Incredibly cool new safety feature for power tools, it’s a system that can detect when a saw blade is cutting through something that isn’t wood, such as say, the very digits you are using to push the wood through the saw. You get away with a nick instead of a stump. Check out the videos of this thing in action, it’s awesome. They even have slow motion videos. The future products also look as impressive.

It’s proof that we really need more geek woodworkers out there to think of these things, it’s a brilliant use of simple technology to save important fingers (not that there are any unimportant ones).

High School Shop teachers will give this one-and-a-half thumbs up for sure. But really, the big winners here are the hot dogs used to test this thing.

This is a good one.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you decide one day that current amusement park technology no longer amuses you. It could happen I suppose. 80mph roller coasters that put you through 2 or 3 times the Earth’s gravity become so passé after a while. I mean you could almost sleep on some of these things.

So, along comes the ROBOCOASTER to help shake you out of your ennui. Literally. Some crazy person designed this thing using what looks like an automotive assembly line robotic arm with a couple of chairs bolted onto it. This maniacal Terminator shakes the living crap out of you in every direction, essentially turning your insides into warm slurry which you are sure to eject as soon as this thing stops. It looks just like some enraged machine flinging hapless meatbags in The Matrix, I can’t imagine paying to try it. Some high points from the product web site; 4.9 meters per second maximum speed, it’s connected to the Internet (so some hacker punk can literally have his way with you) and it runs Windows, oh great. That’s just begging for a “blue screen of death” or “crash” joke, which is sadly, far too easy.

Check out the videos of the thing in action, they don’t actually show anybody walking away from the ride, although they do show a poor bugger getting into a wheelchair after one ride. I can only hope he was in the wheelchair before the ride.

Ok, this is geeky, I will admit, but it also rocks and I think anybody would agree that it is about the coolest thing in the world. It is also the coolest thing about the world, Google Earth (ooh, look at the butter-smooth segue, damn I’m good). If you haven’t seen this thing yet run, don’t walk to the website and try it out before they come to their senses and charge for it. Actually they do charge for the advanced services, but you get the idea. It is not only beautiful to look at, it’s a complete blast to play with and gives me a god-like sense of power. It’s a completely healthy pastime.

Basically it’s a view of the Earth from space, which you can dive right down into, anywhere you want. You just grab it and spin it. It’s incredibly good use of technology, the pages stream down as you go, depending on what you look at. You can of course search for a location, add favourite places, get directions, and a whole bunch more.

It brings certain landmarks into view that are quite shocking, really. I had no idea this was visible from space, when looking at our house, for instance:

Well this is of particular interest to us at the moment, bear with me for a moment. Quinn is resisting our best efforts to toilet train him; it seems that he is an efficiency expert and has determined that it takes far less time to just crap his pants than it does to actually tell us he is about to do so and go to the bathroom. It’s hard to argue with his logic, his powerpoint slides were compelling, 21% more playtime his way. Even my spreadsheets showing that diaper expenditures would be reduced by 50% didn’t help. Again, his rebuttal was quite logical in that those expenses come from my budget and really don’t affect his bottom (line).

Anyway, maybe this little potty tweak would assist us in getting him to see things our way. In fact it helps everybody see things better, since it’s a transparent potty. Why this was a compelling potty modification, I still have no idea.

Link to Gizmodo

In Wired today.

Check it out.

One day energy will get cheap enough so that I can waste it at my current rate and not worry as much.

Maybe I’m part of the problem?

Ok, I had a little fit there for most of yesterday. I was having one of my by-now-familiar rants about consumer grade DSL routers, ran out last night and bought another one, when all along it turned out to be a (ahem) billing issue with the ISP. Now it wasn’t a very good way to handle it on their part, but I can appreciate how from their perspective I was non-responsive.

Anyway, we’re back now, and I’m a little poorer for the whole thing. Couldn’t resist getting a new rig for the office PC at home. Verry nice. And I know I’m a geek, but if you can’t take pride in your work, why bother?

It’s like Pimp My Ride for geeks.