I dropped by the science march and met some great folks and saw some awesome signs!
Category: Science
Defcon 2016 photos and videos
Close ups of my much coveted badge. Some hardware and base stations of the wifi village. Both Information Society and Berlin played on Saturday night! Shot a video of an amazing demo from the Car Hacking Village. A car modified to play games instead of driving. Also, the best of my flight home. Some great pictures of Hoover dam and some of the solar farms and mesas as we few home.
Defcon is on!
A little disappointed about the electronic badges selling out. Already met some amazing people. Enjoyed some great talks. Watched some live social engineering and a bomb defusal contest. Tons of great hardware hacking. An arduino powered robot poured me a shot!
(Bunnies laptop!)
Dentistry of the future…
A recent mouthpiece fitting exposed me to the latest in dental impressions. I filmed it, the tech was quite impressive. A camera takes pictures of my teeth and software stitches it into a 3D model. I only wish i could take home the model files. sure beat the molding clay in my mouth. (though it did take a little bit longer)
The Pi Day of the Century!
I hope that you are doing something with circles to celebrate. I am enjoying the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Festivities start at 1pm.
The Future has awesome amazing infrastructure like this!
Solar Freaking Roadways! This is even better that the smart roads i have been reading about for years! LED roadways make so much sense. Not just to warn drivers of obstacles ahead, or to change parking lot configurations. It can even change lane configurations based on traffic patterns. Like the golden gate, our roads could shift the number of east vs west bound lanes to account for traffic. The only down side is the cost, i’ve seen estimates all over the map. How much did our present roadways cost if you added it all up? I bet that has been plenty expensive as well. What about the Railroads? These things are expensive, but infrastructure is worth it. When we spend money like this we are paying ourselves to build a better tomorrow.
Awesome Tour of the ISS!
Check out this amazing tour of the International Space Station:
Endeavors Final Flight
Caught the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavor as it passed over Malibu today. Enjoy my terrible photography. I hope this mobile upload comes out. I may have to upload again once I get to my office.
Solar eclipse seen from LA!
From the northern part of Los Angeles, i spied the eclipse through a pair of plastic and cardboard eclipse viewing glasses. The viewing spectacles were provided by the Griffith Park Observatory. It was a spectacular sight, despite only being a partial eclipse and only the beginning. I was amazed when i pointed the lens of my small digital camera though the disposable glasses and was able to take a pretty decent picture. enjoy. depending on where you live, you may still catch it in your area. Look up in the sky, but protect your eyes.
Hanging out with robots and astrophysicists!
I visited JPL yesterday for their anual open house. I got to see many of their amazing toys. We even got to the spacecraft assembly facility. A giant clean room where the final assembly of their spacecrafts, probes, satellites and landers take place. For a room that is roughly 50 years old, it looks bran spank’n new. How do you maintain a clean room with a giant door big enough for a spacecraft to fit in? well, first off the giant door opens to an airlock. Second, the pressure is actually higher inside the clean room then outside. this way, if any air escapes, it is clean air escaping the clean room and not the other way round. I also learned about JPL/NASA’s spin on one of my favorite inventions, the Tweel! it’s a combination tire/wheel. It actually resembles a bicycle wheel more then a car wheel in that it is suspended by the spokes from the top rather then held up from the bottom. Apparently, rubber doesn’t do so well i a vacuum or in the cold (forgive me, i grew up in LA). That is why they make theirs out of some kind of space aged glass polymer. neat stuff. here are some photos. enjoy.
