Every nerd’s favourite webcomic was extra nerdy today, April Fool’s Day… (hit the pix link for full-sized) I need to view the source and figure out how Randall managed to emulate a fricking terminal on xkcd, but mad props nonetheless. ***bonus points for the lame “top command” joke***

Sunday Funday…hillbilly style: Trucking cow poo with D-Rock. Outcome: not-so shitty.

+1 eggroll - 1 M$ +1 creative plating + 100 deliciousness

Unfortunately, said world from the title is the world in the palm of your hands. Long story short, the DS is going to drop some sweet glasses-free 3D on yall suckaz. But don’t take my word from it… TFA from PCW:

Imagine picking up a Nintendo DS and playing games in 3D without the clunky, dork-tastic glasses. Nintendo says a handheld gaming device that’ll do just that will launch in Japan before the end of March 2011, and that it’ll reveal its so-called “Nintendo 3DS” to the world for the first time at E3 2010 this summer. But wait–3D without the funky eyewear? How does that work? Like those tricky picture perception puzzles, where you have to “relax” your eyes to see the mathematically embedded 3D picture? Or like the laser heads-up-displays that project an imagine onto your retina? Or how about actual head jacks, like the metal prongs plunged through occipital bones in The Matrix?

Matrix reference in aught-10. Poorly played, PC World. They continue… > Speculation aside, let’s assume Nintendo’s got the 3D part down pat, and that it’ll be at least as persuasive as the technology in the video above. The real question’s this: Will gamers buy a so-called “Nintendo 3DS” on the merits of 3D alone? Ask that question in a broader sense, “Is anyone really interested in 3D?” and the answer’s “No one knows.” The technology’s all hype and punditry to date, a public relations push by technology vendors eager to sell pricey versions of existing view-screen technology with a slight visual twist. Whatever, naysayers. 3D is awesome, and since it is Nintendo, it will be incredibly playable, and it will sell very well. Without any doubt. I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve already gone on record saying that Richard Branson is my hero. In a ‘suck it, NASA’ move, Branson managed to take another step towards privatising space travel, by launching the shit out of SpaceShipTwo via a piggy-backed flight. Per wired.com…

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made its first captive carry flight early this morning at the Mojave Air and Space Port. SpaceShipTwo, which was christened the VSS Enterprise at its unveiling in December, is being carried by WhiteKnightTwo on its first test flight. According to Aviation Week, SpaceShipTwo has been undergoing ground testing with WhiteKnightTwo recently, but this is the first time the two aircraft have left the ground. SpaceShipTwo is expected to go through a similar flight test program as its much smaller predecessor, SpaceShipOne, but with much more rigorous and wider ranging evaluations in order to certify the vehicle for public use. During SpaceShipOne’s development, two captive carries were followed by several glide tests where the space ship is released from several different altitudes to evaluate its flight characteristics. After glide flights, the flight test team at Scaled moved on to powered flight, eventually culminating with the first flight into space on June 21, 2004. WhiteKnightTwo made its first flight on December 21, 2008 with test pilot Peter Siebold at the controls. At Oshkosh, we caught up with Siebold and got a first hand account of what it is like to fly the 140 foot wingspan, twin fuselaged behemoth that carries SpaceShipTwo. Virgin Galactic has not set a date for commercial space flights, but has said passenger flights would not happen before 2011 at the earliest. According to the company, once glide flights are complete, the team will progress through subsonic powered flights, supersonic powered flights, and finally suborbital space flights. It will then undergo a lengthy certification process with the Federal Aviation Administration before launching the first commercial passenger space flights.

Seaplane was awesome…this is tubular. Perhaps more things that have been traditionally government mainstays should be tackled by bad-ass proprietors. FOR THE WIN.

though not technically an original, this merges an established meme with an up-and-coming meme

Let me clear the air before this one. There are four things to know about me. In no particular order… 1) I love humanoid robots. 2) I love androids. 3) I love drawing humanoid robots…and 4) I love Android OS. Now that that is out of the way, let me say that this post doesn’t pertain to any of those four, for better or for worse. This post serves to shed some light on some custom robotic applications. As always though, FTW. While I am holding it down on Arduino and Lego Mindstorm front, there are, quite thankfully, people utilizing robotics to improve procedures in real situations. Nothing is better than robots, lasers, and gadgetry…unless it falls into another field dear to my heart. Quality assurance. I should trade in my twin monitors in for one of these bad boys: Now that looks like some precision automation exemplified. So the gist of my rant is that there are automated assembly applications all over the place. You name it, it can be automated…and with some crazy levels of precision… two tenths of a micron precision. Take a look at a exemplary robotic setup. I could color that sucker green, in an effort to appease my fan-base. Or, alternatively, I could throw up a pic of something slicker than green robots…. Could those be lasers? Yep…I’m talking about some 6-axis automated inspection system lasers…for the win. I’ll be the first to admit that high performance machine vision, 6-axis robotics, and bad ass software trumps my form of QA…even though our banking software is pretty sweet. Regardless of the preferences, hit the bump to read about some real robotics applications. They are numerous…from automotive, clean room, fuel cell, medical devise, solar, and semiconductor implementations, to my already-mentioned QA…there is a ton to check out. In the mean time, I’ll be horsing around with my robot drawings and laser pointers…pining for an Arduino.

green robots…sigh.

Improving Existing Products: A How-to Improving existing products is a snap! Start with a product. Here, I used this product, a dog poop receptacle. Pretty boring, huh? The first rule of thumb when improving existing products, is to make sure to improve upon the improvable, regardless of how improbable it is to improve appropriate items theoretically unprovable. Unlikely. Here is my improved product: Turds FTW!

FTL FTW