engineering
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Cornell students steer Pong using brain waves, can't quite play during naps (video)
We here at Engadget are always fans of brain wave experiments, and so we were delighted when two Cornell University electrical engineering students, Chuck Moyes and Mengxiang Jiang, wrapped up a final project using brain waves in the best way possible: playing Pong. Their experiment links a baseball cap full of EEG-scanning electrodes to a computer, letting the cap wearer control a paddle using Alpha or Mu waves. Depending on the waves you use, you can move the paddle either by changing your concentration level or by thinking about moving your feet. You won't rack up a high score while napping (or with a teammate narrating over your shoulder), but with a budget under $75, it's hard to find fault. You can grab the source code below, and check out a video of Jiang and Moyes' handiwork after the break. [Thanks, Chuck and Mengxiang]
Transmogrifying a tribute to engineering
We've talked a lot about creating transmogrification looks that mimic other characters -- in-game NPCs that we adore like Thisalee Crow or even looks that pay homage to characters from other beloved video games. But there's absolutely no need to limit yourself to mimicking other characters with transmogrification. It can be just as fun to create an homage to a favorite mount, pet -- or in today's case, a profession! Today we've got two looks based on the beloved profession of engineering. I actually stumbled onto this look while trying to create a monochromatic piece for the heck of it, but I was pleased enough with how it turned out for me that I decided to share it with all of you. In addition to my own leather number, I've put together a cloth outfit as well -- and I'll see what I can do to create a mail and plate version in the following weeks.
HTC details micro arc oxidation, says your One S will be strong enough to forgo the case (video)
Happen to recall the gorgeous metal HTC's using on its upcoming One S to surround its Ice Cream Sandwich-loaded core? To refresh your memory, the ceramic look and feel of its metal unibody shell is created using a process known as micro arc oxidation -- and HTC's highlighting how the magic happens in its latest YouTube video. According to the company, the shell (made from aircraft-grade aluminium) gets slammed with a whopping "10,000 volts of energy," causing a reaction that quickly leads to the black color and smooth texture. Notably, HTC points out that this is actually a treatment to the metal, rather than a finish on top of it. That's not all -- the metal also ends up being nearly five-times stronger as a result. Want to see the zapping for yourself? You'll find the clip and more details in the flick just after the break.
Apple's Sir Jonathan Ive: our competitors have 'completely the wrong goals'
London's favorite only remaining evening free-sheet has snagged an interview with Apple design maven Sir Jonathan Ive. In the piece he talks about being thrilled and humbled by his recent Knighthood, the importance of his London upbringing and why Apple's competitors can't win. Pointing to a desire not to make "genuinely better" products, Cupertino's unnamed rivals instead are "interested in doing something different, or want to appear new," which he says is the wrong goal. The difference is that he and his team aren't tied to a price, a schedule or a marketing scheme -- which he believes "have scant regard for people who use the product." There's also a barbed reference to consumers being able to sense "great care in the design and when there is cynicism and greed" in products on the market. Head on down to the source link to read more, including his frustration with designers who "wag their tails in his face" -- who knew designers had tails, eh?
2 crafting professions that won't make you rich
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! If you're trying to decide which professions to put on your character and you are considering their gold making potential, you'll want to avoid engineering and inscription. While they're not terrible if you consider their stat bonuses, they're not ideal for gold making on many realms. Of course, every realm has its own ecosystem, and as with all advice you'll read from this column, you should check that the assumptions hold for your realm and faction. That said, by far the most common problems I have trouble helping people with are related to these two professions. Inscription I'll start with the one that's going to get me the angry comments first. Inscription has long been touted as a cornerstone of the money making meta game -- heck, it earned my esteemed colleague, Fox, his first million gold on Darkmoon Cards. Before that, we had "glyphsmas" when 4.0 hit and a steady level of demand for glyphs before that. We still have the stupidly profitable fortune card market that lets anyone open a tiny, Blizzard-sanctioned casino. So what's not to like?
