Archive for category Admin

Typography as Couture

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Art on March 5, 2008

no dream clothes.jpg

I’m not one for the fashion industry but sometimes, just sometimes, they hit on interesting concepts.

And by interesting, I mean wtf that’s kind of cool in a ridiculous way.
(via notcot.org)

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People are Fasting from Technology

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Technology on March 5, 2008

I almost ignored this. Something drew me back and figures it’ll be worth remembering later.

Another round of technology-overload-phobia is sweeping the net, this time in the form of fasting.

Not like this is a new concept or anything. The phrasing of Technology Fast couldn’t be ignored.

(via buzzfeed)

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Verva Vie Sports Gauntlet: Must Have. Give it to Me Now!

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Just Freaking Neat, Technology, The Future on February 19, 2008

Du Nguyen Tran read my mind. He created something pretty darn neat.

sportsgauntlet.jpg

The Vie (pronounced vee, French word for life) is a sports glove, of which the main objective is to incorporate today’s technologies to enhance human performance and safety via a simple human-machine-interface. The Vie is aimed towards those who keep active by running/walking but its features can easily be spread to other sports. The Vie is a typical health monitor that also uses GPS technology to do such things as map jog routes, rendezvous with friends, send out emergency distress beacons and more. To keep the sport natural, the input is made via a unique, single hand control interface.

[…]

Jogging and other sports, like bike riding, usually require the freedom of both hands. The interface needed not only to be simple but flawlessly controllable with one hand. Influenced by sign language and communication through hand gestures, the Vie uses strain gauges embedded in the glove to receive input commands from each individual finger. Each finger corresponds to an icon on the E-ink screen and the act of tapping is the selection. The result looks like you are typing or playing the piano, in mid air. Miniature motors then also provide tactile feedback, to feel that you have actually pressed a key, as well as OLEDs to give visual feedback. This can be personalized by programming your own shortcuts through menus made up of a combination of few finger strokes. An interaction with a device that is so intuitive and natural, you will know it like the back of your hand.

(via grinding.be)

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Some Dolphins are Attacking Porpoises to Death

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Animals, Video on January 25, 2008

No matter how intelligent or cuddly you think they are, they are wild animals. Their reasons are always their own.

Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals – but has left animal experts baffled as to the motive.

Another mystery is that the animal ‘murders’ have only been reported in two parts of the world – along Scotland’s East Coast and in America off the beaches of Virginia, where even more alarmingly, the victims were scores of the dolphins’ own young.

The first clues to solving the riddle came in 1997 when, by coincidence, marine biologists in Virginia were finding young, dead dolphins with horrific internal injuries at the same time as young porpoises were washing up on Scotland’s north-east coast with identical causes of death. The body count was growing in both locations.

And that video is more sensationalist than it should be. Where are the proper scientists? When they start screaming, “Dolphins are tired of porpoisecide and want to use our blood for bathwater!” That’s when I tie the boat to the dock and run for the rockies.

(via dunc!, telegraph.co.uk)

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Ring Gun: Small. Stylish. Old. Deadly?

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, History, Technology, USA on January 24, 2008

thumb463x_ringgun.jpg

Also, it won’t pass through Airport Security.

Duh.

Also of interest:
Watch Gun
Crucifix Gun
a fucking Hand Canon!

and other deadly curiosities.

(via curio&antik, gizmodo)

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May 11, 1999: Solar Wind. Missing for 2 Days.

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Science on January 22, 2008

aurora_med.jpgFrom May 10-12, 1999, the solar wind that blows constantly from the Sun virtually disappeared — the most drastic and longest-lasting decrease ever observed.

Dropping to a fraction of its normal density and to half its normal speed, the solar wind died down enough to allow physicists to observe particles flowing directly from the Sun’s corona to Earth. This severe change in the solar wind also changed the shape of Earth’s magnetic field and produced an unusual auroral display at the North Pole.

Starting late on May 10 and continuing through the early hours of May 12, NASA’s ACE and Wind spacecraft each observed that the density of the solar wind dropped by more than 98%. Because of the decrease, energetic electrons from the Sun were able to flow to Earth in narrow beams, known as the strahl. Under normal conditions, electrons from the Sun are diluted, mixed, and redirected in interplanetary space and by Earth’s magnetic field (the magnetosphere). But in May 1999, several satellites detected electrons arriving at Earth with properties similar to those of electrons in the Sun’s corona, suggesting that they were a direct sample of particles from the Sun.

“This event provides a window to see the Sun’s corona directly,” said Dr. Keith Ogilvie, project scientist for NASA’s Wind spacecraft and a space physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. “The beams from the corona do not get broken up or scattered as they do under normal circumstances, and the temperature of the electrons is very similar to their original state on the Sun.”

(via digg)

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The SPs are Organized

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Intertube Madness, Video on January 22, 2008

Somebody has declared war on Scientology. The video won’t survive on You Tube long and that’s for sure.

Aside from being a little creeped out, I am intrigued. Ellis points out it’s some internet strike group called Anonymous. Noted here.

EDIT: A glossary for crazy can easily be read and laughed at.

(via warrenellis)

UPDATE: Anonymous is clearly organized and won’t be “taken to school“.

Expect them.

,

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TRex R/C Helicopter Makes Me Wish I had Money

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Just Freaking Neat, Video on January 21, 2008

I would take that, modify a brain chip, implant said brain chip, and control it with my MIND.

(via geekologie, remote air trickery you tube)

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Earth’s Geology May be What Keeps Water Wet

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Science on January 11, 2008

Hansen recently stirred the pot with a controversial hypothesis published in last month’s issue of the journal Geology. Meteorite impacts early in Earth’s history, she suggested, created the first rifts in the crust, jump-starting plate tectonics.

[…]
Energizer Bunny Tectonics?
“It’s an implicit assumption that plate tectonics never shuts down,” Silver told Discovery News. “But it’s nowhere stated in plate tectonics theory.”

Silver and his colleague Mark Behn proposed in the Jan. 4 issue of Science that all it takes to stop plate tectonics is the devouring of the crustal plate under the Pacific Ocean. And that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

[…]
The end result would be a supercontinent, no remaining subduction zones, and virtually no plate tectonics, at least for a while.

(via disovery news)

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Chimps Eat Dirt to Stay Healthy

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin, Animals on January 11, 2008

Krief collected the dirt along with leaves from one of the chimps’ favorite foods, the Trichilia rubescens plant. She found that when eaten alone, the leaves had no pharmacological effect, but when combined with soil, the mixture had clear anti-malarial properties.

[…]

Krief also compared the dirt chimps eat to that used by nearby human healers to treat diarrhea. The samples shared many similarities, including a high concentration of the mineral kaolinite, the main ingredient of some anti-diarrheal medicines.

“Local people around Kibale use soil in traditional medicine, associated to different plant parts,” Krief said. “It may potentialize the properties of plant or attenuate their toxicity by adsorbing noxious compounds.”

(via yahoonews, the complete study to be published in the journal Naturwissenschaften )

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