RubeGoldberg
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ICYMI: Robots, disappearing medical skin and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-336110{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-336110, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-336110{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-336110").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: We are rounding up a few interesting robot and car stories at the top of the show because simply too much happened since last week to just chose one. The University of North Texas drug-sniffing car needs a mention, and so does the US Army's new bomb bot. Also, researchers from MIT developed a gel that dries as a totally clear second skin. It could be used to do something as simple as smooth out wrinkles (see ya, botox!) or deliver topical medicine, covertly. And Harvard's Wyss Institute came up with a cheap way to test for the Zika virus; hopefully at-risk states take notice. If you like Rube Goldberg devices, this one with magnets and marbles might blow your mind. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
ICYMI: UAVs of the sea, real-time FaceSwap and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-838513{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-838513, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-838513{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-838513").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: The Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins has created a UAV that can stay underwater for two months, before launching through water and air. A mouth-mapping system using an off-the-shelf web camera is able to swap out anyone's lips onto the face of a famous person talking, and get pretty realistic results -- this can't end well. And Domino's is unveiling a robot delivery system in Australia that will either make you hungry or angry, depending on how you feel about 15-year-olds having a first job. Seiko created a Rube Goldberg machine with watch parts and it's darling. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Incredibly complex machine plays music with marbles
There have been plenty of impressively elaborate musical machines in recent years, but this might top them all. Swedish band Wintergatan has crafted a Musical Marble Machine that, as the name suggests, churns out tunes using 2,000 marbles (technically, ball bearings). It's a pretty involved effort with 3,000 parts that include a crank, levers, conveyor belts and legions of spinning gears -- Rube Goldberg would be proud, especially if he knew that this beast took 14 months to make.
Rumor: Rovio's new game is Casey's Contraptions
148Apps has done a little bit of digging, and has possibly discovered what Angry Birds creators Rovio are up to next. Rovio recently released a thank you/teaser video for a full billion Angry Birds downloads, and in the very end of that video, a character appears: It's a younger kid, with some pulleys and balloons in the background. Haven't we seen that kid before? Indeed, it appears to be Casey, of Casey's Contraptions, an iOS game that came out around this time last year. That game is still available, in HD form anyway, on the App Store. Casey's creator Noel Llopis said this to 148Apps: "Before rumors start flying, Rovio is a perfect gentleman. Not a Zynga at all. Don't worry, all is well." That seems to point to the fact that Rovio has possibly acquired Llopis' skills and the game, and is presumably publishing it or a sequel in the near future. I'm not sure this is the game Rovio was talking about when they said they were making a non-Angry Birds title -- Rovio has acquired other developers before, so this seems more like an acquisition or a publishing deal than an official Rovio game. But we'll see -- Casey's Contraptions was a terrific game that suffered a little bit from lack of exposure, and Rovio has no shortage of an audience to bring to it. If indeed the two are teaming up on another Contraptions release, odds are that's good news for everybody.
Google I/O: input/output game promotes its dev conference, wastes your coffee break
Google's latest time-sink is apparently inspired by "the spirit of innovation" shown at its annual I/O developer conference -- while not-to-subtly promoting it at the same time. The HTML5 game offers a blank canvas for you to clog up experiment with sliders, swingers and flippers, with the largely unimportant goal of getting the ball from one side to the other. Google says it'll even feature some of the more epic creations at this year's conference. Channel your inner Rube Goldberg at the source below.
Pile of Arduinos hooked up in Rube Goldberg-esque chain reaction (video)
All right, so technically this isn't a Rube Goldberg machine (it doesn't actually perform a task, merely loops endlessly), but the spirit is the same. Students in the Media Interaction and Design program at the University of Applied Sciences FH Johanneum in Graz, Austria strung together a pile of Arduinos to create a chain reaction of unbelievably geeky proportions. Seriously, you just need to watch the video -- you know you're in for a treat when you get Homer Simpson, Darth Vader and Hello Kitty in under one minute. Don't waste any more time here, hit that read more link and watch more Arduino's than you can shake a stick at work in tandem.
