Longbars: Opensource Nutrition Bars
In case you've been wondering what I've been up to...
You can see it all at the Longbars Blog. 5 months from starting with scratch to publishing the LLC notices on Dec 1!!
Read all about it.
[Edit: Just got publication notice from the paper! Two weeks later. You'd think they'd be more eager in such times... lazy pigs. jklol?]
Good Friday Extra Double-fun Carismatic Blaster Action!!!! Double-Link Extravaganza!!!!
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
We've all heard it: 'the internet is for porn.' I hear there's even a music video. The reality of the matter is that the net is changing the way we do everything. Whether I'm shopping for a car or a book, or just trying to keep myself entertained... i'm no longer reliant on a passive informational medium to get my extra-sensation information.
But you might ask me, "What's that mean?"
Let me elaborate
Since we came up with the idea of using radio-frequency to transmit information, the primary method of doing so has been thru either traditional radio, or with televisions. How do you interact with your television or radio though??? Well, you don't really -- you just sit there and absorb whatever it is that you're being told.
It's kinda like going to church on Easter Sunday... you get dressed up, you wander down to your local info-saloon, your bartender serves you a drink, you drink, you leave. There's no interaction involved... nobody asks you what you want, no consideration is given to your mood or feeling... you just get what you're given.
The internet is doing something very interesting to the culture of sales. Instead of advertising at you, businesses are trying to engage your readership by generating content that you're interested in. The whole idea is that we are no longer being broadcasted at, instead we're being presented with a million different portals of information that we can walk thru. We can go 24/7. We can go in our underwear, or nothing at all. We can go when we're "working"... as i'm about to illustrate:
For Starters...
Here's a good one for starters -- http://www.academicearth.org/
There's about a million (not really that many, still plenty) cool looking videos here. They're all from professor-types... and there's a range of topics. I was particularly intrigued by the MIT Course Lectures!!! that's right folks... you can go to school at MIT for free if you have a computer with web access.
Which brings me to...
...my next extravaganza link -- http://laptop.org/en/
The idea is this -- by sending these 'rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected' laptop w/ educational software & content preinstalled, the One Laptop Per Child group is putting computers in schools for 6-12 year-olds. The kids get to take the laptop home, and the child can use all sorts of open-source (free) software with the laptop.
Well, i guess that's not really much of an extravaganza... but if I get some interested comments, i'll post more of these sorts of links up. If you'd like to be getting posts by e-mail, you can signup for my feed with your RSS reader... it's quick and painless... like waxing... only much less painless.
Three sheets @ work ftw!!!!
will it resonate? … super video post #1 w00t!
[the title sounds cool, but the rest of it is a complete hack from you-tube and a lifetime membership to the geeklord sci-fi hubub booklist... get used to it.]
Let's think about the future in big fat over-reaching strokes. While I'm not tempted to do the requisite research, I suspect if i looked close enough i would be able to conclude that nobody had a clue how significant the impact electricity or mass production or plumbing would have been on life in the developed world around the time that those technologies were first being realized... i posit that nano-tech will be the same sort of technology.
It speaks volumes that our the global civilization is even beginning to have a conversation about the impact of nano-tech in general and programmable matter specifically. Certainly we should... i'm just saying it's impressive that we do.
All that being said... and any shred of creative ability in my soul being totally spent... i'll step aside for some other peoples work to shine:
First off, here's (one of my fav's) a concept from BMW called GINA. The designers discuss a yet-to-be-created elastic fabric (read: spandex+recycled-milkjugs?) surface for the exterior of the car, but i imagine by the time something like this is live, we'll see thin hybrid metals that can emulate the 'non-newtonian fluids' i link below. Such a combination of flexible and rigid states, and the ability to control those states would be very effective at absorbing shock in a collision (among other fabulous applications that I won't begin to discuss in this post)... combined with an intelligent driving computer (that would necessarily have to be less likely than you to get in a wreck) to manage ultra high-speed roadways... I'd be (nearly) invincible:
Yeah, but if that car never comes to pass, then you can check me out in Thunderdome
+
Alrighty then, Second-off!
Here's an interesting idea that i think would mix well with my rambling above... they've called the technology needed to create this table 'programmable matter'.... looks like nano-tech+ferrofluid (below) to me :o)
But, perhaps not...
Here's the ferrofluid. The fluid is an oil, and the dark color is nano-sized particles of iron suspended in the oil. Electromagnets beneath the surface are then used to move the iron particles with their magnetic field. Courtesy of Protrude Flow & Wiki
And here's their first try </snide>:
I believe that's made of cornstarch and water and food coloring...
Last but not least, I couldn't resist including this fantastic slo-mo vid... :