What's Next 10/12/2015

What's Next: A quick look into future technology news

Memristors and or 3d Xpoint Memory:

It's hard to believe how closely associated the tech companies are with their biggest competitors. HP and Intel both claim to have new memory tech that is 1000x faster than current gadgets. but neither has produced prototypes yet. I guess we will just have to wait.

New/Old Video Games

Dhewm3 is a modern revival for fans of the original dhewm3, it utilizes the original game content while updating and fixing the engine, to fix bugs and use up to date drivers and architectures.

How'd he do that?

If you're into CNC the way that I am, you might be wondering how he did that. That's my question after this video..

Random Instructables 10/2/15

Instructables of the Day:

Turn a Bandsaw into a cutoff saw

This instructable is unfortunately mostly a video. he builds an aluminum pivot to turn his bandsaw into a cut-off band saw. Its a nice project made out of Shiny Aluminum :)

Cross hole drilling in round stock:

I know what your thinking, this is dead simple. It's actually not at all. Many times something that seems simple becomes incredibly hard when you need it to be precise.

I once had a method for achieving this, my material had nice straight lines down the length.  after I drilled a dozen or so holes I realized. Those nice straight lines twisted about 20 degrees along the length, Oops!

Numato Opsis: FPGA-based open video platform

This board seemed mighty expensive to me ($349) until I started looking at their comparisons, and realized I'm not in the target market (though if you are I would be happy to help install such a thing).

This board uses an FPGA to process and transcode newer digital signals (HDMI and Displayport) to other types of signals such as outputting to USB or multiple outputs.

Its an interesting (and long overdue if you ask me) setup.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/numato-lab/opsis

Distracted ...

I got a bit distracted last night..
Looking at this..

"McLaren F1 LM" by robad0b - http://www.flickr.com/photos/robadob/195998261/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McLaren_F1_LM.jpg#/media/File:McLaren_F1_LM.jpg

The Mclaren F1, often reviewed by extremely Lucky Englishmen, employing primarily superlatives and words ending in "est". It is my favorite car. Even after all these years. I doubt I will ever even see one in person, let alone touch or drive one. But it seems the ultimate and final word to answer the question  "what should a fast car be?". Additionally it won the 24hrs at Le Man race without breaking a sweat. Even though it recently lost many of it's long held records, the new cars just don't really seem to be better.

The Solar System to scale

This is an illuminating film. Our place is So So small..



To Scale: The Solar System from Wylie Overstreet on Vimeo.

I once helped my little sister with a project and we did this, we got the foam planet set and we strung them along a 29 ft string. Then we made a poster where each planet was a dot or circle approximating it's diameter (the sun was a 6ft wide circle so it was only shown as an arc on one border of the poster, the earth was a simple dot from a pen, barely even ranked, I think jupiter was 1.25in).

I wish I could have been in class when she showed that project.

This and This... Cool New Tech and Old Movies

Ok not so Old...
This

"Sandia Labs engineers create 'self-guided' bullet"

Is REALLY cool!!... 

But it reminds me of this...

I just hope it kills its victims, can you imagine having circuit board shrapnel in your body...but I guess killing people is the point...

Low Buck Internet Radio

Makezine posted a video showing how to mate a USB sound card with a cheap WIFI router, a little open source software and this combination becomes a cheap and easy internet radio. No computer required (for the audio output).

Heck add a LCD and a few buttons and there would be no need for a computer anywhere in this setup. But I guess that would make it more like the cost of the radios he shows at the start of the video...

Anyone wanna donate the supplies so I can try this (to get my Christianrock.net fix in the kitchen or outside for example)

R/C Wipeout

As usual this is something I've often wanted to build. But someone beat me to it with a couple of really cool twists.

I've always wanted to build an remote control car with a camera mounted on top. But I never thought to build a cardboard clone of a Wipeout (video racing game) track to race the car on. And I never thought to hook up the controls to an arcade style cockpit and drivers seat. This is genius!

Make sure you don't miss the video! (love the music)

I think maybe I should find an art grant somewhere and really start building things...

Why we should keep going to space

This video was just posted on Make: today.

This demonstrates how little we know about the universe and how much going to space teaches us.

It may seem uselessly stupid to study alka seltzer in micro-gravity. But many things that seemed pointless to study at the time ended up being useful.

It looks like space exploration (as we have known it in the past) is mostly dead in America and around the world. But I still believe there are many benefits to a vibrant space program.