WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Calling all geeks! What would you like for Christmas? Well we at Winding Down have been scouring the net for things no self-respecting geek would be seen without - electric aircraft, 10,000 watt speakers, an amphibious quad bike, an interactive light bulb, a USB tentacle, a brain controlled helicopter, a 1/16 scale battle tank, a 16.8 million colour gaming keyboard and a computer to match, a leettle gadget redolent of a certain Alien movie, Alan Turing Monopoly, Tesla coils, Van De Graaff generators, and finally 360 degree video. What a smorgasbord of goodies all laid out for your inspection!
This week we concentrate on Christmas gifts, because by next week it will be too late for you to buy them before yuletide is upon us. Next week’s Winding Down will be the last of 2012, and will revert to its normal format. After that we will be taking a break to sample some very un-geek-like food, such as roast duck/turkey/goose, vegetables, potatoes in non-fries formats, wine, non-root beer, and the like. In other words stuff with dangerous things like vitamins in it.
It’s also dangerous because one has to make polite conversation to relatives who come visiting. Note that a detailed technical explanation of the inner working of your latest 15 teraflop home brew computer is not considered to be polite conversation. Those of you facing this possibility should consult your mother, who will brief you on the recognized standard API for communicating with non-techie relatives, including details of the optional headers containing family gossip.
Anyway, if we at Winding Down towers survive the experience, we will be back in the new year - on January 13 to be precise. In case you are wondering why it’s such long time, the explanation is as follows. One, it’s not really very long, honest. Two, I need the time to track down a long standing, annoying, bug in my game, Federation 2, and finally eliminate it, so that new players can get into the game.
And now for something completely different...
Geeks Bearing Gifts:
Gizmag recently ran a list of things you can’t afford for Christmas, but I’m going to tell you about them anyway, just in case you feel like building an open source version of any of them. Some of the items were OK, but hardly inspiring, like the Lamborghini bicycle and the US$5 million watch, but others were more exciting. I want one of the Volta Volare GT4 hybrid electric aircraft, which describes itself as ‘The most technologically advanced private aircraft available anywhere on Earth’. It certainly looks it, especially the carbon fiber body (though I would have preferred it in matte black rather than polished metal). Nifty, and a snip at US$495,000.
The other item that really took my fancy was Behringer’s aptly named 10,000 Watt iNuke Boom Dock for iPhones and iPods. Mind you at eight feet wide, four feet high and weighing 700 pounds, I’m not sure exactly where I’d put it! Still, with twin 18” subwoofers, dual 12” neodymium woofers, two 1.75” titanium-diaphragm HF, it’s certainly capable. And this is the clincher - the volume control goes up to 11...
And, as a runner up, perhaps the amphibious quad bike from GIBBS might enhance my street cred a little. ( My spelling checker offered to change ‘cred’ to ‘crud’, I wonder if it knows something I don’t?)
http://www.gizmag.com/top-10-christmas-wishlist-2012/25243/
Scientific American also have a top ten for Xmas. Most of the offerings are worthy, but somewhat dull. However, the portable document scanner from PiQx Imaging (number 7 in the slides) look interesting, especially if you happen to be a librarian. The MOVA moving world globes look pretty nifty, but could be a little distracting when you are trying to nail the monster in one of GoG’s DRM-free retro games.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=sciam-2012-gadget-guide
http://www.gog.com/
Here’s something a little more unusual for Christmas. It’s a lamp bulb that transforms a surface into a touch screen. The LuminAR Bulb works with standard light fixtures and projects an interactive image onto any surface. There’s video showing some of its uses (what we in the trade refer to as ‘use cases’ in order to fool ordinary people into thinking that we are cleverer than they are). I could see this becoming really quite useful.
http://www.gizmag.com/luminar-bulb-surface-touch-screen/25356/
Ah! Yes! One of my favourites - a USB squirming tentacle. A must for Cthulu fans with lots of USB ports on their laptops. Why settle for a lesser evil? Available now from Think Geek!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ede3/
If the above is too boring for jaded geek appetites, then how about a brain-controlled helicopter? Might not be ready for Xmas, but it will, hopefully, be available soon after. More to the point the makers, Puzzlebox, are promising to turn the project open source and provide all the details of how it works. As the guy from Puzzlebox so aptly put it, “...cool as it might be to fly a helicopter with your brain, it’s cooler understanding how it all works.” Spot on!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/26/brain_controlled_helicopter/
Those of you into more ideologically unsound toys may like to take a look at this ‘toy’ - a 1/16 scale German Panther Radio Controlled Battle Tank complete with a 6mm BB gun system, maximum firing range 25 meters (if you want to drive German tank replicas, you must be prepared to use metric measurements). This beast comes with a vast list of warnings as the makers cover their asses, which should give any purchaser some ideas of the more interesting uses of this little baby.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=PANTHER-3819-1
Those of you who are PC gamers might like to consider taking a look at the Isku FX keyboard from ROCCAT. Apart from being able to handle up to 36 macros, it has a 1ms response time, and can light up in 16.8 million different colours in response to in-game actions. Hmmm... 16.8 million colours/in-game actions. Exactly which game is this intended for? You could finish the game in less time than it would take you to program the colors!
http://www.gizmag.com/roccat-isku-fx-gaming-keyboard/25400/
If you want a gaming PC machine to match your 16.8 million colour keyboard, take a look at the Maingear F131. I’ve seen a number of reviews of this machine, all of them good. The only problem is the price, which runs to about US$3,000, but high class PC gaming machines are expensive - and they knock the spots off the aging third generation consoles which are still using the day before yesterday’s technology.
http://reviews.cnet.com/holiday-gift-guide/laptops-desktops/gaming-pcs/
Fans of Alien will like Lethal Protection’s ‘Life-Phorm’ tech gadget stand - it looks just like the creature that implanted the egg in the crewman’s mouth. Eek! Just the thing to scare your friends with, and it does look remarkably useful for holding devices on irregular surfaces or at weird angles. Not really recommended for arachnophobes, though.
http://www.lethalprotection.com/features/
Techie Monopoly fans can now get the Alan Turing edition of Monopoly from Bletchley Park. Not a lot more to be said about this - and it will help support the trust in their effort to restore the World War II code breaking center.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/shop/view_product.rhtm/139574/668529/detail.html
Of course, no list of geek presents would be complete with a mention of Tesla Coils. Unfortunately, they tend to be expensive, so here in the URL is a link to where you can not only get fully built machines, but also the plans or kits to build it yourself - lotsa work, but much cheaper, and lotsa fun! Those of you who want something a little easier to build might like to consider a Van De Graaff generator (the machine, not the band). I built one of these in my last year at high school. We had difficulty making a suitable belt to carry the charges, but eventually got it working with using a silk stocking donated by my physics teacher’s wife!
http://www.amazing1.com/tesla.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator
And finally, a little plug for some technology I’ve been working on - 360 degree spherical video. Normally when you watch a video you can only see what the camera operator is pointing the camera at. With spherical video, you can look all around and up as well. There’s a demonstration at the URL, and in the new year apps for the iPhone, iPad and their Android equivalents will be available - looks very nice on my Samsung Galaxy Note. The best of the demos is the Thorpe Park Roller coaster one where you can ‘turn’ the camera round to look at the riders as well as see where you are going. There’s also some behind the scenes peeks at making a number of different TV programs.
This is an up and coming technology whose uses are only just starting to be recognized. I think you’ll see a lot more of it in the coming years...
http://spherevision.com/videos/360
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Andrew, Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
16 December 16012
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
