Persons Develop Search Results

Wake-Skate: Winch Madness

Amazing footage shot of some highly skilled wakeboarders, entitled "Winch Madness". According to Wikipedia, Wakeskate winching involves "an engine, spool, rope, handle, frame, and some sort of simple transmission. The person being towed walks (or swims) away from the winch and pulls out all of the rope." When the winch lets loose, the boarder can go 15-25 mph.

How To: Perform a great rope escape magic trick

Grab a friend and get ready to perform some magic! The Great Rope Escape is sure to amaze your audience! You will need a rope (two pieces, each roughly 3 feet long). Sometimes we use materials that require adult supervision... like scissors so make sure you have friends and family around whenever you do magic tricks.

How To: Install blown-in insulation

Have you ever felt cold in your older home, even with the heat cranked? Ever feel drafts that seem to come from nowhere? And conversely, in the summer, is your home an oven? Many older houses are improperly insulated, if there is any insulation at all. This can have a large impact on your heating and cooling bills. Loose-fill insulation can be blown into your walls and attic to help increase the efficiency of your house, significantly decreasing your heating and cooling expenses.

News: Kim Dotcom Lashes Out Against “Corrupt” US Government

The US judge handling the Megaupload case noted today that it may never be tried due to a procedural error, a comment that has sparked the anger of Megaupload’s founder. Kim Dotcom is furious with the US Government for destroying his businesses and rendering hundreds of people unemployed. According to Dotcom the case is the result of “corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood.”

Font-Face: Design a Typeface with Your Mug

If you've ever used a font editing program to create a font, you know that one generally shapes the various forms by arranging points on a screen with a mouse. But what if those points were controlled by something other than fine motor skills? Andy Clymer of high profile type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones was interested in exploring alternative methods for how a typeface is developed; hence, "font-face" was born. Font-face employs facial recognition to control the design parameters of a font....

News: Police Use iPhones to ID Suspects via Face, Iris and Fingerprint Scans

Some cops already have the ability to extract data from your cell phone using handheld forensic devices, but soon police officers will have a new mobile data collection toy to play with—an Apple iPhone. Actually, it's an iPhone-based device that connects directly to the back of an iPhone, which is designed to give law enforcement an accurate and immediate identification of a suspect based on their facial features, fingerprints and even their eyes.

Fresh Folds: Turtle Evolution

Last week I found the time to work on my own origami designs again. The basic turtle from a few weeks ago developed: From the basic turtle on the left (in darker green) I derived not one but two different turtles (the yellow and the one in bright green). As you might see on the pictures in the gallery the new turtles are both prototype and folded a little unclean.

News: Print Yourself in 3D

Since the early genesis of the brilliant Microsoft Kinect hack, inventive applications have been popping up nonstop. One of the most fascinating projects to surface recently falls within the realm of 3D printing. "Fabricate Yourself"—a hack presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference in January—allows users to pose in front of an Xbox Kinect, which then converts a captured image into a 3D printable file. What does this mean exactly? Think Han Solo trapped in carbon...

News: Weston Price Foundation

The Weston Price Foundation is the gold standard for truly good nutrition. Weston Price was a dentist practicing in the 1930s who over the course of many summers visited fourteen different native groups and correlated the health of their teeth to what they were eating. He consistently found that as long as the people ate their traditional whole foods diet, their teeth (and the rest of their bodies) were healthy. When they started eating Westernized foods their dental and overall health deteri...

News: Minority Report, Kinect-style

Here's another cool hack using the Kinect, albeit one beyond the reach of most of us. Some students, staff, and professors at MIT have developed "hand detection" software using the Kinect's motion sensor. Below is a demonstration of this software. It recalls Tom Cruise's iconic scenes from the movie Minority Report.

News: Can Lying Make You a Better Person?

Psychology Today's Elizabeth Svoboda presents an interesting argument on the merits of no holds barred truth telling versus the social sensitivity involved in telling little white lies. Svoboda poses that while truth tellers may rest easy at night, brutal honesty can have negative emotional repercussions for others.

News: The Future of Pancakes

Here's another latest in robotics: researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have developed a robot that flips pancakes. The most interesting aspect of the project is the use of kinesthetic teaching, in which the user "trains" the robot by example. The user grasps the robot's limb, and guides it through the motions the user would like it to adopt. This bot takes about 50 trials to get it, but in the end succeeds. Previously, I Want a Robo-Chef in My Kitchen.

News: It Ain't the Ball, It's the Altitude. Duhhh....

I guess it takes the designer to explain, but it's the altitude that's affecting the unpredictable movement on the ball, not the ball itself. Defending himself, he says the ball's been around since December and no one's complained until now. I know it's a problem in Jo'Burg and Nelspruit (highest venue in WC history). But Cape Town's at sea level, does anyone know if the problem exists there?

How To: Do pass and move soccer drills for ball control

This UEFA Training Ground video helps develop your ability to pass and move the ball to fellow soccer teammates. Although it seems quite basic, proper passing in heated game situations is a nice skill to have and to fall back on if a recently learned soccer trick suddenly escapes you're caught between a rock and a pushy defender.

News: Pentagon Searches for Perfect Body Extraction Bot

Rescuing wounded soldiers in a war zone is extremely dangerous. Again, (previous entry, Futuristic Warefare), the Pentagon turns to scifi technology and robotics for the answer. The current solution is to develop robots that perform as "combat casualty extraction system[s].” And not just one robot to go in and save the day, but an "autonomous EMS crew, complete with an unmanned ambulance and robodocs, who can aid fallen troops 'with minimal intervention by medic or other first responder opera...

How To: Define a site using PHP pages in Dreamweaver 9

As it ships, Dreamweaver typically has more built-in behaviors for ASP and Cold Fusion than it does for PHP. Still, developers are quickly writing PHP extensions to make Dreamweaver quite a robust tool for developing PHP/MySQL Web Applications. In this Dreamweaver 9 video tutorial you will learn how to define a site to use PHP pages. Make sure to hit "play tutorial" in the top left corner of the video to start the video. There is no sound, so you'll need to watch the pop-up directions. Define...