Adam Savage
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Adam Savage turned Spot the robodog into a creepy rickshaw driver
Boston Dynamics has long touted robotic dog Spot's ability to help out in disaster situations and to take on jobs too hazardous for humans, but what practical applications does it have for the average Joe? Beyond scuttling around your house like a Lovecraftian nightmare, that is. Well, as ex-Mythbusters host Adam Savage has recently unveiled, it's pretty good at pulling a rickshaw.
Tour Mythbuster Adam Savage's collection of collections with Street View
When Adam Savage isn't busy blowing stuff up while filming Mythbusters, he's often found tinkering about in his San Francisco workshop. It's in this "cave" that Savage films his popular YouTube series for Tested, but it's also home to an incredible number of gadgets and sci-fi memorabilia that his Mythbuster cash has funded over the years. Fortunately, this treasure-filled studio is now open for virtual tours, courtesy of Google's indoor Street View cameras, letting you go behind-the-scenes and see for yourself where all the magic happens. If you prefer something more personal, Savage has also conducted a video tour of his man-cave, which we've included below.
Mythbuster Adam Savage explains how to bring cartoons to the real world with an iPhone
Last month, you might remember seeing the work of storyboard artist Marty Cooper (aka Hombre McSteez). If you didn't (then go watch it right now), he's the man behind "Aug(De)mented Reality," a three minute collection of entertaining stop-motion cartoons that have been brought into the real world. He does so using only transparent plastic cells, a sharpie, Wite Out, then capturing it all on his iPhone 5s. If it left you wondering what iPhone app Cooper uses (StopMotion Recorder) or how he manages to match each frame with the scene, then you're in luck, as he's taken the time to show none other than Mythbusters legend Adam Savage the tricks of the trade. In the video below, Cooper unleashes one of his creations inside the workshop, giving you a taste of how to bring your own imaginary monsters to life without any special effects.
Mythbuster Adam Savage on how to make stopmotion animation with iPhone
Adam Savage is no stranger to mixing science with whimsy. With his hit show Mythbusters, he and partner Jamie Hyneman have tackled everything from shark attacks to death rays. Of course, that show can't film all the time. To fill the other hours in the day, Savage runs a web series called Inside Adam Savage's Cave, where he does experiments, shows off oddities, and generally makes merriment. In today's episode, Savage has invited animator Marty Cooper into his cave to talk about traditional hand-drawn animation and augmented reality cartoons. The best part? All of the animation is made with an iPhone. Using the app StopMotion Recorder, a series of by-hand drawings made on transparencies, and a little bit of time, Savage and Cooper are able to create a few glorious stop-motion cartoons that delightfully float in the real world. We're including two videos. The first is the episode of Adam Savage's Workshop featuring Cooper and his animations. Finally, we've included Cooper's Aug(De)Mented Reality YouTube short featuring even more of his incredible animations. Enjoy.
Macworld 2010: Adam Savage re-enacts the EFF's history
We visited a lot of parties last night (and the TUAW bloggers are nursing hangovers because of it), but the best was undoubtedly the Electronics Frontier Foundation's 20th anniversary bash at the DNA Lounge. It wasn't strictly Mac-related, but Mythbuster Adam Savage was in the house, and he led a hilarious re-enactment of some of the major moments in the EFF's history, assisted by various objects and people "found around the club". Of course, since there were quite a few luminaries in the house (including the founders of the EFF, the crew from Steve Jackson Games, and other tech who's whos), the re-enactment actually ended up being re-enacted by most of the actual participants. We captured video of the event, and it's both informational and hilarious -- you can catch it in two segments after the break below. Stay tuned for more from Macworld 2010 all this week -- the floor opens today, and we'll have live streaming video right here on the site, as well as hands-on, interviews, and news from the show in San Francisco all week long. For the iPhone-friendly YouTube video, click here.
Adam Savage's RFID implant activates, orders him to change his story
It's no secret that RFID isn't the most secure thing in the world, so we mostly took Adam Savage's story about Discovery telling the Mythbusters to back off an episode exposing the tech's flaws after a conference call with various cred card company lawyers as a bit of laughable corporate insecurity, but it looks like Adam got himself in a bit of trouble by sharing -- Discovery's now sending out a release in which he basically retracts the whole thing. "There's been a lot of talk about this RFID thing, and I have to admit that I got some of my facts wrong... Texas Instruments' account of their call with Grant and our producer is factually correct [and] the decision not to continue on with the RFID story was made by our production company, Beyond Productions, and had nothing to do with Discovery, or their ad sales department." Sure, that doesn't explain why he said that Tory "still gets a little white" when he remembers the phone call, or why he said RFID was "on Discovery's radar," but we're guessing it has more to do with simple exaggeration than devious conspiracy. At least we hope so.
Mythbusters RFID hacking episode canned by credit card company lawyers
Although it's no secret that RFID is easily hacked (see: train passes, passports, credit cards, one billion other cards, etc.) it's still not necessarily common knowledge, and it sounds like the major credit card companies want to keep it that way -- according to Adam Savage, Mythbusters was all set to do a show exposing the weak security behind most RFID implementations but was shut down by lawyers from "American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... [who] absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode." Since Discovery is an ad-supported channel, it's not surprising that it backed down, but we'd say that the credit card industry would be far better served spending money on actually improving security rather than lawyering up and trying to keep consumers in the dark. Video after the break.[Via Wired]
Ask MeFi on balancing MMO economies
Just like WoW Insider's Adam Holisky, I too am a big Mythbusters fan, and it's pretty common knowledge that 'buster Adam Savage is a big Ask Metafilter fan and user. So I am also a big Metafilter fan, and when they do a thread about MMO economies, it just intrigues me in all the right ways. (See what I did with that intro? That's why I get paid the big blogging bucks, which, trust me, aren't that big in the first place).But my interests aside, the Ask MeFi thread is a great read for anyone who's thought about balancing an MMO economy. Not only are there a lot of great links (see that? True MeFi style equals big blogging bucks!) to other resources on the subject, but there's some good commentary in there, too: What specific things can you do to balance out the huge earnings of hardcore players and keep casual players competitive? And how exactly do you organize your items -- if items are too rare, they'll never be useful enough to be sold, but items that are too common won't get their prices off the ground.Fascinating stuff, touched on by a fascinating community.
