So, apparently the Empire State Building upgraded the lights on their roof to be LEDs.  I have to say, that was an excellent choice.  I’ve always accepted the 3 different colors as simple fact and never requested more, usually when you do that complicates things.  But now that I’ve seen this I have to say that that was a very well made choice.

Hopefully things wont get too crazy later on, and it won’t be a different display every night, or week, or month, or whatever.  I like the simplicity of thing, no need to go crazy.  And if all else fails, red, white, & blue will never go out of style.

Also, since it’s all high tec, and LED and whatnot, I bet it’s computer controlled, and if it’s computer controlled, I bet it’s connected to the internet somewhere, and, if it’s connected to the internet, then it’s hackable.  How long before you think it gets hacked to display something unapproved?

I give it 6 months.

40,000 peices of K’nex, 8 months of work, 450 feet of track, 5 lifts, custom computer controlled crane.  That is some serious dedication there, serious.

As I was watching this I wished for 2 things.  One, to hear what it sounds like without the nice piano music playing over it.  Often times these ball machines are extremely loud, and overpowering.

Then I saw the LEDs on certain parts of it, mainly the spinning funnel part, and the crane.  He also has some LED balls.  So at first i wanted to see it at night in the dark, but then I figured that the duh, it’s dark you won’t see much of anything .  But I forgot 2 things, one, how bright LEDs are, two, he had LED balls, and the shadows that turn up because of the spinning of the balls was awesome.  Really something great.

{MAKE}

It’s been awhile since I posted about Tetris, granted, not much can change in a 26 year old game.  There’s only so many times you can see it on the side of a building before it gets repettitive.  This however is a new way to play Tetirs.

What’s more, the people who made it, some smart people at MIT, made 2 of them, and made them multiplayer.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there is almost no way to make versus Tetris enjoyable, either to play or to watch.  And, I won’t say that this was fun to watch, because the guy on the right was absolutely horrible at it.  I don’t know if I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and saying he lost on purpose to the girl, (which is acceptable), but the way he played is just not acceptable.  You can let some one win, and you can just utterly suck at something, I’m afraid that that guy falls into the latter.

{Engadget}

Anyway, after the click you got my 3 favorite concepts form the past month or so of my stumbling around the internetz.  Enjoy them, and remember if they ever come out and become products, I owe someone a dollar*

Paper to Pencil

To start off we have the waste paper to pencil recycler thing by Yanko Design.  They claim they don’t know how it works.  That’s because it doesn’t work.  It’s a fucking concept of an idea that someone had.  The idea behind it is to take paper, and tightly wrap it around a lead pencil core.  So you get to recycle the paper that you go through like candy into pencils that you’re lucky if you go through one a month.  Hell, I still have pencils on my desk from 10 years ago.  Not a very “green” way to do stuff, unless you sell those pencils.  But as can be seen in the photo, the pencil still retains some information from the paper used, so big companies with secrets to hide wouldn’t exactly benefit from selling pencils that you can put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle of their crimes against humanity.

That gives me an idea on how to encrypt some information though…

Windstalk Power

If there’s one area of the world that has more concepts than all the others combined its the so called “green energy” one.  On an average month I will come accross at least 10 new concept designs that plan to revolutionize the way we make electricity, and live our every day lives.  200% efficiency rates, removal of carbon from the atmosphere, and peace on earth.  Those are actual promises I’ve read about claims to these awesome environmental friendly solutions**.

The most interesting, or at least interesting in the sense that I understand how it works and one day, many, many moons from now, it could become a real technology,*** is the Windstalk power generators.

The idea behind this new and exciting power generator is that it uses the expansion and compression from these tall stalks bending in the wind to produce electricity.  Now, from what I understand the way those piezoelectric parts produce the electricity while the wind blows.  And because of the turbulance inside the tightly packed “park” they will bend and sway more and create more power.  Now that’s a pretty neat concept, and then they take it one step too far by saying the concrete bases will collect water and allow plants to grow wild in the no-mans land inbetween.  Thought that wasn’t enough, well each stalk has an LED that will glow with the intensity of the power being produced creating a nice ambiance effect, and they hope that people will want to walk through there at night under the artificial stars and enjoy the quite clean energy being produced.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Here’s an idea, why don’t you buy 30 or 40 acres up in Nevada, and build this out with your own money and then see just how successfull it is.  Then you can shop it around to the different cities and towns with all your feel good happiness stuck on for good measure.

