Audial Aweomeness: Audio Wishlist

AIAIAI Tracks Headphone Series

This is, just simply, pretty cool. In the past headphones were the size of small plates and did a pretty good job of muting the entire outside world. The audio was pretty great but you sweated profusely because of the generous foam padding. And to be quite honest you looked stupid. Through time and some evolution we then ended up at the other extreme, with tiny "earbuds" that nearly vanish in your ear — and you still looked stupid.

Now, we have moved on to “audio fashion wear” that combines the best of all worlds. Copenhagen’s AIAIAI and its design partners at Kilo has come up with the stylish, light-weight Tracks Headphone Series that combines toned-down nostalgic looks with superior sound quality. A leather version of Tracks, in natural and black, is apparently in the works as well.

In another 5-10 years I'll be saying these look stupid on me as well. But for now they have a great style and look to them. They'll set you back 80 bucks but style don't come cheap.

iPod Dock + Speaker + Bed Light

Note that, sadly, this is only in it's conceptual stage. This is the iPod Dock + Speaker + Bed Light. Its a pretty basic idea. Nothing to it really. But it's subtle yet brilliant design makes it desirable. This dock would have hidden speakers in the device's panels, a sleek smooth finish that comes in many colors and a handy night light fixed in the overhead panel above the dock station. Its the perfect device for someone with little space with an eye for great design.

Zikmu

Zikmu are wireless speakers designed by Philippe Starck for Parrot. Standing at 2.5 feet tall, these speakers are an iPhone/iPod docking station with surround sound technology and a range of wireless capabilities. The two speakers, which radiate sound from both sides, can be placed anywhere in a room and work without wires. Speakers can also stream audio from mobile devices such as a PC or a Mac using Bluetooth A2DP or Wi-Fi. They also have remote control and very trendy minimalist look.

Radiofonografo

I am really excited about this though it is way out of my price range. From the Italian brand Brionvega, the 60s and 70s are back, or that at least some of the design sensibilities of the era have new life. The classic, groundbreaking Radiofonografo, divined in 1965 by two of the three Castiglioni brothers, Pier Giacomo and Achille, is making a comeback as RR226. In 1965, the 'musical component robot' was an electronic marvel that in one groovy designed device included a radio, amplifiers and a record player (for both 45s and 33s).

This modernized model also has a CD and DVD player but other than that it is as close as possible to the original. The amplifiers are moveable which makes it possible to create different configurations both for visual and listening pleasure. It was showcased at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in April, it may be a while before coming to a store near you. But like so many of the Castiglioni brothers' product marvels, still produced and/or displayed by Zanotta,Flos, Artemide and MoMA, the Radiofonografio is most likely going to stay with us for yet another long period of time.

Links: aiaiai.dk, cultofmac.com, zikmu.parrot.com, brionvega.it

Mario the Musical: Bravissimo!!!

Nerd In Love: Illustrations by Nicole Martinez

See more at: cargocollective.com

Price of Happiness: It's Relatively Affordable

Can money really buy you happiness?

More and more research has concluded that the answer to that age old question is actually "no".

But, if there had to be a number put to it, there is a figure that the majority of folks have in mind when it comes to being happy and, interestingly enough, it's lower than you may expect. It's not one million dollars, and it's not 250 thousand dollars, the apparent price of happiness is actually right at $75,000.

Apparently anything less than $75,000 annually and folks are over-consumed with worry about debt and meeting "ends meet". Anything above $75,000 and it's not really happiness, just a compensation for a lack of happiness brought on by the problems that come with having more money.

"If survival is the primary human goal, happiness comes in at a close second," said Kip Parent, Chief Executive Office of Keirsey Research. "It's such a multifaceted emotion that is empacted by numerous variable, from personality type to age to parenting status. We wanted to learn more about who is happy and why."

According to the study, which used Keirsey's In-FlowTM "river" methodology, the happiest Americans are extroverts with an annual household income of $75,000 or slightly more. The least happy Americans are unemployed , closely followed by those who are separated by not divorced.

Source: keirseyresearch.com

Francoise Nielly: South France to Fluorescence

"... all of that classical imagery of South France is very alive as an experience inside of me. Maybe it is what led me to the use of fluorescent colors in my paintings."

Though Nielly now lives in Paris, she says it is the memories of childhood in South France, living along the Mediterranean, that are largely what lead to her style; the fluorescent colors could represent the loss of clarity or emotion with the memories. She also credits her work to her love of urban life. She does a great job maintaining such great detail but with the use of loose strokes and aggressive contrasts. Her work is greatly inspiring and urges me to try something similar.

See more at: francoise-nielly.com

Alpha Dog: The New Beast of Burden?

This is a prototype from Boston Dynamics. Meet the 'Alpha Dog'. This four legged, robotic device is pretty amazing considering stuff like it was science fiction just a decade ago. It's called 'Alpha Dog' but perhaps a better name for it would be 'Awesome-sauce robot dog'.

