Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Robot kayaks

Robot Gossip has an article (with a picture) about a new robotic kayak developed by MIT as a testbed for aquatic robots.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Fan death

According to this article on Wikipedia, people in Korea believe that it is dangerous to sleep in a room with a running electric fan. There are regular reports in the Korean media of people dying from fan death.

Strangely these deaths only seem to occur in Korea and most people outside Korea consider the idea to be somewhat ridiculous. This makes me wonder if there are any similar things that we in the West believe that are laughed at elsewhere.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Fake Identities

This site offers a "False Identity Generator". It is mainly intended for use on website registration pages. It returns a valued, though not necessarily existing address, as well as an appropriate zip code and phone number. It also provides a birthdate and mother's maiden name.

An interesting web comic

Gunnerkrigg Court is a web comic with excellent art and interesting stories. Don't let the vaguely Harry Potter-esque setting put you off.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Bionic limb breakthrough

The BBC has an article about a new technique that allows metal rods to be anchored to bone and then protrude through the skin. Until now they haven't been able to get the skin to grow properly around the rod.

Flip clips

I haven't used this service but it looks like it might be an interesting present to get for someone. Basically they convert a video into a flip book.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Water displays

This article describes, and has a picture of, a machine that uses water as a display. Waves are generated by a series of devices around the edge of the water and the interference patterns form the desired image.

Who's watching?

This article in the New Scientist reports on research that shows that people are not only more honest when being watched - they are more honest when there is just a picture of someone watching them.