Incorruptible Data

From Gizmag. Finally, there is a way to make sure your data is safe. Hitachi has developed an "incorruptible" glass-based data storage technique. It uses microscopic dots within a piece of quartz glass, the dots being binary data. The data should be stable for at least several hundred million years.

The current two-centimeter square, two millimeter thick prototype can contain about 40 megs of data. Researchers are confident they can increase storage by adding more layers.

Fun Time! Father And Son Send Toy Train Into Space!

On Aug 24th 2012, Ron Fugelseth and his 4-year-old son sent "Stanley" to space in a weather balloon with a HD camera and an old cell phone for GPS. He was recovered 27 miles away in a corn field. This video documents the journey from liftoff to landing. Fugelset animated Stanley's face with After Effects and Photoshop to bring him to life.

3D Printing For The Masses

MakerBot Replicator2

There is a true revolution going on that most folks simply aren't aware of. It's being driven by people who want to make things. It's facilitated by 3D printing.

Decades ago, while living in Boston, I heard that a certain high-tech company in the area had a device that would allow you to input any design and presto! out would come the finished product. Now, we mere mortals can enjoy the same excitement at seeing our material fantasies realized.

At the forefront of the home maker craze are two "affordable" printers (affordable being in the $2000-3000 range), the MakerBot Replicator and Form1's high resolution printer. I won't go into the particulars here, but follow the links provided and have a look at the video below to learn more.

Common Parasite Linked to Personality Changes

It appears that about 22 percent of the American public, over the age of twelve, is infected with a parasite that can influence behavior. People infected with the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii are more extroverted and less conscientious than those that are not infected and that the longer men are infected the less conscientious they become.

Here's a link to the Scientific American article this came from.

Travel Photo of the Week

Venice, italy

Open Source Brick Press

A little over a year ago, I featured Marcin Jakubowski and his plans to build 50 open source machines with which you can rebuild the comforts of civilization. Here's a video of his "Liberator," an open source, compressed earth, brick press.

Small House In Australia

Here's a beautiful small house in the Australian outback. It's renting out as a tourist cabin, only $2000 per night.

Control Your DSLR From Your iThing And Smartphone

Here's a neat gadget. Now you can control your DSLR from your iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone or smartphone with a gadget called Triggertrap. Lots of applications: timelapse, security. All kinds of ways to trigger the shot. If you do any kind of photography other than point and shoot, you want to know about this.

Fun Time! Plot-oon!

Plot-oon from Chris Butcher

Warp Drive For Real?

It looks like the speed of light might not be the barrier it's always been made out to be and that interstellar travel (within reasonable amounts of time) just might be possible.

"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.

Here are links to two articles discussing the tech and the problems that need to be overcome to make this happen.

The Warp Drive Could become Science Fact
Dark Energy and Surfing Spacetime