Zen and the Art of Prop Making

The idea of a mechanised suit that gives a human being super strength is not new. Numerous examples of an exoskeleton suit can be found in movies such as Aliens, Iron Man and, more recently, Avatar and District 9. Most people will appreciate how fanciful such concepts are, particularly with modern advances in CGI technology. A practical exoskeleton suit In a good example of life imitating art, the folks at Raytheon have made some pretty impressive steps in making the concept of an exoskeleton suit a reality. The video below shows a working example of the XOS 2, a tethered exoskeleton suit which gives its human operator super strength.

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor. He was born in 1883 and died in 1970 and was best known for his cartoons depicting impossibly complicated machines doing very simple tasks. Any device that is designed to do a very simple task in a highly complicated fashion is known as a Rube Goldberg machine . We all remember as kids seeing a room full of dominos falling in patterns after one is knocked over triggering a chain reaction. The same concept was used in another Rube Goldberg machine - the game called Mousetrap where a ball operates an interconnected series of chutes, levers and buttons on the machine. The "OK Go" Rube Goldberg machine I saw this OK Go video for the first time today and the technical aspects of their machine blew me away. This Rube Goldberg machine that the band OK Go built takes the concept and launches it into the stratosphere! Here is the official OK Go video for the recorded version of "This Too Shal...

The rising popularity of automated comment spam software targeting blogs is annoying. The only thing they have to offer is a bit of entertainment in how badly they are written and how natural sounding they try to be. Comment spam promising to bookmark my posts, informing that they will be telling all their friends how informative my posts are and that they will be coming back again soon leaves me breathless with anticipation. Dumber and dumber comment spam I've decided to dedicate a post to comment spam I've received. All comment spam had no relevance whatsoever to the associated post content and all had URL's linking back to commercial sites. I'm sure you will find much of this comment spam familiar. I've rated them on a score of 1-10 within a category for a bit of fun. - You post great articles. Bookmarked ! ( 1/10 for originality) - Pretty nice article. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog pos...

While researching robots I came across a company who has made a mechanical dog robot. They have made some amazing progress in the science of walking machines. The company is called Boston Dynamics and they have developed a four legged mechanical dog called, surprise surprise, Big Dog. Lifelike mechanical dog As you can see in the video this mechanical dog robot appears almost lifelike in it's movements. At one point a guy tries to push the machine over and it recovers itself! Shots of it navigating an icy surface have to be seen to be believed!