MIT Uses Invisible Rays to Transform Your Hand Into a Mouse

Filed under Found on the Web

Okay, that headline might be a little misleading, even though it’s more or less accurate. Because at MIT’s Media Lab, Pranav Mistry has developed a system that uses a small laser and an infrared camera to track your hand movements as though your hand was a computer mouse, and your first two fingers were that mouse’s left and right buttons.

According to Gajitz the hardware cost about $20. Because that’s an end user’s price you can figure that a manufacturer would be able to install the system for even less – enough less, for example, to include the system on the left and right sides of a laptop so that both right handed and left handed users could mouse away, right out of the box.

And because the software interprets the movement of the user’s fingers any number of gestures could be supported. Your desktop could become a multitouch surface that you could use without leaving fingerprints all over your display (I’m looking at you, iPad).

Cartoon mice are a free bonus!

Once upon a time when Virtual Reality was a phrase you actually heard, I used to daydream about a 3D modeler that I could set up like a wood shop. Grab a box primitive, run it through the imaginary band saw, clean it up on the imaginary planer, drill it with the imaginary drill press, carve it with the imaginary chisel… this isn’t that, but it’s tantalizingly like it in the abstract.

Wired’s Video Tour of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship

Filed under Found on the Web

Remember the Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship from last year’s Burning Man? Wired has posted this video tour of the completed installation – with its engine room, life sciences lab, and pilot’s station. According to its rocketeers the rocket is headed for San Francisco where it’ll get a new “bus stop” entry (or maybe that’s an observation area: I can’t quite tell from the description).

[tags]raygun gothic rocketship, retro future, rocket ship, science fiction, life size, art, prop, installation[/tags]

Turn Vintage Typewriters into USB Keyboards!

Filed under Found on the Web

An idea whose time has gone! Just what I was looking for.

The USB typewriter is a non-destructive mod for a mechanical typewriter that converts it into a keyboard that can be used with any Mac or PC – it’s shown here being used with an iPad, which is the only productive use I’ve heard of for one of those.

The conversion does require some sanding of the typewriter’s crossbar which makes contact with the keys’ arms.

You can purchase complete USB typewriters (current offerings are $400 or $450), a prefab kit ($150), or a bag of parts ($75) to solder together yourself. For $200 you can ship your own antique typewriter to the maker and have it converted.

I would love to pair an old portable typewriter with a mini-ITX or Via computer and a little LCD screen for the world’s weirdest and most wonderful laptop. Throw in a retro telephone handset for a cell phone, and look! A mobile vintage office!

Installation instructions and more information at the USB Typewriter site.

Vintage Pulp Cover Art from ‘Fantastic Novels’, at Golden Age Comic Book Stories

Filed under Found on the Web

Thrill! to twenty-five covers for Fantastic Novels, from 1941 to 1951, at Golden Age Comic Book Stories!

Gasp! at the striking cover art by Frank R. Paul, Virgil Finlay, Norman Saunders, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, and Raphael DeSoto!

Be Amazed! to discover that most of the A. Merritt stories I read in the early seventies seem to have first seen print here, in these Astounding Pages!

Well. Or not. I mean, that’s probably more amazing to me than to you. And doesn’t that space ship on the left have a duck’s head? Yep. I thought so.

Great stuff here. Everything from Finlay’s rifleman on the back of a giant mutant bee to the unashamed mad science of this beaker-bearing biologist with his tiny man in a tube.

Just the thing for a Monday morning. Trust me on this one.

Rocket Girl 3D Model by Antony Ward

Filed under Computer Graphics, Found on the Web

Just spotted this at Deviant Art: Antony Ward’s 3D model of a "Rocket Girl" character, via Silo, ZBrush and Maya. Really nice sculptural work there, and an interesting approach to her hair. I don’t think the character herself needs much explanation, since it goes something like this:

Girl x (Rocket Pack+Fins) + (2 x boots / raygun) = awesome

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

She’s part of a new book on Silo 3D that Ward is working on. There’s more information about that at his web site. His earlier books are Game Character Development and Game Character Development with Maya.

Snoopy Flying Ace – Vintage Dogfighting and Canine Dementia

Filed under Found on the Web

I don’t own an XBox, but I guess if I did I’d totally fail to resist the complete wackiness of Snoopy Flying Ace. According to the Ars Technica review this game explores the deep and disturbing hallucinations of everyone’s favorite beagle as he dogfights with foes like a gigantic zeppelin (protected by force fields), and swoops in crazy Immelmans past the Eiffel tower, a beagle-shaped Sphinx, and… wait for it… a frozen dinosaur.

