Zen and the Art of Prop Making

The original TRON movie was an exciting voyage into a virtual word where anything was possible so seeing the title paired with the word "duck" piqued my curiosity. I don't know why but there is something inherently funny about a duck or anything relating to them. I discovered this video ad for duct tape which, if you are familiar with the original TRON , is a witty send up of the classic motorcycle sequence in the movie. The original TRON The movie was originally released in 1982 by Walt Disney Pictures and was directed by Steven Lisberger. It starred Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn in the lead role with Bruce Boxleitner in a dual role of program/user Tron . The movie tells the story of Flynn as he attempts to hack into a major corporations mainframe to prove that they had stolen his work. He gets transported into a virtual digital world as a unique program/User. Here he teams up with Tron, one of his creations, to defeat the Master Control Program, who has been contr...

The now lost Spirit rover mission, initially planned to last 90 days, landed on Mars in January 2004 and sent data back to Earth for more than six years. However, with two damaged drive wheels and getting stuck in the sand in May 2009 and with its solar panels facing away from the sun, the Spirit rover did not have sufficient power to operate its internal heaters and didn't survive the bitter Martian winter where temperatures dropped to minus 67 degrees Farenheit. No contact from Spirit rover Last communication with the Mars Spirit rover was March 22nd, 2010. Despite efforts to regain communication over the past several months NASA officials have decided it is a lost cause and will be *closing the book* on the mission this week. The Spirit rover twin, Opportunity, is still functioning on the other side of the planet and has travelled over 18 miles since its arrival in 2004 and is on its way to Endeavour Crater. More information about the Mars Spirit rover and other rov...

The Waterfall Illusion by Escher, like his other drawings, is a sublime example of 3D illusions drawn in 2D. Some of the images are not so impossible to recreate in real life. A recent example I discovered was his 1961 drawing of a Waterfall Illusion recreated in real life. The illusion only works from one viewpoint but this is necessary with many illusions. How the Waterfall Illusion works While most two-dimensional artists use relative proportions to create an illusion of depth, Escher here and elsewhere uses conflicting proportions to create the visual paradox. The Waterfall Illusion has the structure of a Penrose triangle, an impossible object designed independently by Roger Penrose and Oscar Reutersvärd. Below is a video of a clever model reconstruction of the Waterfall Illusion drawing. Using elements cut in perspective the illusion comes alive when seen from a particular viewpoint. Many Renaissance churches used this single viewpoint idea to achieve fantastic effects o...

When searching for information on the Internet you want relevant content in your search results. Usually you get relevant content for your query in the first few pages of results. If the information you seek is more than 6 months old it will be buried beneath tens of millions of irrelevant results because it is deemed not relevant enough to make it to the top of search results. This makes the relevant content you are after virtually impossible to find. Google judges relevant content as content that is updated regularly as opposed to static content. An historical document is static content but it is still relevant content . Static historical content should be just as accessable as regularly updated content and should not be prioritised in importance by companies who control access to this information and have a financial interest in search results. Is this trend what we have to look forward to in the future? It's hardly a satisfactory state of affairs. "What's Hot" v...

A quick search on YouTube for Rubik cube robots will illustrate how many people have devoted their time to solving this puzzle. There are robots that look like humans that have been designed to solve the Rubik cube puzzle but they seem clunky and awkward in their operation. They do finally solve the puzzle but none of them do it as quickly as Ruby, the brainchild of students at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. Not only does Ruby solve the Rubik cube puzzle in record time but her design and operation is a beauty to behold. Ruby is also a work of art and a credit to her designers. YouTube Videos of Rubik cube You think Ruby is fast solving the Rubik cube puzzle? It is still not as fast as a human. Below is world champion Feliks Zemdegs solving the Rubic cube puzzle in record time of 6.24 seconds! Will robotics ever achieve the blinding dexterity of the human hand? More Rubik cube videos available on YouTube.

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...