gadgets
pharyngula | February 18, 2011Obviously, I did it all wrong. I have a digital video microscope in my lab, but what I did was spend about $20,000 on a nice microscope, $1000 on a digital still camera and about $500 on a digital video camera, and $200 on a pair of custom adapters to link them together. The principle is simple enough, though; you're just mounting a camera on the scope where your eye would be and grabbing images with a standard computer interface. So here's New Scientist bragging about building a video microscope for £15.
I've done something similar in the past, but I can one-up Lewis Sykes: I made my…
pharyngula | December 29, 2010I'm struggling with some annoying problems with my computer right now: every once in a while, it spontaneously dies without warning, and the system says there's something wrong with the battery. It's happened now several times today, always right when I'm in the middle of writing something. I've ordered a new battery, but until then, I may be spending some time getting apoplectic with the stupid friggin' unreliable machine.
Do not be alarmed if updates are irregular, I'm busy punching the keyboard.
pharyngula | December 2, 2010Those porn sites you've been browsing? They've been slurping in more of your private data than you think. A paper has been published documenting the invasive practices of many websites. They're doing something called history hijacking, using code that grabs your entire browsing history so they can monitor every site you've visited. Cute, huh? There are tools you can use to block this behavior if you're using Firefox, at least.
Several people have written to me about this because of Table 1 on page 9 of the paper. There among the porn and gaming and commercial sites one stands out as unusual.…
pharyngula | September 21, 2010People are always asking me for the source of those nice t-shirts that illustrate how long we've diverged from a given species. I think the name must be hard to remember: they're at evogeneao.com. Now there's a little software widget that will be just as neat-o.
Look up TimeTree, and remember to show it to the kids. This is a page with a simple premise: type in the name of two taxa (it will accept common names, but may give you a list of scientific names to narrow the search), and then it looks them up in the public gene databases and gives you a best estimate of how long ago their last…
pharyngula | August 31, 2010I'd never heard of knol before, but apparently it was Google's attempt at creating a competitor to Wikipedia. Wikipedia has its flaws, but wow, it was revealing to see the alternative: knol is awful.
It was brought to my attention because it is infested with woo. To see how bad it is, compare the answers to this question:
Does god exist? (wiki)
Does god exist? (knol)
The Wikipedia query returns a fairly objective article that lists various arguments that different faiths and philosophies have made. The knol query returns aghastly article by a creationist that actually uses the argument that…
grrlscientist | April 2, 2010tags: Another Housefly, machine, sculpture, gadgets, humor, funny, silly, Arthur Ganson, streaming video
Another Housefly, a creation by Arthur Ganson. Ganson writes: To be honest, I never really liked Housefly because it made too much noise! This is a rethinking of the original mechanism that takes into account more aspects of the fly. The linkage arms which move the base of the spring-wire purposely mimic the front legs of the housefly as she cleans herself.
Here's the original housefly machine that Ganson was improving upon:
pharyngula | February 27, 2010I've been going insane this morning, thinking I might have mysteriously lost my ability to type, or even recognize valid HTML…and I've been seeing really weird stuff everywhere I type on the web.
It looks like the problem is Webkit, the browser I usually use. I updated it this morning, and it seems to have decided that normal spaces aren't good enough anymore, and is inserting non-breaking spaces instead. It's been an infuriatingly difficult problem to track down, because I do most of my composing offline in a text-editor that isn't afflicted with this bug, and it's just when I edit that I…
pharyngula | January 14, 2010If you ever argue with creationists, you know that the Index to Creationist Claims is an incredibly useful site, as is the book version, The Counter Creationism Handbook. Life just got a little sweeter: it is now available as a smartphone app for the blackberry and iPhone (just get into the App Store and search for 'creationist'). Well, sweeter for us; creationists will find themselves a little more readily refuted now.
pharyngula | January 13, 2010RCA (which is not the old and reputable company I remember, but has gone out of business and its name sold to anyone with the right amount of cash) recently announced a device called the Airnergy harvester, which supposedly simply soaks up the RF energy emitted by WiFi devices in the neighborhood and uses it to charge portable batteries. Wow, what an idea…but a moment's thought makes it clear it can't work. My local wireless router simply can't be pumping out that much energy, or it would an awesomely wasteful device, and there can't be that much power floating free in every few cubic inches…
pharyngula | November 28, 2009Woo hoo! Amazon has addressed one of my biggest complaints about the Kindle (other than the evil DRM on the thing): they have added built-in pdf support. Finally, I can just transfer papers directly to the Kindle and get reasonable rendering.
