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Leonardo Da Vinci, The Madrid Codices Now Available Online

 Featured, Hacks, Robotics, Technologies  No Responses »
Dec 182012
 
leonardo 2

For many of us who like to play with mechanics, robotics, prototyping 3D-Printing and other maker/hacker hobbyists, Leonardo Da Vinci is an inspiring figure that you can use for ideas for projects or just like reading and looking at his impressive technical drawings.

The Spanish National Library Published the Madrid Codices from Leonardo Da Vinci on-line in a very nice interactive format.  The topics discussed in these 2 volumes include mechanics, statics, geometry and construction of fortifications among others.

leonardo da vinci

These Manuscripts have been discovered quite recently in 1964 (after being lost for about 150 years), and you can now access them for free on the website of the Spanish National library, http://www.bne.es.

The Interactive format they have used adds some really nice functionality to them. You can mirror the pages (handy because Leonardo Da Vinci used to write mirrored) and adds citations and transcriptions for parts that are unreadable or very hard to read and open animations of some of the designs in action.

Access the codices here: http://leonardo.bne.es/ 

 

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Mining Litecoin with Minecraft

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Dec 102012
 
Litecoin Minecraft Server

On my quest to get some money in Bitcoin, the most established Digital Crypto-Currency, without spending anything I’ve had a look at quite a few options.

I started Mining Bitcoin on CPU, that gave me almost 0 results. After that, I had a look at referral programs and click to earn pages. From there I found Litecoin, a currency with a lot lower value, but aimed at CPU Mining (bitcoins an experiment and Bitcoin, an update). the results are average to bad until Recently.

Recently, because I found, what can be the best way to earn, spend and use the Litecoin currency. If not the best, it is probably by far, the most fun way: A Minecraft Server that uses Litecoins as the in-game Currency of the economic system: http://www.spendlitecoins.com.

On this server, each block has it’s Litecoin value and can be bought, sold at in-game shops or traded with other players. I have not spent a lot of time playing around yet, but I hope that soon, I’ll be able to tell you more on the practical side of things.

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Go Retro – Atari Technolostagia

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Oct 232012
 
pong

Technolostagia: The term Technolostagia describes a sentimental longing for technological items from the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. This time it’s something I found in the Imaginarium shop. (available online in quite a few countries) They are now selling a couple of toys that catch the interest of many of the Atari generation:

The feeling of the famous Atari console from the 80′s has been reproduced quite well in two versions, the classic Joystick and an games hall console version. 2 Sprites and 128 Colors! They work on batteries and use an s-video connector to be able to hook it up to any TV set.

Both come with their own set of 10 games included:

Console

  • Alpine Ski
  • Space Invaders
  • Birdie King
  • Bubble Bobble
  • Tube-It
  • The Legend of Kage
  • The Fairyland Story
  • Puzznic
  • Quix
  • Chak´n Pop
 Joystick

  • Pong
  • Asteroids
  • Breakout
  • Centipede
  • Gravitar
  • Circus Atari
  • Adventure
  • Missile command
  • Realsports volleyball
  • Yari’s Revenge

On the Spanish Imaginarium Site:

Console: http://www.imaginarium.es/58714/ecommerce_1/58714

Joystick: http://www.imaginarium.es/54015/ecommerce_12/54015/

 

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Disney’s Interactive Plant Technology

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Oct 232012
 
interactive plant tech

A while back I came across the site of Disney Research and was surprised about the amount and kind of projects they had ongoing. I really did not expect a lot more than investigations and projects around audience interaction or Disneyland rides. I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled on the page of Disney’s Interactive Plant Technology.

One of them is around investigating the way a plant can be used to interact with a computer. This might sound slightly confusing, but you only have to look at the embedded video to understand what I’m on about.

Visualizing the energy that a plant emits is, aside from beautiful, a great way to see how a plant or a flower interact with its environment. Especially when the method used is not invasive and does not damage the plant (it would be different if the energy would flow in the opposite direction).

I was expecting an informative note at the end of this video. Something along the lines of “No Plants where hurt during the recording of this video”.

