Cheers!
-The Cannoli
Below we have a video of a very progressive thinking guy. Taking the asphalt road that we have been taking for granted all these years and replacing it with a newer, very 21st century technological, power producing, solaricious road. The idea is to take glass, that is as hard as steel and place solar panels under the glass. That way the road, that is just sitting in the sunlight all day now becomes a power-plant taking electricity to you and your neighbors doorsteps, for free..well until the power company finds some way to charge you for it.
In the video he talks about how they plan to put LEDS in the panels to light up the roads, and give dynamic warnings to drivers, as well as make the pieces weathers, shatter and slip proof. Problem is that I can’t see power companies really enjoying the thought of their billion-dollar business going the way side for free power. I for one would love to see something like this because you know the web will spring up with hundred of ways to hack into the grid for the free energy. I enjoy the idea of taking all of these technologies and combining them into new, innovative and useful applications. With the impending loss of loss fuels, oil and energy derived from rocks we find in the ground, humanity needs progressive thinkers that are willing to take risks and push forward to harness the powers that we have around us for the free use of energy, that is clean and green. If we hope to ever get off this rock and explore the universe before our sun explodes or we kill each other, getting this world more energy efficient is a must and this is a great idea…plus when we get hover/flying cars we can just have normal glass since we won’t be going 80 over it and smashing into one another all the time. Kudps to this guy! Check out the video below.
~ Cannoli ~
A new online citizen science project launched last month called Planet Hunters. The project involves visiting the site http://www.planethunters.org/ and starting to search. Upon signing up with Zooniverse (a collection of projects similar to and including Planet Hunters) you will promptly receive a Planet Hunters Club Card, Planet Hunters Magnifying Glass, a Map of the Stars and Monthly Letter with Gift Monthly…or not.
The screenshot above is what you will see once you visit the site. It works by presenting the users with light data gathered from the Kepler telescope, which has been monitoring nearly 150,000 stars in the nearby constellation Cygnus, recording their brightness over time. The hunting part come sin by examining this light data. You see, when a planet passes in front of a Star, the star’s light will dim from the planet, which doesn’t glow, blocking the star’s light. Sound complicated? It’s is. Here is a small introduction and tutorial video that you should check out. At the very least there is some cool information about the goings on of space exploration that is interesting as hell:
The study, that was headed by Dr. Ian Stephen, showed that with five additional portions of vegetables per day to ones diet, that over the course of 2 months participants skin had a much healthier and radiant glow. The research isn’t anything too revolutionary, but it went something like this:
1) Get willing participants
2) Have half of them double their fruit/vegetables.
3) Observe how Carotenoids (which are found in high volumes in RED vegetables and fruits) affect the skin.
4) Get participants a tan.
5) Ask strangers to judge them. (best part)
If the research could be photographed it would look something like this:
The face in the middle shows the woman's natural color. The face on the left shows the effect of sun tanning, while the face on the right shows the effect of eating more Carotenoids. Participants thought the Carotenoid color looked healthier.
Brilliant piece right? It works by creating strips of colors, then uses verticies on the color strips, then your brush pushes the verts around and creates art. You can manually edit the verts or rely on the brushes to do all the work. Manually change colors, change sizes and push your piece until it’s perfect. If creating isn’t really your thing you can “Watch” the art. Which is a cool feature that takes what looks like the 10-20 most recent pieces of art and warps them into one another using the verts and changing the colors. People have created some really phenomenal pieces using Viscosity such as this piece:
Tonight I went to visit a lovely young lady that somehow agrees with me on the point of my awesomeness. After a quick cup of coffee we made our way to the bar next door, where eventually her friend Jason showed up. Jason is a local tattoo artist here in Phoenix,AZ. Long story short I drove them back home and got a tour of their house…err studio. This is where I wish I would have had my camera as it was so incredibly cozy! Open-face brick, wood floors, and trippy art all over the room created a really warm and surprisingly not cluttered feeling. After the tour of the Tattoo room and his backyard metal working/painting lab Jason handed me two pieces of art to decorate my bare-ass place in Seattle seen here:
Pretty rad huh? That being said, if your into Tattoos and live in Phoenix, AZ you should check him out. He’s got some great work, in fact, you should look at on his portfolio site….
http://web.me.com/jasonlouiselle/Site/Welcome.html
His studio will make you feel at home and he’ll kick you ass at Wii Sports before you get your half sleeve, and maybe a friend will make you some Chicken Soup to distract from the pain. Check out his actual Tattoo work below, enjoy:
For lyrics that will stimulate your cortex while you spiral down Greydon’s Vortex you should give this a listen. The album is available for free to listen on his site and if you enjoy it why not throw 8 bucks his way to support his efforts? Follow the link for some wavelength stimulation of your A-Spot. Cheers!
Keep checking back for the regular updates and hopefully some new features and games for you to play!
Sounds dirty, but looks cool
Augmented Reality has become exponentially more popular in the last few years. It seems like a daily occurrence that I log onto one of the many blogs I visit and see something that has an Augmented Reality component to it. I found this and 1) Found it fucking awesome, 2) Needed to post it. What your going to see in the video is that they are using shock-wave lengths from taps on the arm to interact with a display that is projected on your arm via a small projector and computer strapped to your bicep. The technology could be used to make display screens on phones obsolete or revolutionize MP3 player control input. For example, you could do such actions as skip songs or pause/play by touching fingers together or clenching a fist. Expect to see more and more technology like this as we get further into 2010. I’ll say it now, 2010 is going to be the year of technology integration away from a monitor and into the environment. I expect to see something revolutionary this winter to early next year that will become the standard on how we interact our technology (though the touchscreen pretty much did that with the DS and the iphone ie: we’re still tapping on our arm).