Air Umbrella

The air umbrella is perhaps the simplest thing, that simply will not work.  The idea is to have a plastic stick that sucks air in from the bottom, and blows it out the top super fast to protect you from the rain.  Cool right.  Wrong.  You know how fast the air will have to be traveling to protect you from the elements.  Very fast.  So, you know what that means, you need a super powerfull, and therefore super loud motor in the stick to move that air.  Then that motor will use up electricity like there’s no tomorrow, and you’ll need some major batteries, or it will only last 10 minutes.

Now, say you’re walking down the street and its raining out, you don’t care cause you have a hat on, and the rain doesn’t bother you too much.  But you see this person walking too, they have no umbrella so you get close to them to pass, and BAM! hit in the face with cold air and lots of water.  That’s enough to make most people flip their shit.  Lucky for the other person they have a giant heavy stick cannon to defend themselves with.

*no one will get a dollar

**may or may not be true.

***in an alternate universe

That really is some insane piece of work.  I read the forum post, and looked at the pictures, and even then I can only sorta kinda understand all the stuff that went into making that thing.  I want to make one, but I don’t think that I have the technical knowledge to make it work as well as that video, cause let’s be honest, that video is pretty ace.

Ok, well, maybe the whole assembly doesn’t look that ace, but the video of it in the dark on the other hand, that’s pure gold right there.

Just look at the detail in that frame, which is made of LED leadoffs, soldered together.  I am no where near skilled enough to do that.  But I’d try.

I like LEDs, I think they are pretty ace, and I use them often.  I’ve made and modified my fair share of flashlights, but this one takes the cake for crazy.

500 superbright white LEDs, 50 watts of power used, blinding light, and something that probably weighs a good 20lbs makes this a monster.

Look at all those LEDs, I understand that they were sanded down a bit so they fit nicely, but still, that’s just crazy, look at the back, and all that soldering, and wiring.

I had a hard enough time soldering my table, and that was 6 different panels all spread outwith lots of room to mess up, this is all crammed together just begging to make a short.

And in case you were concerned that it was all for nothing, it really does create alot of light.  I wish there was a lumen value on it though.  Because it would almost certaintly be easier to use one of these which are also 50 watts, and 4000 lumens.  I’m almost certain that that value is larger then the flashlight they made.  But then again where’s the fun of soldering together 500 LEDs?

{MAKE | hacknmod}

I looked for a video explaining how the newer LED based traffic lights work, and look, but couldn’t find one.  Probably because as the guy said above, it looks much like the computer you’re reading this on, and does everything you can think of and then some.

Still it’s neat to see how things worked before we had computers to do everything for us.

{MAKE}

Bottle wall (no sound) from Alex Beim on Vimeo.

That’s a pretty neat thing to make.  It was made from empty bottles of Bacardi.  Now, I think this could be made much more interesting if you made it with all sorts of different bottles.  Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Jack Dainel’s, whatever ever else you prefer to drink, and hell, throw in some beer bottles too.  That would make for a much more interesting display.  All the different colored and shapped glass interacting to form weird cool shapes and designs.

If you were really interested, you could do it will full bottles, but I think that would get alittle expensive, and probably not make it look as good.

{MAKE | Create Digital Motion}

I like tables.  I like weird interesting, not normal tables.  I like electronic tables.  I like this new 64 RGB LED table that Edo in Germany made.  It is nice, and well beyond anything I can make in my spare time.  But I like it.  I would have made it 128 pixels wide, just so you can get more resolution, but this is nice.  Maybe for his next one he’ll make it bigger.

I like how it responds to noise, and movement. That’s some interesting implementations there.

Plus don’t the aluminum sides look nice!

Check out some more videos and photos over at Hacked Gadgets

You can download the full .pdf over at BBspot.

My favorite house:

Yea it’s a couple years old, and yea it’s a horrible quality video, but damn, is it impressive.  That guy had the internet video 3 years ago, I remember it, it was so popular, it was sent to snopes, which confirmed it.

Continuing the lights to music setting, here is another house, with more TSO, this time its Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24.

Much better quality video, but still damn impressive.

Here’s a less intensive musical themed light display:

It’s nice and laid back and features “traditional” Christmas Music.

Here’s another non TSO house:

I really like the “jumping fountains” things.

Here’s another more intense display to Carol of the Bells, not the TSO version:

It’s nice, not as professional at all which is what makes it one of my favorites of the list. The neighbor’s lights in response though is great.

All those awesome houses being shown, I prefer more traditional, non-computerized display of lights better.  Like the one below:

I guarantee that no one on his block knows what that is {source}

Also, i like my lights with old molded plastic from the 1980s that’s all faded and awesome.