Saturday
View From House Snow Balls
Prove that the simple snow balls may be something more than just a souvenir to come from Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz.
They served as inspiration for the view from their house in the highlands of eastern Pennsylvania, and materials for the balls themselves - absolutely everything that can be caught by the arm.
Labels: Art, Cool, Creativity, Events, Funny, Interesting, Story, Toys, Wonderful
# posted by Dany @ 5:01 AM
They lost some lbs this past year
Wednesday
A Star Wars Chess Set From A Galaxy Far Far Away
You get chess sets, and then you get Star Wars Droid Chess Sets, like the silver and gold set as designed by Rex Abergas, a 4th year Industrial Design Student at the University of Technology of Sydney.
Being a Chess lover (although in no way a Chess Master…) and having a slight fascination with Star Wars – this is one set I absolutely have to get my hands on. I’ve played on all manner of different sets, and I’d love to give this one a go to.
Instead of the usual Black and White sides, this particular set consists of a Gold and Silver Side. Rex incorporates extraordinary detail, from the Pawns right through the Rooks and Bishops to King and Queen.
To start with the Pawns, they are Pit Droids and they look rather intimidating standing all proud and tall like that. Always eager to be on the front line.
The Destroyer droids, Droidekas, are a fine choice for Knights, in my humble opinion. Sneaky, and always aimed on completely annihilating their enemies, they fit in well with the characteristics of a Knight. Undoubtedly my favorite piece, in this set and in ordinary chess sets.
Everybody’s favourite robot, R2D2 makes his appearance as a Rook. Short and sturdy and straight to the point, just like a Rook’s mobility.
I’m sure the Trade Federation smiled approvingly on the Bishops being portrayed as Super Battle Droids! Fearless droids with limited independence, or limited movement in chess terms, but forceful nonetheless.
I had to spare a laugh when I saw the Queen as C3PO. Look, it is a shiny Sheldon from Big Bang theory! Remember the episode where they played “Guess” and Leonard remarked that Sheldon resembles C3PO. Don’t get him wrong, he is flattered; he just does not see it.
Hailing all the way from deep within the Confederacy, we have General Grievous in the position of King to rule them all. He might be a fine example of a not backing down to anyone. But Kenobi killed him after all. Kenobi would’ve made a great king…
It must be hard choosing which characters to use for a chess set, with such a big variety to choose from. Sadly, we don’t see Han Solo, Darth Vader, or even Boba here. With any luck, Rex will create 6 different sets…
Labels: Art, Cool, Creativity, Informative, Interesting
# posted by Dany @ 7:38 AM
Saturday
Do It Yourself Coil Gun
Daniel Eindhoven is talented designer who created this cool coil gun. It took around 40 hours to finish this outstanding job. It weights 5 Kg and, capable of delivering over 18J kinetic energy, and speeds up to 110km/h . This weird coil gun has laser pointer for easy aiming and it costs around 100 Euros.It needs 8 seconds to fire a projectile if is connected to power source or 90 seconds with batteries. It is really impressive, I’m not a gun lover but this one is really made with creativity. You may also would like to check this Swiss mini gun, the smallest gun in the world. A coilgun, as the name implies, consists of a coil of wire – an electromagnet – with a ferromagnetic projectile placed at one of its ends. Effectively a coilgun is a solenoid: an electromagnetic coil with the function of drawing a ferromagnetic object through its center. A large current is pulsed through the coil of wire and a strong magnetic field forms, pulling the projectile to the center of the coil. When the projectile nears this point the electromagnet is switched off and the next electromagnet can be switched on, progressively accelerating the projectile down successive stages. In common coilgun designs the “barrel” of the gun is made up of a track that the projectile rides on, with the driver electromagnetic coils around the track. Power is supplied to the electromagnet from some sort of fast discharge storage device, typically a battery or high-capacity high voltage capacitors designed for fast energy discharge. A diode is used to protect polarity sensitive capacitors (such as electrolytics) from damage due to inverse polarity of the current after the discharge.
There are two main types or setups of a coilgun, single stage and multistage. A single stage coilgun uses just one electromagnet to propel a ferromagnetic projectile. A multistage coilgun uses multiple electromagnets in succession to progressively increase the speed of the projectile. Many hobbyists use low-cost rudimentary designs to experiment with coilguns, for example using photoflash capacitors from a disposable camera, or a capacitor from a standard cathode-ray tube television as the energy source, and a low inductance coil to propel the projectile forward. A superconductor coilgun called a quench gun could be created by successively quenching a line of adjacent coaxial superconducting electromagnetic coils forming a gun barrel, generating a wave of magnetic field gradient traveling at any desired speed. A traveling superconducting coil might be made to ride this wave like a surfboard. The device would be a mass driver or linear synchronous motor with the propulsion energy stored directly in the drive coils.
One main obstacle in coilgun design is switching the power through the coils. There are several main options — the simplest (and probably least effective) is the spark gap, which releases the stored energy through the coil when the voltage reaches a certain threshold. A better option is to use solid-state switches; these include IGBTs or power MOSFETs (which can be switched off mid-pulse) and SCRs (which release all stored energy before turning off). A quick-and-dirty method for switching, especially for those using a flash camera for the main components, is to use the flash tube itself as a switch. By wiring it in series with the coil, it can silently and non-destructively (assuming that the energy in the capacitor is kept below the tube’s safe operating limits) allow a large amount of current to pass through to the coil. Like any flash tube, ionizing the gas in the tube with a high voltage triggers it. However, a large amount of the energy will be dissipated as heat and light, and, due to the tube being a spark gap, the tube will stop conducting once the voltage across it drops sufficiently, leaving some charge remaining on the capacitor.
The coil gun first appeared in literature as the “electric gun” in the 1897 science fiction novel A Trip to Venus by John Munro. The novel described in detail a way to launch vehicles into outer space from the Earth’s surface. In the novel, Munro describes in great detail multiple coils fired in sequence by solenoids timed to achieve acceleration without generating g forces that would harm passengers. The gun could be angled on a hillside if desired.
Labels: Art, Cool, Crazy, Creativity, Funny, Interesting
# posted by Dany @ 7:59 AM
Tuesday
Horse Riding at the Ranch in Texas
A horse riding was one of the most used way of transportation in the past. Today it is more a hobby that conquers people at any ages. Man and horse was always a special relationship. Even kids like hippos. That positive acceptation by kids is today the basic of a hippotheraphy. Hippotherapy is a treatment that uses the multidimensional movement of the horse for patients who have movement dysfunction. But professional horse riding encourage many adults too, especially on horse riding shows.
Labels: Art, Cool, Creativity, Design, Funny, Sports
# posted by Dany @ 2:13 AM
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