A few things to note in the video: The weights being carried by the dog weigh a total of 400 pounds and this robot can carry that load up to 20 miles (30 kilometers) over the course of 24 hours without having to refuel. Also, when the robot is on the ground it was not do to any mechanical problems. The robot collapses into a "safety frame" because it runs out of room. Lastly note the guys pushing it with all their strength and it doesn't phase it a bit. It stays on it's feet. Now the real test is can I it be ridden? If it can I am going to start saving for one right now.



Now as cool as this robot is, the range of its payload and range has kept it from being a realistically deployed system. It will need to push its current limitations before it will be see as a useful tool for its cost and bother. But those over at Boston Dynamics are encouraged and optimistic that this will eventually be fully realized.

This is an artist rendering of a potential end product that could become the standard for military operations and planetary exploration. I can't wait till the first AT-AT is created. My dream is to see one in every nerd's garage.

Andrée Wallin: A Master Of "Enviros"

Sometimes I wonder if I had put more effort into my art education and went full steam trying to make it in the design industry perhaps I could have been a concept artist. But then again, maybe not. But I'll say this, whether I have the potential or not Andrée Wallin inspires the creativity in me.

His "enviros", as he calls them, are incredible works. He really knows how to make the viewer feel like they are right in the middle of the action or lack there of in some cases. His loose brush strokes and attention to lighting-detail make each of his projects seem like still memories of a vivid dream.

His portfolio is slowing building and getting more and more impressive as it does. He is currently working with Joseph Kosinski, director of Tron: Legacy. He is on a team of concept artists for another futuristic film in the works, Horizons.

Like many artists I have written posts about I have a hard time deciding on which works I'd like to feature. So, with great difficulty I have posted just a few of his pieces below. Of course you can go to his site to see more. The link will be at the bottom.

Swamp Fever













Starship Factory













Dodge












Deep Impact












Archland











Downtown















Check out more at: andreewallin.com

Biorobotics: The Future Looks Awesome

Human devices, from light bulbs to iPods, send information using electrons. Human bodies and all other living things, on the other hand, send signals and perform work using ions or protons.

Materials scientists at the University of Washington have built a novel transistor that uses protons, creating a key piece for devices that can communicate directly with living things. The study is published online this week in the interdisciplinary journal Nature Communications.

Devices that connect with the human body’s processes are being explored for biological sensing or for prosthetics, but they typically communicate using electrons, which are negatively charged particles, rather than protons, which are positively charged hydrogen atoms, or ions, which are atoms with positive or negative charge.

“So there’s always this issue, a challenge, at the interface – how does an electronic signal translate into an ionic signal, or vice versa?” said lead author Marco Rolandi, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering. “We found a biomaterial that is very good at conducting protons, and allows the potential to interface with living systems.”

In the body, protons activate “on” and “off” switches and are key players in biological energy transfer. Ions open and close channels in the cell membrane to pump things in and out of the cell. Animals including humans use ions to flex their muscles and transmit brain signals. A machine that was compatible with a living system in this way could, in the short term, monitor such processes. Someday it could generate proton currents to control certain functions directly.

A first step toward this type of control is a transistor that can send pulses of proton current. The prototype device is a field-effect transistor, a basic type of transistor that includes a gate, a drain and a source terminal for the current. The UW prototype is the first such device to use protons. It measures about 5 microns wide, roughly a twentieth the width of a human hair.

“In our device large bioinspired molecules can move protons, and a proton current can be switched on and off, in a way that’s completely analogous to an electronic current in any other field effect transistor,” Rolandi said.

On the left is a colored photo of the UW device overlaid on a graphic of the other components. On the right is a magnified image of the chitosan fibers. The white scale bar is 200 nanometers.

The device uses a modified form of the compound chitosan originally extracted from squid pen, a structure that survives from when squids had shells. The material is compatible with living things, is easily manufactured, and can be recycled from crab shells and squid pen discarded by the food industry.

First author Chao Zhong, a UW postdoctoral researcher, and second author Yingxin Deng, a UW graduate student, discovered that this form of chitosan works remarkably well at moving protons. The chitosan absorbs water and forms many hydrogen bonds; protons are then able to hop from one hydrogen bond to the next.

Computer models of charge transport developed by co-authors M.P. Anantram, a UW professor of electrical engineering, and Anita Fadavi Roudsari at Canada’s University of Waterloo, were a good match for the experimental results.

“So we now have a protonic parallel to electronic circuitry that we actually start to understand rather well,” Rolandi said.

Applications in the next decade or so, Rolandi said, would likely be for direct sensing of cells in a laboratory. The current prototype has a silicon base and could not be used in a human body. Longer term, however, a biocompatible version could be implanted directly in living things to monitor, or even control, certain biological processes directly.

