Offbeat posts

I hang out with an awful lot of comic book dorks, and many of them have been cowering in fear since Disney’s fateful acquisition of Marvel, wondering what impact The Mouse will have on their favourite superheroes. Generally, I’ve told them not to worry – Warner Bros has owned DC for, what, like, thirty years, and if you ask me, that’s been nothing but good news for Dr. Bruce Batman and Friends. But I digress. Check this bizness out, as it’s the first Disney/Marvel tie-in I’ve seen since the acquisition, and it’s geek chic as hell. Do I really need to explain it? It’s Marvel heroes, done up TRON-style….

I am so frequently reminded of how I should totally have stuck with science a little more, if even to send little pieces of mobile tech into space as a hobby. Hindsight is always 20/20. Oh well. Lucky for me, we have father-son teams like this posting videos of their own adventures to Vimeo, that I might live vicariously through their eyes and know the joys of science for myself. After a solid eight months of research, the aforementioned father and son (alright, so really just the father – but that kid is the opposite of uncute, regardless) released a weather balloon, HD video camera and iPhone in tow,…

Niklas Roy’s workshop has a large window right in front. After getting fed up of passersby peering in, he decided to take action. In a move that would make Mark Zuckerberg’s head explode, Roy came up with a privacy scheme so nerdy and so unique that he’ll almost certainly win the Techi Nerdiest Solution To An Everyday Problem award. If the award existed. Or even Techi awards existed. Niklas’ may have been short on curtains and tall on tech, or he may just have been looking for a creative approach. Either way, this is awesome. I won’t ruin it for you, but the small piece of curtain uses robotics to move along…

No, this isn’t a terrorist threat. Atomic Tom, a New York based band was looking for a little exposure, and a train carriage full of commuters is the perfect captive audience. After having their instruments stolen, the boys turned to technology for an impromptu mobile gig. Using their iPhones as instruments, the band rocked out to a small crowd of bewildered travelers. “I saw Atomic Tom perform on the B train today… at first i thought they were going to bomb the train, but then they started playing and i was like ‘i love new york!’ liked them so much, i asked a stranger for the band name.” said Brittany…

While their story is one of bravery and heroism and all that good stuff (I promise I’m being sincere), everyone and their dog is trying to get a piece of the trapped Chilean miners pie, even Big Steve, who has donated to each of the miners ‘a latest iPod [sic]‘, as reported by Reuters. By ‘a latest’, I’m gonna assume a 32-gig Touch, which is pretty rad, just for sitting in a cave for 69 days. Then again, the miners have also been gifted $10000 each, trips around the world, movie deals, and tickets to sporting events, among other things. Steve’s offering seems more like a quick shot to stay in the public consciousness…

Six Slovenian volunteers have been undergoing a bizarre test: being punched in the arm over, and over, and over, and over again by a robot. A researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Borut PovÅ¡e, has somehow coerced six of his colleagues to agree to let an industrial robot repeatedly sock them in the arm, in an effort to discover the threshold of robot power. Honestly, had I known this is the kind of stuff I could be doing with my life, I’d have paid more attention in science class. “Even robots designed to Asimov’s laws can collide with people. We are trying to make sure that when they do, the collision…

Now ‘ears one for the books – a large padded earpiece that attaches directly to your iPhone. You’ll look ear-ily trendy with one of these on your phone, and your delicate ear holes will be saved from wear and tear. Designer Robert Potter created his Earos concept in response to the minimalist approach to headsets by modern phone manufacturers. While this seems a bulky addition to the iPhone, it i true that Apple didn’t give much thought to comfort in their design process. Thanks Robert, this will be a ‘noise’ addition to my mobile experience!…

All I can say is that I definitely paid too much for my Mac Pro. One of the fellas at One Block Off the Grid was having trouble running AfterEffects on his Mac. It was time for a new machine. So, after purchasing 800 bucks worth of parts on Amazon, he decided to assemble them not in a PC case, but in the very box they came in. The result is a laugh-worthy (and ugly as hell (and totally awesome)) assemblage that needs to be basically hotwired just to turn on. I don’t think there’s ever been a machine more worthy of the ‘Hackintosh’ name. High five, guys….

This will be the dumbest thing you’ll read all day: Seems that Brits are using their iPhones to cheat hedge mazes. No, really. Consider the maze at Longleat Safari Park, which is apparently the world’s biggest, boasting two miles of paths and constructed of 16000 seven-foot-high yew trees. On average, a visitor takes about 90 minutes to wander their way out, mumbling frustrated, NSFW epithets under their breath all the while. But apparently, that’s no longer the case. Upon taking a stroll through the maze (I wonder if he does that a lot… I wonder if he gets bored), manager Tim Bentley has noticed…

Coming down the pipe from XKCD is this utterly brilliant map of the state of social networking today. Click the link for the giant one. “Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health,” explains the map. A talking map. “This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there.” Honestly, there’s nothing to say that the map can’t say for itself. “[the map] involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random…