A case for transmogrification and reforging engineering pets in Mists of Pandaria
I want to get this idea out there, in hopes that some friendly designer smiles upon it: Transmogrification and reforging bots for engineers in Mists of Pandaria. It might seem like a little trivial, given that these are just a matter of hearthing back to the city to do right there, but that's not always a good and viable option. When raiding, you don't have a ton of space to do things for only yourself, and you need to take into account the rest of the group's time. Reforging pets, in particular, would be a boon for raiders. Often times, a new piece of gear can be quickly enchanted and gemmed (I know I always carry a few extra gems and enchanting mats on me when I expect to get a big new piece of gear); however, the reforging and "thinking time" (or Ask Mr. Robot time) that's necessary for high-end raiding isn't easily done. People can try to hearth and do it quickly during a scheduled break, but that's rarely practical. Transmogrification pets would be less critical but would fit nicely into the engineering motif of providing unique gadgets and toys that provide at least some level of usefulness and/or fun. Engineers already have their own special teleportation generators and can make some fun pets and whirligigs. Letting them and others transmog their gear at a remote location, possibly through a Jeeves-like item, would be a nice addition to the engineer's toolbox. So what say you, Blizzard, can we have some mogging and reforging pets, please? We promise to only transmog to look like Whitemane (and maybe the Stormwind or Orgrimmar guards).
Fish are lazy, naive, easily led by robots (video)
What does a fish look for in a leader? No doubt a nice fishy smell is important, and maybe a sense of direction too, but the overriding factor happens to be something much simpler, and indeed simple enough for a robot to mimic. Our old friend Maurizio Porfiri and a colleague from New York's Polytechnic Institute have shown that a fish-bot will quickly attract live followers if it has a nice, fluid swimming motion. When the stroke is just right, real fish will pull up alongside and visibly relax their own motion to conserve energy, just like geese flying at the rear of a 'vee' formation. It's hoped that, in the future, robots might be used to guide endangered fish populations away from oil spills and other calamities, in much the same way as battery-powered leaders have guided humanity since the dawn of time (allegedly).
Light-based 'Metatronics' chip melts minds, not copper
Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have flipped the switch on a new type of computer circuit. Unlike conventional silicon, the new chip uses light -- not electricity -- to perform its logic. By creating an array of nano-rods, light-flow can be treated like voltage and current. These rods can then be configured to emulate electrical components such as resistors, inductors and capacitors. The benefits of the so-called "metatronic" system would be smaller, faster and more efficient computer chips, which is clearly a welcome prospect. Another curious property the team discovered, is what it calls "stereo-circuitry." Effectively one set of nano-rods can act as two different circuits, depending on the plane of the field. This means your CPU could become a GPU just by changing the signal. We can't speak for the light itself, but our minds are certainly bent.
How to assemble coordinating transmog gear sets for your hunter or shaman
In fashion, coordinates are matching pieces of clothing that are meant to be worn together. Think of a matching suit jacket and pants, or a prom dress and shawl sold together in the same color. Typically, coordinates are for people who work in offices and need to look professional or people who can't dress themselves. In WoW, there are coordinates too, and they can be used strategically to pull together seemingly unrelated pieces of gear into different looks. This week, I'll be showing you three different looks for your mail-wearing hunter or shaman, all oriented around three easy-to-obtain mail coordinates.
Potions, Portals, and Scrolls of Recall: How to get around Azeroth as quickly as possible
Azeroth is big. This is readily apparent to any new player who's confined to running around on foot or anyone too cheap to shell out for a mount. Even mounted, you're going to spend a lot of time getting from point A to point B unless you can somehow shorten the journey -- and you can usually shorten it in a number of interesting ways. We all know about the zeppelins and the boats, the workhorse transportation system of Azeroth, but due to the eccentricity of the many transport options in the game, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. For example, an inventive Horde player without a Hearthstone up who wants to travel from Silithus to Orgrimmar can settle in for a long flight -- or she can simply chug a Potion of Deepholm and take the Orgrimmar portal from the Temple of Earth. No potion, but you've quested through Sholazar Basin? Take the Titan Waygate from northern Un'Goro Crater to Sholazar, then fly south to the Horde's zeppelin at Warsong Hold. You'll still beat a wyvern flying from Cenarion Hold. With even a few of the following options, a max-level player with some imagination should be able to scrape together a few methods of considerably shortening a journey.
