Macbraughton
Culture – Creativity – ConflictThe Potential of Spintronics
Posted onOctober 24, 2009In this Q & A session with Physics World, David Awschalom discusses the current uses and future possibilities of harnessing the spin of electrons. This emerging field is called spintronics, and it’s potential applications range from massively increased memory storage to the building of functional quantum computers.
Soft Morphing Mobile Robot
Posted onOctober 15, 2009Those folks at DARPA are again up to something strange again, this thing is called the Chembot. It’s hard to watch, robots aren’t supposed to be mushy.
Real Transforming Robot
Posted onOctober 4, 2009What else can I say, this is incredible. Maybe transforming robots are going to be a lot more than just science fiction.
Who Said Pigs Don’t Fly
Posted onSeptember 3, 2009I know I said I hated facebook, but I’m really impressed with how it has become such a good place to share things with friends and family. They have made the privacy controls a lot better and a lot easier to use, and there just isn’t the spam or noise that there are on other sites like myspace or twitter.
That said, when I started using facebook there weren’t that many Americans on it, so not many people that I knew before moving to Canada. Now there are tons, including a lot of people I haven’t seen or talked to in years. Talking to them has brought back a lot of memory and emotion, which inspired me to put this up.
To all of my friends and family who live far away, or for whatever reason I don’t get to see or talk to as often as I wish I could, I just wanted to say I miss you, I love you… I remember you and think about you all of the time.
Bugbase Brings Open Hardware to the Masses
Posted onJune 25, 2009I’m starting to get really excited about the emerging field of open hardware. The primary concept is analagous to the open software movement in terms of making hardware that can be modified by the user. Bug Labs is now selling a modular computing device running Linux sofware with an ARM processor. The possiblities for this are absolutely unlimited.
Here is an interview with Eric von Hippel from MIT discussing one of the Bugbase modules that has been developed in his honor, the BugvonHippel breakout module that expands the capabilities of the Bugbase into being used as a controller for about any electronic device you could think of. There is also a lot of really good discussion and speculation about where the future economy is going, where design and innovation is user-driven, rather than by the manufacturers.
After all that, I just can’t wait to get my hands on one of these!
Robots, Cars & Megan Fox
Posted onJune 18, 2009Despite all of the cheesiness that pretty much anything done by Michael Bay, well, maybe even because of it, the next Transformers flick Revenge of the Fallen looks promising as the biggest film of the summer (or at least the biggest robots, although I hear the robots in Terminator Salvation are pretty big too). Robots, cars & Megan Fox… it doesn’t really need to be coherent in any way. Did I mention Megan Fox?
I made a comment to my wife while we watched the trailer that I guess they were working on a trilogy, with Revenge of the Fallen sounding a little too much like The Empire Strikes Back, and sure enough, as per imdb, Transformers 3 is in development.
Add Star Trek and it sounds like a perfect drive-in combo. Sweet!
Rogers Profiles my Wife in Attempts to Sell a Phone
Posted onJune 4, 2009So I’ve been telling my wife for months to wait to buy a new cellphone because although the iPhone is really cool, Google’s Android platform is even cooler being open source and running Linux and all. I’ve got to give it to Rogers… I had read that they were planning to launch their “revolution”in the beginning of June but haven’t had the time lately to catch all the details. Just now I found this video with none other than Canadian/American actor Joshua Jackson as the Rogers spokesperson for their launch of the HTC Dream and Magic phones.
It’s a little creepy, because next to David Duchovny I don’t know if there is any other actor that my wife begins involuntarily salivating over every time his image appears (don’t worry, I don’t get the David Duchovny thing either). I never thought that there was such a specific nerdy female demographic in Canada but apparently there is and my wife is the target market.
I was going to try to get her to keep waiting because there are rumours on the internet that the new Canadian wireless entrant Globalive (aka Yak) is supposed to be coming out with the HTC phones later this year at much more competetive prices, but I don’t know if I can outsell Joshua Jackson. I showed her the promo video and before I knew what was happening she started watching youtube clips of him and downloading season 1 of Fringe off of bittorrent and telling me about his upcoming movies.
Damn you Rogers, I admit I am dead sexy but I haven’t been in any major movies yet. If she buys the G1 from you, you should at least give me a cut because I was the one who told her that Android was cool in the first place.
Simple Stem Cell Thereapy Cures Blindness
Posted onJune 4, 2009Using stem cells from the patient’s own good eye, University of South Wales researchers are curing blindness in an extremely simple and non-invasive procedure. Makes one wonder what kind of other “miracle” medical treatments are just beyond the horizon.
Flying Penguins
Posted onApril 24, 2009No this is not a joke, those Germans are really up to some crazy stuff…
World Builder
Posted onApril 21, 2009This is an extremely moving film about a possible future… there is no dialogue, so ephemeral, so beautiful.
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