Got a Kindle yourself? Follow the instructions to update your machine.
pharyngula | November 17, 2009It's an announcement for a new video game, and the website is totally deadpan.
I can't find the company "Prayer Works Interactive" on the web, which gives me some hope that this isn't real.
pharyngula | November 10, 2009I had my doubts about this; I got an offer from ASPEX corporation to let people get free scanning electron micrographs of just about anything. They make a desktop SEM, and all you have to do is fill out a form and mail it in with your sample of a dead bug or a microchip or bacon, and presto, within a few weeks they'll have it scanned in and the image available on their website.
I asked them if they knew how many readers I have, and they said no problem, they can handle it.
Huh.
Well, you heard them. Scavenge your trash cans, dig into your local sources of vermin and oddments, and send them in…
pharyngula | July 12, 2009She sounds like a nice person: a zoology student (I was one of those, once! Zoology departments are disappearing everywhere, though), with the hobby of making cuddly, squishy plush beasties of all sorts, especially of lots of invertebrates. I think it's time that the teddy bear hegemony in the world of children's toys be broken — you can start there, and support a science student at the very same time.
pharyngula | November 11, 2008…he uses a Mac laptop. We have something in common!
One curious fact at that link:
Clinton sent a grand total of 2 emails while in the White House - which was two more than Bush.
These people live in a strange and different world than mine.
pharyngula | October 14, 2008
How can I respond to a story about zebrafish, development, and new imaging and visualization techniques? Total incoherent nerdgasm is how.
Keller et al. are using a technique called digital scanned laser light sheet fluorescence microscopy (DSLM) to do fast, high-resolution, 3-D scans through developing embryos over time; using a GFP-histone fusion protein marker, they localize the nucleus of every single cell in the embryo. Some of the geeky specs:
1500x1500 pixel 2-D resolution
12 bits per pixel dynamic range
Imaging speed of 10 million voxels per second
Complete scan of a 1 cubic…
pzminion | August 8, 2008The new Speedo LZR Racer suit, that is. Designed with all the power of science and technology behind it, the LZR Racer is being credited with imparting enhanced, record-breaking athletic performances to its wearers.
.
It was designed using the same technology applied to reducing drag on the Space Shuttle, with the goal of diminishing the friction and skin movement that normally occur during swimming, thus improving overall hydrodynamics. It's a cool story from the scientific perspective, to be sure, but the public reaction since its unveiling in February 08, and now with the Olympic…
pharyngula | January 16, 2008Ahhh…in case you hadn't heard, Apple came out with an new machine yesterday, the MacBook Air. I want. It's one of those superslim portables, with the usual Apple elegance — this would be a perfect travel machine.
Except for the price: a bit less than $2K for the low end model, over $3K for the high end, all solid state model. I think I'll have to wait a few years for the price to drop significantly.
sporte | December 2, 2007Usually, I wait until the end of December to take care of holiday-related shopping and shipping. This year, I've resolved to do better. This year, I'm hoping to ship holiday gifts before Christmas.
Fortunately, my SciBlings have come up with lots of great holiday recommendations to help you share science gifts with those you like and love.
I've compiled some of those suggestions here and I'll keep adding new ones as the month proceeds and people post them.http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/11/get_your_larry_craig_doll.php
Before we indulge the material world though, I'm going to…
pharyngula | December 15, 2006Can you bear the beauty? It's another week's worth of random cephalopod imagery.
pharyngula | December 12, 2006
We can learn from nature:
Inspired by the sleek and efficient propulsion of squid, jellyfish and other cephalopods, a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher has designed a new generation of compact vortex generators that could make it easier for scientists to maneuver and dock underwater vehicles at low speeds and with greater precision.
In addition, the technology — seemingly inspired by the plots of two classic sci-fi films — may soon allow doctors to guide tiny capsules with jet thrusters through the human digestive tract, enabling them to diagnose disease and dispense medications…