Month: May 2007

Interactive touchable tetris board

This is hard for me to explain concisely and well, so I’ll just slap up the image, direct you to the details of construction, and let you marvel at the interactive touch-board LED-based tetris game.

TetrisGame-02-L.jpg

What is this thing? It’s the game of Tetris but played on a device that is composed of 240 buttons. So if you want to move the Tetris block right/left, you simply touch a button left or right of the current piece. To rotate a block you touch a button in one of the top two rows. And to drop a block you touch the bottom row. It’s a hands on Tetris game! Watch:


A few ‘wow’ numbers:

  1. 16 microcontrollers
  2. Total of 256 MIPS
  3. 720 LEDs
  4. 1.5A current draw
  5. 1300 lines of code
  6. 28800 bits being updated per second
  7. 9 people
  8. ? man hours

The full write-up is extensive and very interesting. There are pictures of the 2×2 board that is the basis for the entire system. But as awesome as it would be to have this, their estimate for pricing is around $1500. I believe that’s a touch more than the wife would let me spend.

[tags]Awesome touch-reactive tetris board game[/tags]

New thought on the creation of the great pyramids

I was just discussing at work today with a colleague the topic of the construction of the great pyramids. I posted on the site here last year a bit about new thinking on the process, and today found another article about possible casting work done in the creation of the pyramids.

The widely accepted theory-that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps-had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes.

According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water.

Continue reading “New thought on the creation of the great pyramids”

Console sales at 6 months

Some clever person has put together a chart showing sales figures for the first six months for recent consoles. The numbers are rather interesting, I think, and suggest last year’s claims about the Wii being a certain-to-fail doom and downfall plan for Nintendo were off base. Of course, I also think everyone who pays attention to the gaming market already realize that the Wii is beating up on everything else out there except for the Nintendo DS, and that last year’s predictions of Nintendo’s death were very wrong.

firstsixmonths.jpgTo steal a term coined by Kotaku, I put together the above charticle juxtaposing the first six month console sales of Wii, 360, PS3, PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. First, the Wii has sold better than the mighty PS2 after the first six months. Amazingly, both the PS3 and 360 sold worse than the GameCube for the same period (!). Cumulative first six month totals in units sold are as follows:

  1. Wii (2,470,000)
  2. PS2 (2,200,000)
  3. Xbox (1,900,000)
  4. GameCube (1,540,000)
  5. Xbox 360 (1,384,000)
  6. PS3 (1,271,000)


The article doesn’t specify initially that these are measures of US sales, but later verbiage in the article makes me think that’s the message. I’m guessing Sony isn’t that happy with these numbers, given that the PlayStation 3 sold around 81,000 consoles last month, putting them way behind Nintendo and Microsoft.

[tags]Recent console sales for first six months[/tags]

Starcraft II announced

Well, since every gaming site in the universe is covering it, and since I claim to be a gamer, I suppose I need to pass on the news that Starcraft II has finally been announced by Blizzard. I believe that at this point, this is news to exactly no one. Blizzard promises big gaming announcement at a big Korean gaming event, the Starcraft2.com website mysteriously got an update recently to point it to something spoooooky at Blizzard’s main domain, and it’s only been an Internet-eternity since the original came out. I’ll admit the screenies look mighty-purty, but even though I enjoy real-time strategy games, I just found the original to be kinda “m3h” for me. But for those of you who are gamers and somehow missed the announcement, consider yourself now caught up.

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime says, “With StarCraft II, we’ll be able to do everything we wanted to do with the original StarCraft and more … We recognize that expectations are high following the long-running popularity of the original game, but we plan to meet those expectations and deliver an engaging, action-packed, competitive experience that StarCraft players and strategy gamers worldwide will enjoy.” Meanwhile, IGN’s man in Korea, Charles Onyett says, “SC2 looks, at least visually, strikingly similar to SC1 – both in unit and map designs.”