The curious case of Cataclysm potions
Remember how amazing cogwheels were? The concept was an inherently cool one -- engineers, much like jewelcrafters, could get their hands on something that would enhance their gear purely through their craft. For jewelcrafters, it's the ability to cut amazing gems, limited to the number they can use in their gear. For engineers, cogwheels were purchasable with crafted engineering items and could be used in a helm with cogwheel slots. You may be wondering why I'm using the past tense here. It's for good reason -- cogwheels are, essentially, a dead item. Introduced at the beginning of Cataclysm, they could be used in engineering crafted goggles, but that was it. Once players started raiding, those goggles were quickly replaced ... and we never saw anything with a cogwheel in it again. For something that had me really excited about being an engineer, the cogwheel was a letdown of sorts. But that's not the only thing that's been a little off, professionally speaking, with Cataclysm.
MIT developing educational MMO funded by Gates Foundation
Is gaming the answer to the math- and science-related apathy plaguing American school kids? Some folks at MIT think so, and a new press blurb outlines how the institute is developing an MMO designed to further science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. "In contrast to the way that (STEM) is currently taught in secondary schools –- which often results in students becoming disengaged and disinterested in the subjects at an early age –- educational games like the one to be developed give students the chance to explore STEM topics in a way that deepens their knowledge while also developing 21st-century skills," the release says. The title is being developed in collaboration with Filament Games, and MIT's Eric Klopfer says that it will be a powerful educational tool. "This genre of games is uniquely suited to teaching the nature of science inquiry," he explains, "because they provide collaborative, self-directed learning situations. Players take on the roles of scientists, engineers and mathematicians to explore and explain a robust virtual world." The project is being financed by a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Layering a transmogrification look from the Darkmoon Faire
So maybe you don't want to wear one of the umpteen million tier sets or dungeon sets out there. You want to look different, unique, stand out in the crowd ... we get the picture. There's an art to putting together a transmogrified look without just picking up a labeled set, and it involves the careful use of layering. Check out the couple above, from poster fwerp on Reddit, who have taken layering and off-set pieces and turned out a couple of outfits that are sure to have them blending in with the Darkmoon Faire crowd. What's shown above is a set of roleplay outfits -- note the lack of spaulders -- but all it takes is a little creativity to toss together a look just like it, one that you can transmogrify for your own use. These are both cloth sets, so casters, if you're looking for something other than the usual robe and glowing shoulders getup, take a peek after the break and see how you can put this together for yourself!
3DConnexion announces SpaceMouse Pro for 3D aficionados, galactic rodents
3DConnexion's SpaceMouse Pro won't do much to quench your nostalgia for Hickory, Dickory or Dock, but it could make your three dimensional workflow a bit easier. Announced yesterday, this new peripheral boasts a proprietary "six degrees of freedom sensor" for smoother 3D navigation, along with a quintet of QuickView keys, providing instant access to 12 different viewing angles. Compatible with both PCs and Macs, the mouse also features four "intelligent function keys" to control your most frequently used apps, as well as an onscreen display for instant feedback. Designers, engineers and astronauts can grab the SpaceMouse Pro for $300, at the source link below.
Researchers increase charging capacity, speed of lithium ion batteries by a factor of ten
It's not every day that we get to write about advancements in battery technology -- much less one as potentially groundbreaking as what a group of engineers at Northwestern University claim to have pulled off. In fact, Professor Harold Kung and his team say they've successfully managed to increase both the charging capacity and speed of lithium ion batteries by a factor of ten. The key, according to Kung, is the movement of the lithium ions nestled between layers of graphene. The speed at which these ions move across a battery's graphene sheets is directly related to how fast a device can recharge. To speed up this process, Kung decided to poke millions of tiny, 10-20nm-sized holes into a mobile battery's graphene layers, thereby providing the ions with a "shortcut" to the next level. As a result, Kung's perforated batteries were able to charge ten times faster than traditional cells, going from zero to hero in 15 minutes. Not satisfied with that achievement alone, Kung and his squad then set about increasing their battery's charging capacity, as well. Here, they increased the density of lithium ions by inserting small clusters of silicon between each graphene slice. This approach allows more ions to gather at the electrode and, by taking advantage of graphene's malleable properties, avoids some of the silicon expansion problems that have plagued previous attempts at capacity enhancement. The result? A battery that can run on a single charge for more than a week. "Now we almost have the best of both worlds," Kung said. "We have much higher energy density because of the silicon, and the sandwiching reduces the capacity loss caused by the silicon expanding and contracting. Even if the silicon clusters break up, the silicon won't be lost." There is, however, a downside, as both charging capacity and speed sharply fell off after 150 charges. But as Kung points out, the increase in charge retention would more than make up for this shortcoming. "Even after 150 charges, which would be one year or more of operation, the battery is still five times more effective than lithium-ion batteries on the market today," he told the BBC. For more technical details, hit up the links below.
