Xeeban’s Musings

Today a nifty device arrived, the Oregon Scientific ATC3K.  It is a small battery powered video camera that stores video on SD cards.  It takes full color digital video at 640 x 480 VGA at 30 frames a second.  It is also waterproof up to about 3 meters, so it is good for all sorts of outdoor activities.

My friends and I have been taking some low quality video with my Sony Cyber Shot during our weekly rides, but the quality of the video is very poor even for uploading to YouTube.  This new camera at VGA resolution should be much nicer.  Not as nice as a real video camera, but not bad.  Plus it’s small enough to mount to a bike helmet and is relatively cheap so destroying it in a crash would not be too much of a loss.  The camera will hold up to a 4GB SD card and uses about 2 gigabytes per hour, so this should enable me to capture 2 hours of continuous footage before having to swap out the SD card.

It comes with several attachment accessories so you can mount the camera to a bicycle or to a helmet.  I’ll probably be helmet mounting the camera to get a little more stability.

So I jumped on the bandwagon and got an iPhone… I must say, it is a sexy and sweet device.  My poor iPod Touch is now neglected and will soon be given away to find a new home.  This device is the killer combination of phone, MP3 player, video player and PDA.  Not to mention the connectivity so you have the web and email all in the palm of your hand.  Amazing.

The new applications that are available are very nice too.  Some are real gems, like Shazam that allows you to identify any song that you might hear playing.  Midomi is a similar app that even identifies songs that you hum or sing.  Totally amazing!

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

… okay, I love this meme.

Ever stay awake at night trying to visualize the 4th dimension? Yeah, me too. It’s a bitch. Here is a site that not only helps… it helps you to visualize the 10th dimension! Halp, brane hurts!

http://www.tenthdimension.com/

The BBC is running
a very interesting article about a device created by Kimiko Ryokai, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab.

The brush can scan any external image or surface and use that to “paint” that texture onto a digital painting.

Ms Ryokai wanted to know what would happen if you could literally suck the ink from the environment.

My last entry about the Babble device led me on a thread of links that wound up at a Wired article about the company that produces it.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67951,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5

Ever wanted a real cone of silence? This company has something that is pretty close: http://www.sonaretechnologies.com/babble.html

It rebroadcasts snippets of your real voice, causing the effect of scrambling what you say so that others cannot understand. It sounds a lot like a room full of people. Very interesting gadget!

A keyboard for the Uber Geek. This is a totally black computer keyboard with nothing at all on the keys. The keys are all blank! The whole thing looks like some stealth ninja keyboard.

http://www.daskeyboard.com

Apparently not having the keys labeled makes one even faster and more accurate with typing after the initial training period.

There is a sexy new iPod just hitting the streets : http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/

It comes in a 2GB and 4 GB version and looks very sweet. I think I may have to get myself a birthday present here soon…

My friend Mark and I have been enjoying a wonderful site on the web called “Ear Plane”. Its a site that has many little ear training tests, both melodic and harmonic. It goes from the very simple to the extremely complicated to the impossible (well, for me anyway… heh).

If you are looking to improve your ear, this is a great place to do it! Check it out at http://www.earplane.com