[tags]Blizzard finally announces Starcraft II[/tags]

Shirt with redacted number

This is a gift that really few folks currently would understand outside the geek community, but I want it. The motion picture industry has been aggressively targetting bloggers and other manner of web site operators who have published the secret magic numbers needed to allow otherwise unauthorized software and hardware to decode and display high definition video from HD-DVDs. Of course, their actions have made the number spread more quickly than it probably would have otherwise. Since I am a follower of the law, I will not publish the number here. However, I would like to link to this cool shirt that ThinkGeek has for sale and mention to my viewers that this would make a great gift for me.

magic_numbers.jpg

Meeting notes from a recent hypothetical meeting in the AACS-LA* office.

Lessons Learned:

  1. When trying to keep a secret, serving people legal notice re: its existence slightly less than effective. Possibly deploy ninjas next time?
  2. Members of online communities object to posts being removed. Ask owners of affected sites to replace posts with smiley face emoticons.
  3. Allowing lawyers to create public relations policy = bad idea.
  4. “Cease and Desist” kinda does the opposite.

Action items:

  1. See what other numbers we can get. Check on availability of 0 and 1 as vital part of circumvention technology.
  2. DMCA not working: investigate banning computers?
  3. Appeal to the kids. Introduce “Ernie the Encryption Key!”
  4. Expire the key. They can’t possibly crack it again, can they?

No, I won’t tell you what the number is that the motion picture industry is trying to protect. I do think option 1 under the Lessons Learned will serve the company well in the future, though – don’t you?

[tags]Perfect gift for the geek in your life, The shirt the motion picture industry doesn’t want you to have[/tags]

Kantor on Brambleton Veterinary Hospital

I’m not normally one who links to other sites and articles just to give links, but I really can’t help but respond to Andrew Kantor’s request for links back to his story on poor service and Brambleton Veterinary Hospital nor his follow-up article from the day after. And when he has even more troubles with a veterinarian from the hospital and has to write more, well, I just have to let both my readers know about it.

If you live in Roanoke, Virginia, I strongly urge you to avoid the Brambleton Veterinary Hospital in Southwest Roanoke County. The staff there is incredibly unprofessional, and it makes me worry about the quality of care the animals receive.

(If you don’t live in Southwest Virginia, ignore this post. Or, if you’re feeling kindly, link to it. That’ll push it up on Google. 🙂

We have been customers of Brambleton Veterinary Hospital for more than two years with our three dogs and two cats. We’ve always paid our bills immediately and never had a problem. We’ve also brought in injured strays to them, as well as animals we’ve fostered for the local SPCA.

. . .

We have been customers of Brambleton Veterinary Hospital for more than two years with our three dogs and two cats. We’ve always paid our bills immediately and never had a problem. We’ve also brought in injured strays to them, as well as animals we’ve fostered for the local SPCA.

So there you have it. A recommendation on which veterinary hospital to avoid.

[tags]Kantor’s troubles with Brambleton Veterinary Hospital[/tags]

The IT crowd coming to US television

Last year, I downloaded the entire &ldquot;The IT Crows&rdquot; British television show via BitTorrent and watched it after reading numerous recommendations for the show from the various geek sites I visit. Tonight, while catching up on my boingboing reading, I find that the show is coming to the US market on NBC this fall. If you are a geek and haven’t seen this show, you really need to watch it. If you aren’t a geek but ever have to deal with tech support, you might also enjoy the show.

The struggling NBC network is turning to science fiction this fall in a bid to lift ratings and appease advertisers and investors, announcing several new dramas whose story lines range from robotics to time travel.

. . .

Later in the year, NBC will roll out &ldquot;The Lipstick Jungle,&rdquot; based on a best-selling book by &ldquot;Sex and the City&rdquot; writer Candace Bushnell. It will also introduce the &ldquot;IT Crowd,&rdquot; a comedy about misunderstood techies, during the 2007-08 season.

The show is well worth watching. I’ll be watching the US released episodes for sure, even though I’ve already seen all the British versions. (via boingboing)

[tags]The IT crowd coming to US television market, Geek TV show on NBC this fall[/tags]