BlueBiped robot needs no power to walk for miles, as long as it's downhill (video)
The robots; they're walking -- and this one's doing it under its own steam. This passive robotic frame requires no energy input, and is instead powered by its own weight and a gentle slope. The BlueBiped can be adjusted to match the proportions of any user, and researchers plan to use it to assist people who find it difficult to walk and transport unwieldy sports equipment. It already holds the Guinness world record for the longest distance walked by a bi-pedal robot, plodding 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) in a single 13-hour stroll. Those fearing the impending Robopocalypse can at least breathe a sigh of relief that -- like some other homocidal robots -- stairs still remain out of bounds.
The Light and How to Swing It: A career guide for tanks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a Blood Elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. This column is, if anything, the result of my recent switch from engineering to alchemy on my paladin. One of the biggest drivers for my decision (other than the maddening smackdown that engineering suffered after Wrath of the Lich King) was the desire to once again have a profession that bestowed some kind of meaningful bonus for raiding. Just about every facet of engineering that had some appreciable effect for tanking was neutered (as you'll see ahead), leaving the profession a dried husk and a sad remnant of previous greatness. I don't have to tell you that profession bonuses are easily one of the best ways to get stat boosts, and using certain professions can be a powerful tool in the min-maxer's arsenal, in order to squeeze every last stat point out of their characters. Some are excellent; some are even so excellent they are overpowered; some are middle of the road; and others are just horribly lackluster. Let's take a look.
Gold Capped: Chaos Orbs to become tradable in 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Chaos Orbs, currently soulbound, are BOE on the player test realm for patch 4.3. Blizzard said that this would happen at some point, and since this is literally the last point before the end of Cataclysm, it's happening next patch. Currently, only crafters who can use them can even roll on them. Once they become BOE, anyone will be able to roll on them. If this feels unfair, remember that tradable loot (even BOE gear) is greed only. Whether you use it or sell it, it's worth what someone would pay for it. If you decide to use it yourself, you're in essence paying what someone else would have bought it for.
Microsoft HoloDesk: when you need to juggle something that isn't there (video)
If you'd thought that OmniTouch and PocketTouch were the end of Microsoft Research's natural user interface projects, think again. It's now released a video of the HoloDesk, a tool that lets you manipulate virtual 3D objects with your bare hands. Looking through a transparent display, the objects react nearly instantly, rolling from a sheet of real paper into a real cup and falling into shadow if you block the virtual light-source. The Cambridge lab that developed the tool sees uses in remote working, collaboration or device prototyping. If you hadn't guessed, there's a hacked Kinect at the heart of HoloDesk's DNA, which makes us wonder how long it'll be before we can use it to play Halo.
Microsoft's PocketTouch prototype is like x-ray vision for your fingers (video)
Is it more gauche to pull out your phone in the middle of a date, or to draw a bunch of crop circles on your pants? That's the question we were asking ourselves after coming across PocketTouch -- a new Microsoft Research prototype that lets you manipulate your handset without ever removing it from your pocket. Developed by researchers Scott Saponas, Chris Harrison and Hrvoje Benko, the device essentially consists of a customized, multitouch capacitive sensor hooked on to the back of a smartphone. This sensor is capable of picking up gestures through fabric, allowing users to execute a wide array of eyes-free, gesture-based functions (including simple swipes and alphanumeric text) without ever having to actually whip out their phones. To do this, the team implemented what it calls an "orientation-defining unlock gesture," which helps the prototype get its bearings, before testing the capacitive sensors across different fabrics. According to Microsoft, the outcome "exceeded expectations," though there's no word on when or if this Goliath of a device could ever hit the mainstream. Head past the break to see a video of a man playing tic-tac-toe on his pants.