More information on http://www.disneyresearch.com/research/projects/hci_botanicus_drp.htm

 

 

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Mojang (Minecraft) and the UN habitat program Team-up – Block by Block

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Sep 062012
 
Mindcraft recration of Nairobi Settlement playground

Mojang Games, most famous for their sandbox game Minecraft, has teamed up with the UN in the UN Habitat program for a project called Block by Block. The aim is to have kids in underdeveloped countries have a say in the way their future environment is shaped.

This is the second project in which Minecraft is used to give people voice on the way they would like to see their neighbourhood. In Sweden they run the “Mina Kvarter” project together with the Swedish Housing that aims on giving concrete proposals for the refurnishing of large Swedish suburbs built in the 50′s and 60′s.

If you’re in Stockholm in the coming 3 years, you can visit the Technical Museum, where you can give the Mindcraft version of the project a try, look at innovations people proposed and suggest your own.

This time the project aims at upgrading 300 public spaces by 2016. One project in Nairobi is already in planning and you can see a screenshot of the area compared to the version created in Minecraft.

Mindcraft recration of Nairobi Settlement playground

click for a bigger image

The biggest advantages of using Minecraft for such projects is the ease of use and the possibility to work on “worlds” with many people in the same time. It might even be interesting to put the maps up on public servers so people from all over the world can have a look and participate in the thought process.

If you’re interested in something like this, but for your own project, there is quite an informative threat on the Minecraft forum about mapping real-world places in Minecraft. The results are quite good and I will definitively give it a shot. If you’re looking into mapping out smaller things or even people to Minecraft have a look at the Minecraft Kinect hack documented very well here by Nathan Viniconis.

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Minecraft Goodies – Tardis Avatar Skin

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Jul 022012
 
2011-12-14_12.33.17

Cleaning up the incredible mess which is my Desktop, I came across a few things (Minecraft related) that might be interesting for a selected (very) few.

A couple of months ago, as mentioned in an earlier post, buying Minecraft was one of my best (and only) spending on a pc game in many years. The first thing that I did was create a Tardis avatar…

Creating the avatar is as easy as explained on Minecraft.net when you’ve logged in and look at your profile page:

“To create your own skin, first download the reference skin. That’s your template for creation. Then edit it with your favourite image editing tool.”

It took a bit to get something a bit decent, as the source image is really quite small. You can see the results here:

 

The skin itself:Minecraft Tardis SkinHow it looks in the game:

Minecraft Screenshot with Tardis Skin

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Lotus Notes 6/7 Hack 1 – Use Notes to Run System Commands

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Apr 272012
 
LotusNotes6_logo

Aside of being a (pretty bad) mail client, Lous Notes is quite a powerful non-relational database platform. You can see some examples in the other posts in the Lotus Notes category. Here is a hack that shows a bit of hidden power in the ln 6/7 client.

You can use the (quite bad) internal web-browser to access some functionality of the host system. This can be particularly useful in a locked-down environment (ex. Citrix).

Many people in a IT-Support environment will recognise this situation. You need to access the command prompt, but cannot, since it is not available through the Citrix published apps or desktop.

Here’s a way you can work-around this by using the Lotus Notes Client:

In the Lotus Notes Client, check if Lotus Notes is set as the Default Internet Browser. If this is not so, it will most probably open the links in the Microsoft Internet Exporer Window, which is limitred by the system limitations.

You can access this setting in the Location Settings (File ->Preferences -> Location preferences)

Once done, you need to check that the Address bar is present in the Client Top toolbar.

To access the Windows command prompt, open the following link in the address bar:

file://c:/windows/system32/cmd.exe

(somehow I could not make it work using the environment variable like %system% so you’d have to know where your windows folder is located)

From there, you are free to go :) Have Fun!

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Google Science Fair 2012 Teams Up With Mindstorms

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Mar 162012
 
legolise it

This year, Google’s science fair teams up with LEGO Mindstorms. The Google Science fair, although limited to the younger among us, always generates a great list of good and innovative ideas.

This year, sponsored by LEGO Mindstorms, we will hopefully see some more applications of Mindstorms in the field of science. Sign up is ending the end of this month (for all you that are, or have kids that are between 14 and 18 years old).

There are some really nice projects and videos with background information from this one and previous Science Fairs, on the Science Fair Youtube channel.

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