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Archive for November, 2009

Design UI: Toss the Surface, Multi-touch Where Ever You Go

30 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in TECH
3D Human CAD Models

I think it’s about time to leave the table-top to coffee spills and action movie fight scenes. Why? Because who needs to interact with a table-top multi-touch surface when you can interact with any surface… anywhere.

Pranav Mistry has his own idea on what it means to fully utilize your environment and all the objects within it. He’s taken a lot of common devices, a dash of augmented reality and slapped it all into a device you wear around your neck. In this recent TED talk he shows you what the possibilities are.

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Friday Smackdown: Shotgun Strider

27 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in NEWS

The process? It is thus. You close all the doors, the small furry ones stay contained. the humpbacked ones scoop up the furry ones and these links take care of the rest.

Alex Ries – You deserve to have your imagination attacked by squid EVA and furry beaked bipod illustration.
Loma BlackForceOne – 783 ponies of power tucked away in this Corvette mod by Loma performance. sweet.
Kuroshio Sea – It’s only the 2nd largest aquarium in the world, behind the Georgia Aquarium and the ocean.
Avatar:Colonel Quaritch – Now you’ll know what Avatar is actually about. It happens Dec. 16th.
Swine Flu Deaths – We’re DOOMED! Right after the risk of dying with leprosy.
Matrix Trinity LEGO – That scene where Neo dodges bullets and Trinity says, “Dodge this.” in LEGO.
Play Atari – Six old school Atari games you can play online for free.
61 Free – Desktop apps that is. How many do you use?

The Star Wars Tauntaun Costume With A Little Help from SolidWorks

25 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in DESIGN

I don’t know about you, but the Tauntaun scene in Empires Strikes Back was EPIC. In one captivating scene, it taught us the single best way to survive a blizzard is to have the carcass of a very large, very smelly animal with you.

Scott Holden was equally inspired and decided to create his own Tauntaun costume. He lays out the process he went through, start to finish. You won’t have the warm entrails of a tauntaun to burrow in to, but you will see how he used SolidWorks to make it happen.

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Bicycle Design: I Got Your Forkless Super Cruiser Right Here

24 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in DESIGN

Good news for all of you who inadvertently stick your hands in the front fork of bicycles from time to time. You’re gonna have to go back to sticking them in the chain with this new, totally functional bike design from Olli Erkkila.

Olli, graduate of Lahti University Institute of Design in Finland, not only came up with a super slick, cruiser-style bike, he used his ingenious power of design to boot the front fork right out to give the two-wheeled transport a completely unique, almost floating appearance. Check. it. out.

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Start Screamin’ the Possibilities. Real-Time 3D Scanning via Webcam

23 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in TECH

I know. It’s dinner conversation that goes right along with slamming your hand in the potatoes of the person right next to you. POTATO HAND SLAM… “So, What in the world is Qi Pan up to these days at the ol’ Cambridge University Engineering Department?”

One word for ya. Rowdiness. The boy has spun out a doctoral paper featuring new scanning technology he’s named ProFORMA. He explains it as ‘On-line Rapid Model Acquisition’, but we all know those are just fancy words for what we all lovingly know as… 3D SCANNING. How does it work? Take a look.

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3 servings of Autodesk University (with side order of Las Vegas) Comin’ Right Up.

23 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in NEWS

In one week we’ll be smackin’ ourselves (and you) with some Autodesk University coverage. Why would we do that? Well…for good reason party people. 1) product dev tech 2) Las Vegas 3) ponies 4) they invited us. We’re probably excited. In fact, we’ll probably give some awkward high-fives to people we hardly know.

What else is in store? I have no idea actually, but based on my goal of running through crowded areas with my eyes closed and camera flashing, there’s bound to be some mildly interesting blurriness caught.

Here’s the buzz we’ll be lookin’ for and some details on the conference if you happen to be going along.

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Friday Smack: Helsinki Chucker

20 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in SMACKDOWN

Why I remember clear as cankers. It was an ancient foe, deserving the worst of our back-hands and bayonets, until it bestowed unto us pajamas, warm and cozy and then these links.

Yukari Masuike – Haaayt! Mythical skull tigers? Ice dragon. yes and yes.
The 10 weirdest Physic Facts – For instance, it’s a fact that physics is weird.
Google Swirl – More like little explosions of images rather than a swirl of images.
12 Super Heroes that Should be on 70′s Vans – In place of having your own montage on the side of a 70′s van, these would be the other awesome choices.
Anti-stuff Holiday Gift Guide – There’s nothing like anti-stuff, except for maybe anti-matter or anti-freeze.
Offiline Trailer – Lawnmower man?… not quite. It’s got way better effects and cinematography.
Timelapse Graffiti Mural – three cool things combined and their evolution.
Built Time machine to Kill Hitler – so crazy it just might work.
Visualizing Decline of Empires – the four great maritime empires, reduced to little interacting blobs.

Human Beings Should Be Able To ROCK IT. Specialization is for Insects.

19 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in DESIGN

Out of the list of awesome things you’ve accomplished, including bathing a kitty, chopping celery and catching a pineapple in your mouth, there’s some other things as a human being, and even more, as a design engineer, you should be able to do. If not, you’re doomed.

In response to a guest post here on SolidSmack called Design Engineers, Look Out. You are becoming Extinct, by Matthew Loew, Stephanie Moore-Fuller wrote a rebuttal. It’s an extremely valid article.

The argument is great, but what I loved most was the quote she used from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein (Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land). It sums up and solves a lot of messes and arguments that plague our worries and inaction. Even better, if you said the same thing to anyone, you would likely just get a blank stare back. Here’s the quote…

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Ask The Reader: After Robot Apocalyspe, What Design Task Should Our New Robot Slaves Do? {Poll}

18 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in CULTURE

Of course it’s a valid question! We just can’t ignore that after mankind’s self-imposed moment of singularity, we’ll all basically be fleshy corpuscles in the eyes of of our sentient, mechanized masters. That is until we realize that robots hate anything made of peanut butter. You know it’ll happen.

So, ok, most of you may think that the robots will wipe us out. Here at SolidSmack, we’re naively optimistic, so we’ve just got to know what you think will be delegated to robots… for planning purposes. You just can’t be too prepared.

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Fusion-io ioXtreme SSD Speeds Thru Bandwidth and Your Savings Account

18 Nov, 2009 by Josh Mings in TECH

Out of the millions of things in the world to get really, really embarrassingly excited about, storage read/write speeds are UP there. Are ya with me? YEEEEEEAH.

Start giving your bandwith brothers high-fives, because Fusion-io knows what you want and the latest ioXtreme SSD is setting the standard, at least for the next week, for solid-state memory speeds. Not only are they gonna make your CPU smoke, they’ll also put a good-size hole in the old wallet box.

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