The other co-author is UW materials science and engineering graduate student Adnan Kapetanovic. The research was funded by the University of Washington, a 3M Untenured Faculty Grant, a National Cancer Institute fellowship and the UW’s Center for Nanotechnology, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

source: washington.edu

Know Your Nerds: I Wish I Had Thought Of This

threadless.com has this on t-shirts and hoodies. Check them out if you want to sport this like a boss.

DFTBA

link: threadless.com

Check out this link for a higher rez image: laughingsquid.com

Top Five: Birthday Wishlist

Unicorn Meat

How about some canned unicorn meat from Radiant Farms. It's sure to make any dish a little more magical. I wonder if they are free-range unicorns?

Han Solo in Carbonite Ice Tray

This is just genius if I do say so myself--ice in the shape of Han Solo frozen in carbonite. If you are going to use ice why not do it in style?

Monolith Action Figure

This cracks me up. If you haven't seen the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey then this might be over your head. I am not going to explain it so I guess you'll just have to watch it if you haven't seen it.

Warcraft Mugs

For those of you who are obsessed with WoW, now you can get that early morning start to your addiction with a nice mug of coffee or grog... whatever you prefer. Me, I'd probably use the mug to drink away my Blizzard-ruined-a-good-thing-sorrows.

Floating Tardis Desk Toy

Need I say anything about this? If you like Dr. Who, if you like magnetic toys, and/or if you enjoy anything that has to do with science fiction in general then this desk toy should be on your wish list.

Desk not included.

Music Highlight: Biffy Clyro

Time for another music highlight, which I haven't done in months. After a friend asked me about the band last night I had another listen to their music and loved it more than when I had first come across them. These guys are Scottish and it shows in some of their vocal melodies. There is just something about this band that makes me want to toss it all to the wind and let life take me where it wants to. Take a listen to a few songs of theirs below.

Biffy Clyro - Bubbles


Biffy Clyro - Many of Horror (When We Collide)


Biffy Clyro - God and Satan

Race To The Moon: Scientists Say, 'It's On Bitch!'

Now that the last space shuttle has landed back on Earth, a new generation of space entrepreneurs would like to whip up excitement about the prospect of returning to the Moon.

Spurred by a $30 million purse put up by Google, 29 teams have signed up for a competition to become the first private venture to land on the Moon. Most of them are unlikely to overcome the financial and technical challenges to meet the contest deadline of December 2015, but several teams think they have a good shot to win — and to take an early lead in a race to take commercial advantage of our celestial neighbor.

At the very least, a flotilla of unmanned spacecraft could be headed Moonward within the next few years, with goals that range from lofty to goofy.

One Silicon Valley venture, Moon Express, is positioning itself as a future FedEx for Moon deliveries: if you have something to send there, the company would like to take it. Moon Express was having a party on Thursday night to show off the flight capabilities of its lunar lander, based on technology it licensed from NASA, and “to begin the next era of the private commercial race to the Moon,” as the invitation put it.

“In the near future, the Moon Express lunar lander will be mining the Moon for precious resources that we need here on Earth,” the invitation promised. “Years from now, we will all remember we were there.”

Naveen Jain, an Internet billionaire and a founder of Moon Express, says the company will spend $70 million to $100 million to try to win the Google Lunar X Prize, but could recoup its investment on its first flight. He envisions selling exclusive broadcast rights for video from the Moon, as well as sponsorships, à la Nascar, for companies to put their logos on the lander.

Or, perhaps, a tie-in to reality television.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a ‘Moon Idol,’ just like ‘American Idol?’ “ suggested Mr. Jain, who previously founded Infospace and Intelius. “You take the top 10 contestants and play their voices on the Moon, record it and see who sounds the best.”

(There is no air on the Moon to transmit sound waves, but “you could play it through the dust and see what it sounds like when you play it right on the surface,” Mr. Jain said. His point was that with cheap lunar transportation, there was no predicting what might catch people’s fancies.)

Another competitor, Astrobotic Technology, intends to sell berths on its lunar lander to space agencies and scientific institutions, which would pay $820,000 a pound to send up their experiments. The company, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University, is building a large craft — much bigger than Moon Express’s — capable of carrying 240 pounds of payload (read: $200 million of cargo) and hopes to be ready to launch in December 2013.

“We can make a lot of money even if we do not win the prize,” said David Gump, president of Astrobotic, which is based in Pittsburgh. “We will be making substantial profit on the first flight. Basically, we’ll break even by selling a third of the payload.”

The X Prize competitors might all be beaten by landers and rovers that China, Russia and India plan to send up over the next couple of years. But those fall more in the mold of traditional, government-built science probes.