Sony unveils its fourth tablet teaser video, Rube Goldberg aficionados rejoice
We still aren't sure what Sony's series of teaser videos for its forthcoming S1 and S2 tablets are really all about. What we do know is that we love the films' cheery soundtracks and the wondrous contraptions they showcase. This fourth spot has the now-familiar pale figurines wandering though a mechanical wonderland, with marbles whizzing overhead and bubbles floating about. Alas, like those that precede it, the latest video provides no new info on the slates Sony's shilling, but feel free to enjoy the visuals in the bit of esoteric advertising after the break.
Sony tablet teaser video is breathtaking, not overly informative
Woosh. Plonk. Snap. Like a highly atmospheric scene from your favorite film noir, Sony's teaser video for the S1 and S2 tablets starts off with isolated sounds and a bit of quick motion before settling into a sumptuous, deliberately paced feast for your eyeballs. You might say it's high art posing as a consumer electronics promo, particularly if you compare it to ASUS or Huawei's efforts in the field. There's sadly little in the way of new information, all we really get to witness are the reassuring Android Honeycomb software keys on the larger S1, but this "first impression" clip is the start of a series of ads revolving around a pair of alabaster figurines and their tablet-assisted love affair. Give the play button a bash for your recommended daily dose of awesome.
Rube Goldberg Machine to set new world record, bring forth apocalypse
If you've never seen the rise and fall of humanity as told by a series of pulleys, levers, and CO2 rockets, now's your chance -- a team of Purdue engineers have built a contraption that not only tells the history of the world through the end of days, but is also a contender for the world's largest Rube Goldberg machine. The Purdue team's "Time Machine" catalogs a history of dinosaurs, war, and rock 'n roll before finally culminating in a cataclysmic inferno and efflorescent renewal in 232 steps -- narrowly beating out the previous record of 230 set by Ferris State University in 2010. Impressive, but not officially the "world's largest" just yet-- the team is submitting a video of a flawless run to Guinness World Records to certify the historic thingamajig, hopefully eking out a victory with its two step lead.
My new EyeTV set-up, and why Comcast's digital transition is a pain
On Monday, Colorado cable customers transitioned into a new digital world. Comcast switched off analog access to all but its most basic channels, i.e. the ones that they are still required to carry by law, and killed the clear-QAM signal that has made it possible for my EyeTV tuner to schedule and record TV for the last few years. Instead, Comcast has introduced digital transport adapters, and this small box has wrecked my TV-watching, time-shifting, Mac-recording happiness. The problem is this. The new Comcast box will transmit video over a coax cable on channel 3 or 4. You set this via a toggle switch on the back of the box. All channel switching must be done via the box. That means if you bought a fancy new TV with a built-in clear-QAM tuner (without CableCARD) or are using a computer-based tuner like the EyeTV that doesn't have an IR blaster to change cable channels, you're in a bind. You need to send channel requests somehow to the box rather than allowing your equipment to function the way it always has. Unfortunately, EyeTV can't work that way. Elgato suggested that it isn't possible to use the channel 3-4 type connection when controlling a set top box. Argh! For EyeTV users, you can either pay to upgrade both to a new Comcast HD tuner and an Elgato EyeTV HD system, which TUAW is going to review soon, or you can try to cobble together your own solution, a la the discussion at this online Elgato forum thread. I did the latter. In the end, it cost about a hundred dollars in parts and degraded my video quality to "barely watchable", plus it took up several ports (both on my computer and on the EyeTV unit) that I normal use for work. But I can now automatically record TV shows, so it's going to keep me going for the moment, however badly. Read on to learn how I put my solution together, and why you'll probably want to consider opting for a net-enabled TiVo instead. Update: Working with Elgato over e-mail this afternoon to try to bypass the "need a VCR to transform coax signal into composite signal", will update when I have made some progress. The rest of the exercise, from the IR blaster, to the missed channel signals, and so forth stands. Do consider going for Elgato's premium EyeTV HD product rather than trying to back-engineer with older equipment and a DTA. Update 2: Managed to get the solution sans VCR to work. Via Elgato: 1) Make sure you have Analog - Antenna channel 3 2) Make sure you can see the video from the cable box on channel 3 3) Configure ZephIR - give your downloaded IR set a name like "ComcastDCX50" 4) Make sure ZephIR can control EyeTV 5) Use Configure Set Top Box in EyeTV. Name you setup "ComcastDCX50" (or whatever, at long as it matches your ZephIR setup name) 6) Choose Built-In Tuner, and Channel 3. Do not select "use built-in tuner for analog channels". 7) Make sure to delete any previous channels (a la Step 7 in the the main part of this write-up) or you will experience the errors, I first encountered. After, the image quality is pretty poor, but it works and does not require the VCR step. This improved audio but experienced similar channel switching problems with one fewer device needed. Still a hack -- and I still recommend avoiding this approach.