Power-ups include a doghouse-shaped plane and a tail gunner – Woodstock the bird. I can’t believe I think so, but the game sounds like loads of fun. It’s available through the XBox Live Arcade.

Robotic “Dog” from USC Shows Impressive Pathfinding Over Unfamiliar Terrain… and Makes Us Think It’s Alive

Filed under Found on the Web

This is described as a prototype robotic dog – but let’s get this out of the way right at the start. The shape and texture of its robotic body makes it look like a huge beetle, which seems a bit creepy.

That impression fades, though, as you watch it move. Its four legs are constructed like a dog’s legs and its movement is captivating. As the robot explores rough and unfamiliar terrain it applies its experience of similar situations and tries to find its way, sometimes slipping and recovering. Those moments are the ones that really make it seem alive and you find yourself cheering it on.

In fact the way it pauses and thinks about what to do next give the impression of awareness. It’s very interesting to watch and quite a technical achievement – just imagine yourself trying to train a machine to behave this way. Its interactions with a changing environment are especially, well, awesome.

But like most who’ve viewed the demonstration I find myself thinking less about how smart these researchers are, and more about the way we react to the machine in motion and why we perceive it as an autonomous creature. I like the idea of something like this, with Roomba-like instructions to explore and patrol, making way for me on the stairs and showing up next to my bed in the morning.

[tags]robotics, robot, motion, quadruped, dog, bug, usc, bring me my coffee[/tags]

“Choice of the Dragon” game – and its Downloadable Engine

Filed under Found on the Web, Web Development

I just had some fun playing through a text adventure game called Choice of the Dragon (try it!).

It was created with a system called Choicescript. Choicescript games are free to play on the web, but are also available as iPhone and Android apps. There’s (so far) one more game called Choice of Broadsides.

In a lot of ways these resemble what I’ve done with Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual – in fact the basic differences are owed to the two facts that I’m simultaneously developing for the web and for print, and I’m illustrating my story nodes. As it stands the Choicescript games don’t support illustrations but it wouldn’t take much custom Javascript (and/or php) in the page template to fix that. Choicescript allows you to set variables depending on the player’s actions and one of those variables could easily be the URL of an illustration. A little document.write, and you’re there.

If you’re interested in playing with Choicescript – some user-created games get hosted on the choiceofgames site – you can start out with the blog.

[tags]text adventure, game engine, choice of games, choice of the dragon, choice of broadsides, roll your own[/tags]

Go Hero adds “Dan Dare” and “The Shadow” Action Figures to its Line Up

Filed under Found on the Web

Now that Go Hero’s Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon action figures are out in the wild, they’re about to be joined by the lantern-jawed British spaceman Dan Dare and the, well, lantern-nosed pulp crimefighter, The Shadow.

Each of these 1:6 scale figures is now available for pre-order (the photos are from prototypes).

Not content just to fight crime and patrol the spaceways, Go Hero is also working on the incredible BAT BOY from the late lamented Weekly World News.

I’m also curious about the Atomodel, a 1:6 scale blank action figure. It’s got over 30 points of articulation and offers you a blank maquette on which to work – so if you’re dreaming up a new steampunk Star Wars, or, well, whatever, this could be just the thing for you. There’s even a version with an integrated MP3 player for those all-important pew-pew effects.

[tags]go hero, collector, action figure, toys, dan dare, the shadow, pulp, comics, atomodel, blank action figure, maquette, armature, nerd it yourself[/tags]

“Premake” Trailer for “The Empire Strikes Back”, Circa 1950

Filed under Found on the Web

YouTube user whoiseyevan presents this re-imagined "premake" trailer for The Empire Strikes Back as a 1950 movie serial. Warning: if you think about that for too long you’ll fall into a self-referential quantum singularity. But great fun – I’d much rather watch this than the actual movie.

But wait! There’s more! whoiseyevan’s channel also streams other premake trailers for thrill-packed movies like Ghost Busters with Bela Lugosi and Bob Hope, or Raiders of the Lost Ark with Charlton Heston and Peter Lorre. We’ll just have to wait for Connie Willis’ Remake to come true before we can see the whole thing.