As if wakeboarding downstream wasn’t risky enough, Red Bull wake-boarders Robert Pokovec & Dominik Hernler decided to strap themselves to an angry winch and zap themselves upstream at pace.
Filmed in Slovenia in the Bled Gorge and the Soca River, watching these guys carving up the freezing upstream currents is something to behold.
Check it out below. Enjoy.
Sketchbots is kinda cool. Basically, its Google at it again, making another time wasting browser based app that lets you feed into your mugshot, where by through some cleverness, your pic is transformed into a sketch of well, you.
Submit to Google and the real magic happens. Your likeness is then re-sketched by a little robot in the Science Museum in London, and you get to watch it happen live. How much of a buzz is that?
My pic looks freaking weird, but that maybe because I’m wearing a hat and headphones. It doesn’t explain the frown though. Damn you Google, why couldn’t you make me look happier! Shakes fist at sky.
People have been saying for sometime now that cell phones aren’t all that good for us. Convenient, hell yes, but good for us, probably not. It has to do with the radio frequency radiation they give off, and as we put the devices to the side of our heads, a lot of that radiation is being soaked up by our melons.
While there’s no concrete proof that we’re doing ourselves any harm, its common sense that radio frequency radiation can’t be all that good for us. If it was, doctors would be proscribing us regular doses of the stuff.
Now some clever folks by the name of Tawkon have come out with an app that alerts users when exposure levels of RF radiation is high, encouraging you to either consider using a Bluetooth headset or continuing the conversation in an area with better reception (Bad reception apparently makes RF radiation worse).
From the Wired article:
Complicating things, actual radiation output and exposure can be subject to a wide range of variables including the distance the device is held from the head, voice vs. data, distance from the cell tower, signal strength and even carrier.
For parents, Cell Phone RF radiation is something that may be of more concern than personal use because kids are using cellular devices more than ever — certainly more than most of us ever did at a young age.
SAR limits have been established based on adult use, but kids have smaller bodies and thinner skulls; it’s not a stretch to suppose that they may be more susceptible to any possible negative effects of cell pone radiation, especially when they hold a device right up to their head and use it obsessively. Kids’ usage patterns may be different than adults and they may spend more time in malls or buildings where signal strength isn’t as good (leading to higher radiation output).
Enter Tawkon. I’ve just installed it and I’ll be quite interested to see what sort of damage I’m doing to my noggin so watch this space.
If you want to read more, hop on over to the Wired article here or click on the image above. Or just visit the Google app store and download it for free.
4. How the death ray invented radar
As a bit of a World War 2 buff, I knew how the early development and deployment of radar along Britain’s coast helped give early warning of the hoardes of German Bombers that were sent across the English Channel in 1940. The home side were able to get their fighters up in time to shoot enough of the enemy down that Hitler in the end, shelved his invasion plans of the U.K for good. Thats a good thing really after all, I might be speaking German now. Nothing against you guys, I just like English better. Plus that era in Germany’s past really wasn’t one of its best, but let’s not get into that.
What I didn’t know is that the technology for radar came out of trying to (unsuccessfully) develop a death ray, or a weapon that comprised of a particle beam or electromagnetic weapon that could either fry an enemy pilot in the cockpit, detonate a plane’s bombs, or incinerate an aircraft as it flew overhead. Pleasant stuff right?
However the power or energy to develop such a weapon certainly didn’t exist at that time in 1930′s England. I’m not even sure that the power to make a ray gun even exists today. However never ones to give up, the scientists on the project found that by bouncing radio waves off incoming aircraft, then collecting the returning signals, a skilled operator could gather the range, height and speed of an incoming craft.
Hey presto, radar was born.
From the io9 article:
They called their invention RDF (Radio Detection Finding), or what the Americans would later call radar (RAdio Detection and Ranging) — a breakthrough that forever changed the nature of air warfare, and eventually, the course of World War II.
Radar proved to be an indispensable element of defense during the Battle of Britain in which Nazi bombers relentlessly attacked the U.K. in the summer and autumn months of 1940. By the end of their failed campaign, Germany had lost 1,184 planes to enemy action — nearly half of their entire fleet. Unable to establish air superiority, Hitler canceled his landing invasion plans and instead set his sights on Russia.
So not so great news for Russia, but we all know how that turned out in the end.
To learn more and back up the old adage that necessity is the mother of all invention, hop on over to the io9 article here, or click on the bad ass death ray image above. Today’s interesting.
5. The Flying Star Wars Speeder Bike!
That scene in Star Wars (IV: A New Hope) where Luke is in his hovering speeder craft is one of the most memorable for me. As a kid, I honestly believed that my first car would be something like that, a clapped out craft that didn’t need wheels, relying on anti-gravity technology to get me from A to B. Oh disappointment you cruel maiden. Still, it looks like the tech might be right around the corner.
From the Gizmodo article:
Developed by Aerofex in Manhattan Beach, California, the flying bike doesn’t use anti-gravity devices but powerful fans and a special control scheme that allows anyone to drive it without any training whatsoever. And it works great. Heck, it works beautifully.
The bike, which was demonstrated in the Mojave Desert, can now go up to 30mph (48 km/h) and go as high as 15 feet (4.5 meters).
Of course, the military are interested which means the rest of us might have to wait a little longer for our hover bikes and cars, still its nice to see that science is finally catching up with my lofty childhood expectations.
Check out the link here from Gizmodo to learn more, or click the image above. Today’s awesome.
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