelly is attached to a helium balloon. Motion is controlled by remote instead. I want one for my room!!! From Festo.

Bionic Jellyfish : Festo's AquaJelly

AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish in water, a self-controlling system which emulates swarming behaviour. The watertight laser-sintered body houses a central electric motor, the two lithium-ion polymer batteries, the recharging control unit and the servo motors.

AquaJelly uses short range radio communication to emulate its real/organic counterpart. Multiple AquaJelly(s) will act like a jellyfish swarm. .pdf on the top right of the page elaborates more on the project.

Exactly the kind of research I wanna be doing in 10 yrs time. Emulating, improving & redefining nature, humans included.

• Festo's official web

Hexapodmeisterschaft

Hexapod dancing to Mambo No.5, work of students from HTL SAALFELDEN, Austria. Awesome programming. Am wondering whether these students are using Lynxmotion.

I couldn't help but break into a big smile when I saw this video. Hexapods, which include Tachikomas, FTW!!!

Nature's Deadly Bong

Caption : I like how the lake is oxidized to a muddy brown, has yet to recover(reduction?) since 1984.

"... limnic eruption is when a large body of water suddenly releases large amounts of carbon dioxide which, being h eavier than air, displaces it at ground level, suffocating oxygen breathers."

While there are only three places where this phenomenon is known to happen, which itself is extremely rare, namely Lake Manoun in Cameroon, Lake Nyos, Cameroon and Lake Kivu(between the Congo and Rwanda). The Lake Nyos explosion killed almost 2000 people, bearing in mind that that was only CO2 displaced from a lake. Reports suggest that limnic explosions could have a greater effect since there is, well, more water.

Conditions for a limnic explosion:
~ Tropical and prone to volcanic activity areas
~ Body of water must be quite deep

So, what does this phenomenon tell us? That we should be hogging around an O2 tank? Or kick start our quest for space colonization? Nah, we should just start seriously researching on bio-mechanical lungs. OK, I have no idea what I'm talking about now.

I'm thinking of a contraption that utilizes plants' photosynthesis, then channel the O2 to somewhere needed, might have to work around that when plants' undergo respiration. Bah, my biology knowledge is near zero.

• http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/nature-deadly-bong/3185

Topics to be covered

As stated in title:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Turing Test
• Dean Kamen's 'Luke Arm'

*marked for deletion*

How To Fake Fingerprints?

From the Chaos Computer Club, a German hacking group:

• How To Fake Fingerprints?

Interesting how-to article, albeit old news.

Back story to this DIY was that CCC lifted the German Interior Minister's fingerprint, to prove the vulnerability of biometrics.

Live action Ghost in the Shell (Hollywood)

...News is that while a couple other studios were chasing Ghost in the Shell, Spielberg himself took an interest in the property and brought it to Dreamworks. Jamie Moss, who hasn't done much of anything except write Street Kings is set to pen the adaptation...

God help us.

• http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2008/04/14/Dreamworks-doing-live-action-3d-adaptation-of-Ghost-in-the-Shell

Robots: The Next Tech Bubble?

Forbes.com (link) :
Gadgets and gimmicks and concept robots from huge corporations all presage the moment that open-architecture robots will catapult robotics out of its niche. As soon as the next generation of teen nerds can get their fingers into the brains of $200 'bots, robotics will be unleashed into the outward spiral of acceptance. The nerds will run with the technology and do for robotics what they did for computing in the 1970s and 1980s.

Yes. Hai. Ya. Agree.
Just a matter of time before I get my cold, grubby hands on some soldering equipments, and all hell will break loose. Got a few ideas now, like switching on/off the room fan from the bed. Till then, I'll just be learning Python and reviving the 10yr old PC to use Linux.

If I do eventually venture into the robotics field, heck even if I don't, I still would really, really want to see robots become the next PC. MOAR AUTOMATION AS WELL !!! Hope robotics become the next big-thing. That, and prosthetics. And my personal flying car.

Lynxmotion BH3-R Walking Robot

WANT!
Have a thing for a robo-spideys, courtesy of GitS Tachikoma. I've got a few nice 'applications' for this thing.

Uses Sony Playstation controller to navigate. Comes at USD750. Product page

[BBC]Girls 'more skilled at IT'

Boring month. Not many interesting news around. So, here's an obligatory dump.txt

Survey results show that more than boys have created MSWord docs, have a page on networking websites or uploaded a YouTube video....
....more acceptable for girls to be geeks....
meh, you don't even get a bit of geek cred if you haven't taken a philips screwdriver and pried open the cpu casing.

....Boys = Games, Girls = more involved....
I personally feel that playing PC games would get you more computer savvy than just browsing profiles on Friendster. For example, you're bound to come across more problems/jinxes while trying to get a (usually pirated) game to run compared to pointing, clicking and typing comments. BSODs, driver/hardware problems, getting around DRM, you know the drill.