The Beer-o-bot is a mini fridge that shoots beers from an air cannon and is controlled via a web based iPhone interface. Check it out:
I don’t know about you guys, but even though this project is awesome in itself, this guy seems to have poor taste when it comes to drinking good beer.
Features:
[Youtube]
There are so many interesting bits of space stuff floating about the Innerwebz this week! Planets and moons and asteroids (with moons?!), oh my. Here’s brief rundown of each with links to in-depth articles if you’re of the space geek set.
Our Eighth Planet is so Grown-Up!
Tomorrow, June 12, we celebrate Neptune’s first birthday. The planet was discovered on Sep 24, 1846, the eighth planet will only just complete its first revolution of the sun — 164.79 Earth years in the making. The discovery of Neptune was no accident, as was the case with other planets. We can thank Uranus for giving us a bit of a heads-up; its orbit is so strange that astronomers had to decide whether Newton’s laws were wrong or that something else–something big–was pulling Uranus out of its expected orbit. BBC News has a great article detailing the discovery, along with lots of geekery regarding all the info we’ve discovered in Neptune’s first year.
Mark Titan Off of the “Ideal Vacation Spots” List
What’s summer like on Titan? Saturn’s weird moon sports black and red rainbows, heavy smog and violent storms. There are lakes to take a dip in, but they comprise mostly ethane, and it’s only about -180ºC, so maybe you shouldn’t try to swim after all. Thanks to the Cassini mission and the Huygens lander, the scientific community knows quite a lot about Titan; you can too if you check out New Scientist’s profile on Titan’s Uncanny Moonscape.
Well, That’s Personal
What do astronauts do while they’re in space? And what happens to their social lives, families and “me-time”? The LA Times has an interesting look at the personal lives of astronauts aboard the ISS. (Bonus: creepy retelling of a spacewalk.)
We Don’t Need No Stinking Science
Not everyone is as enthralled with the Universe as we are. Specfically, we’re talking about the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, which proposed terminating funding for the James Webb Space Telescope. (I’m not going to lie.; this geek shed a tear at the thought.) The most complex space observatory ever conceived–and successor to aging grandpa Hubble–has been under construction since 2004, and NASA won’t go down without a fight. The Guardian reports on the ongoing battle.
Vesta’s Possible Moon
Since 1994, we’ve had evidence of natural satellites orbiting asteroids; an image of Ida and her moon, Dactyl, confirmed what seemed a likely but bizarre condition of extraplanetary bodies. Everything gets a moon! Now as the Dawn spacecraft approaches the asteroid, researchers are looking closely for Vesta’s sisters, should they exist. The mission isn’t solely to discover asteroid moons, though; Dawn’s primary objective is to build a global map of Vesta and record its topography. The details are in PhysOrg’s recent piece on Vesta.
Can Colbert and Stewart Save the Final Frontier?
With the space shuttle Atlantis seeing its final launch last week, questions about the space program’s future are everywhere. What’s next, if not the James Webb? Veteran astronauts and NASA officials are making appeals to the President for an extension, but Lauren Feldmen of American University, Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale University, and Edward Maibach of George Mason University have what they think is a better plan: enlist the help of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. For the record, I am not opposed. The team’s report at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association last May asserts that “satirical television news appears to be on par with or even exceed its traditional television news counterparts” in regard to its impact on public awareness of science and technology. Can Comedy Central save science?
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this last piece especially, but if you Sexy Geeks have other space news you think we need to know, drop a link in the comments!
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Some rather awesome star wars/?classic blockbuster mashup movie posters by Australian artist Matt Ranzetta.
[Source]
[GaS] reader Dean R. just sent me this awesome cartoon he drew specifically “with Geeks are Sexy in mind.” Check it out:
Thanks Dean!
Yes! Finally a trailer that actually shows something!
Tintin and his friends discover directions to a sunken ship commanded by Capt. Haddock’s ancestor and go off on a treasure hunt.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is planned for release on December 23rd, 2011.
[Via]
Google has lent its name to a new e-reader device that is the first with the search giant’s bookstore built-in. But the main selling point of the Story is the HD screen resolution.
Manufacturers iRiver tout the device as having 63.8% more pixels than “other e-readers.” That stat bears out if you compare its 768 x 1024 display to the 600 x 800 of the latest Kindle. The company puts those numbers in other ways, calling it the first XGA e-reader of its size (a reference to the computer graphics/monitor standard) and of course using the HD label, which is mathematically correct though what consensus there is on a high definition display generally refers to video rather than still displays.
The real question is whether this makes any practical difference to the reader. While it may well appear crisper in a head-to-head comparison, it’s not as if there has been widespread condemnation of devices such as the Kindle for being too low-res and blurry.
The Story HD is 7.3 ounces with a billed battery life of six weeks, both of which are improvements over the Kindle, though again not points where there’s an obvious shortfall from Amazon. It’s priced as $139.99, ten bucks more than the equivalent Amazon model.
The integration with Google Books is also a little underwhelming on closer examination. Titles from the store can already be read on devices such as the Sony Reader and the Barnes & Noble Nook, albeit only via a PC download and connection. And the store certainly isn’t proving as dominant in its field as many Google services.
To be fair, the idea of being able to buy books and download free titles directly from the portable device is a major selling point of the Kindle. That said, the Story HD is Wi-Fi only (connecting automatically to the Easy WiFi network), so those who truly want access anywhere and everywhere are out of luck.
As far as this device goes, it appears to be in a similar situation as the iPad in the tablet market: to beat the Kindle’s brand awareness you either have to be significantly cheaper or significantly better, and it’s unclear if either the store integration or the high-res display meets that criteria.
But it’s certainly worth watching to see if Google reaches similar partnerships with other manufacturers, or even decides to produce its own machines. After all, there must surely be a market for a Google e-Reader that also has the Chrome browser, even if it could only cope with basic e-mail and plain text web browsing.
Way before Eduard Khil sang the Trolololo song, Saraman tried weaseling his way out of Isengard by singing the infamous words. Hear him out!
[Via]
It must be tough being a superhero in this economy. It’s not like the job market is teeming with positions that require a person to wear spandex, and I would guess it’s a lot harder to gallivant across city rooftops when you have arthritis and bad knees. Behance has imagined what superheroes (and their nemeses) do to occupy their time once they qualify for AARP. Catwoman is spot on as a boozy bleach blonde.