While NASA had wanted to send astronauts back to the Moon, its program was canceled last year, a victim of budget cuts and shifting priorities. But it has awarded $500,000 each to Moon Express, Astrobotic and a third competitor, Rocket City Space Pioneers, the first installments of up to $30 million that it will contribute to the X Prize efforts.

George Xenofos, manager of NASA’s Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data program, said he expected one or more teams to make it to the Moon. “It’s definitely not the technical issues that’s stopping them,” he said.

The contestants’ goals do not appear to face legal hurdles. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ratified by 100 nations, bars countries from claiming sovereignty over any part of the Moon, but does not prevent private companies from setting up shop. As for mining the Moon, it could fall under similar legal parameters as fishing in international waters.

Although some orbiting spacecraft have crashed into the Moon in recent years, 35 years have passed since anything from Earth made a soft landing there. To some people, this looks like an overdue invitation.

“It’s probably the biggest wealth creation opportunity in modern history,” said Barney Pell, a former NASA computer scientist turned entrepreneur and now a co-founder of Moon Express. While Moon Express might initially make money by sending small payloads, the big fortune would come from bringing back platinum and other rare metals, Dr. Pell said.

“Long term, the market is massive, no doubt,” he said. “This is not a question of if. It’s a question of who and when. We hope it’s us and soon.”

Link: nytimes.com

And in another piece of news worth mentioning astronomers found a reservoir of water measuring 140 trillion times the earth's ocean water in space. The reservoir of water is the most distant ever discovered in the universe, said two teams of researchers.

The water surrounds a giant feeding black hole called a "quasar" and is located more than 12 billion light-years away. The giant black hole powers the quasar which gradually consumes a surrounding disk of gas and dust. It also emits enormous amounts of energy.

Astronomers studied a quasar named APM 08279+5255, where the black hole is 20 billion times greater than the sun and discovered water vapor around the black hole extending hundreds of light-years in size.

NASA scientist Matt Bradford said, "The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water. It's another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times."

Link: ibtimes.com

Galaxiki: A Collaboration of Galactic Proportions

This is pretty cool. For all of you who enjoy the creative ventures of writing, design and/or science this might just be right up your alley. At Galaxiki.org, every star, every planet, every moon is represented by a wiki page that can be edited by members of this community. The users can make changes to star systems, they can add to planets giving them an elaborate ecosystem complete with lifeforms and write stories to give more detail. One of the main goals of the site seems to be collaboration, the idea being to require users to rely on each other to make sure their solar system histories and physical characteristics are compatible and can coexistent.

There are also growing social networking features including star system ratings, comment options, bookmarks, user awards and status updates for users.

The site requires a membership signup but this is free. However, for those out there that want to create their own solar system that can't be tampered with (though that seems to be in defiance of what they are trying to create) there is an option to get your own personal system by making a donation to the site. The very idea of the site is to reply on everyone to create these fictional worlds.

I haven't really used the site myself just yet. I haven't had the time to sit down and actually give it a try., but I am very interested in doing so. I might do an update sometime in the future if I actually get involved.

link: galaxiki.org

Massive Croc Found: Steve Irwin Would Be Proud

Caught alive after a three-week hunt, an allegedly 21-foot-long (6.4-meter-long) saltwater crocodile—the biggest crocodile ever caught in the Philippines—is restrained on September 4, according to the Associated Press.

The 2,369-pound (1,075-kilogram) crocodile is suspected of attacking several people and killing two. The animal, named Lolong, survived capture and is being held in a temporary enclosure in the village of Consuelo, near Bunawan township.

Federal wildlife officials are trying to confirm whether the reptile is the largest crocodile ever captured, Theresa Mundita Lim, of the Philippines' Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, told the AP.

The Guinness Book of World Records lists a 17.97-foot-long (5.48-meter-long), Australian-caught saltwater crocodile as the largest in captivity.

Yet herpetologist Brady Barr, host of the National Geographic Channel show Dangerous Encounters, said such claims rarely check out. (The National Geographic Society part-owns the Channel and wholly owns National Geographic News.)

"I'd be surprised if it was truly six meters," Barr told National Geographic News, adding that a scientist would need to verify the claim.

Alligator biologist Allan Woodward agreed. "There's never been a crocodile longer than approximately 18 feet [5.5 meters]," said Woodward, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission."That would be an exceptional jump."

As for whether the crocodile is the perpetrator of the attacks, it's impossible to know unless the animal is killed and cut open, Barr said. Officials did induce the animal to vomit, which produced no human remains.

"It's great they didn't kill it," Barr said. "That's commendable [and] very rare."

link: news.nationalgeographic.com

David Rapoza: His Talent Makes Me Weep

I don't really even know what to say about David--his talent has me speechless. I'll just post a few pictures for viewing. Now, choosing which ones is the hard part. I'd like to just post his entire portfolio but that would be a little overkill. I'll just show my favorite series he did, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

See more at davidrapozaart.deviantart.com and daverapoza.blogspot.com.