Dear Aunt TUAW: How do I use my Apple TV in the car?
Dear Aunt TUAW, I'm planning a road trip for the summer. We'll be driving for 3-4 days, then spending a couple of months in a rental house before heading back. Thinking about keeping the family sane, especially during the drive, I thought, "Why not hook up the Apple TV to the Composite inputs (meant for video games) in the minivan?" That way, we'd have entertainment on the drive, then we could hook it up to the TV in the rental house as well. One thing I can't figure out, however, is how to power the Apple TV in the car. Are there car adapters that might work? Love & Kisses, Narcema
National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest of '08 makes us feel lazy
The last time we got to feeling this crafty was in middle school and involved large quantities of cardboard. The folks at the National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest 2008 have clearly taken things to another level, and while the ingenuity is evident, the commitment to aesthetic excellence is what really makes this event a winner. Also the fake beards.
Turning on a 360 Rube Goldberg style
Proud Xbox 360 owner ethjam0909 must have thought that turning on his white box was a little too easy or he just had had a lot of free time, because he felt compelled to construct a Rube Goldberg machine to power it up. Embedded above is a video showcasing his machine, which uses a marble, blanket, and some string to turn on his 360. Our favorite part has to be the end where ethjam0909 glows with pride by giving the camera the "oh yeah, I roxorz" smirk. Rock on ethjam0909, we'd so make one of those contraptions to power on our Xbox 360 at Fanboy Towers, but it's against house rules. And as everyone knows, we're good kids who abide by the rules.[Via 360 Style]
Introducing the Nintendo Rube Goldberg machine
If you're a fan of old cartoonists, you're probably familiar with the name Rube Goldberg (remember how they unlocked the gate in The Goonies?). However, to most of us, the name is better associated with the game Half-Life 2, where fans of the title have been known to make several different videos documenting Rube Goldberg machines of their own. Finally, Nintendo fans have a machine to call their own, as documented in the video past the post break.[Via Aeropause]
DIY cat feeder powered by Ubuntu Linux, CD-ROM tray
It seems, from our very unofficial research, that cat owners tend to be geeks. And to prove our point, we bring you the geekiest cat owner in history. Lee Holmes, of Ontario, Canada, recently combined his Ubuntu Linux server to create a Rube Goldberg machine of a cat feeder. By running a script on his server, the CD-ROM tray pops open, a trap door opens, allowing cat food to flow down a cardboard chute into his cat's bowl. (Bah, just go watch it in action on YouTube, which is linked from his site.) As if that weren't geeky enough, he can use his i-mate JasJar to SSH to the server, allowing him to feed his cat from across the room, or across the world. Now all he needs is to figure out a way for the restocking process to be automated, and he could retire from his day job and sell these things to cat owners worldwide. [Via MAKE:Blog]
Fun with physics: Oblivion's domino effect
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion employs the same Havok physics engine that's been used to create all those fun Rube Goldberg machines in Half-Life 2, so it's only fitting that a similar contraption's been created in Tamriel and recorded for us all to enjoy. The creators used books (instead of dominos) to create the over 3-minute clip! Crazy!See also:Nintendo-themed Goldberg contraptionFun with physics: a HL2 Rube Goldberg machine[Via Waxy]
More Half-Life 2 Goldbergs
Edge Online has a post full of great links surrounding the Half-Life 2 Rube Goldberg video we posted a couple days back. Amongst them, the video posted above, a companion piece to last week's. Heck, if you just want to watch these all day long, there's a thread here with links to dozens of them! The metric they measure these by is the length of the "Goldberg." Longer, of course, means better. There is an ongoing challenge to produce the longest running Goldberg, although the top ten list is really out of date. Posters to the thread are claiming to have Goldbergs that run as long as 2 minutes!
Fun with physics: a HL2 Rube Goldberg machine
Another Rube Goldberg machine made using Half-Life 2 and the always impressive Garry's Mod. More fun with Garry's Mod:Half-Life 2: historical reenactments[Via digg]
