Category Archives: Tech

Air Guitard

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I have no idea why people are still making news about air guitar, but since it’s my duty to report it, here we go.

Apparently the last air guitar innovation I mentioned just isn’t enough for air guitar maniacs. Nope, in fact someone else has developed an entirely new dorky way to pretend to play guitar.  It’s a shirt with sensors in it that detect your talentless windmilling and convert the pathetic noodly flagellation into hugely rad power chords so you can totally shred to your hearts content.  Interestingly, the technology only works if they imbed it into a shirt that has “I’m a huge dork” printed on the front.

Here you go, the press release about the most rockingest “textile-based interface” evar.  A clip:

“Led by engineer Dr Richard Helmer a team of researchers at CSIRO Textiles and Fibre Technology in Geelong has created a ‘wearable instrument shirt’ (WIS) which enables users to play an ‘air guitar’ simply by moving one arm to pick chords and the other to strum the imaginary instrument’s strings. “

Yep, that’s Dr Richard “The Hammer” Helmer dropping it down hard at the textile lab.

Wilson’s Photo Blog

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Wilson wrote another post on his photography blog yesterday, this one is about lighting and stuff. I’m enjoying the posts a lot, they are funny and informative even though I can’t keep up technically to the tips.  His bit about Cindy is particularly funny, more so if you know her as I do.

Go check it out and learn how to take Matrix-style ninja shots.

Robert Wilson Photography

A website to smash all of your dreams of stardom

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We all know you sing in the shower, and in the car when you are alone. It’s ok, don’t worry. As long as you sing alone there’s no trouble. The problem starts when you think you want to sing for other people….. That’s my problem anyway. It seems that if I have a beer or two I think it’s a great idea to pick up a guitar and start singing and playing. The problem has always been that I’m not good at it. I have breezily discounted that as a result of being tone deaf. I was safe thinking, I’m bad at singing but I have a reason, like a doctor’s note. Anyway, I saw this little online test for tone-deafness and it just ruined my whole day.

It’s not short (maybe 6min), but it’s pretty cool. I finished the test with 70% which means I’m actually not tone deaf at all, really. It’s quite hard actually, it will have you second guessing yourself. I think you would do well to use headphones while taking it (I did not).

Check it out for yourself, just don’t cry like I did.

I saw this first on LifeHacker.

Bloglines Update

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Bloglines turned on a very nice update today. I use Bloglines every day, it’s the only website I visit, almost. The new features rock. I just love that site. I know I can’t seem to get any of you people to try it out, but I find it a much better way to keep up with web things…. check it out. The dynamic left panel updates make it even more specialicious.  The only problem I have had so far is the keyboard shortcut I use the most (I never use any of the other ones) doesn’t seem to work any more:  “A”.  It’s still awesome tho.
I got your “bloglines freedbacking” right here….

Random Flash Game

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The simplest of all Flash games.  Draw a line that represents a hill, then click play and watch the little guy slide down the hill on a toboggan, usually to his death.  I’m not sure why this game is so fun.  Really it shouldn’t be fun at all, but somehow it really is.  There’s a limit to the amount of punishment the little guy can take, so you have to be careful to not build up too much speed.  Anyway, there you go, click away…