Category Archives: Tech

Say, "Cheese!"

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Congress gets bill to make cell phone cameras go click

One year after the passage of the Alert Act, all mobiles with cameras made in the United States must emit a “tone or other sound audible within a reasonable radius of the phone.” And the legislation would forbid manufacturers to program an option that would allow consumers to disable the noise.

How many of these devices are made in the US? Does this mean the NSA/CIA/FBI surveillance cameras must do so as well? What about video?

An unrelated bill will require everyone to go “Beep … beep … beep” whenever you step backwards, to reduce the mayhem of bumping into people.

One Frame at a Time

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A Brief History of Stop-Motion Animation

O’Brien’s work inspired his young assistant Ray Harryhausen who followed in his footsteps by creating sequences and films that further blended stop-motion model/puppet animation with live-action footage. One of his finest pieces of work was the sequence in Jason and the Argonauts featuring a fight with seven skeletal warriors who are all performed via stop-motion animation. Not too shabby for 1963.

I'm Leaving, On a Jetpack

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Real Water Rocket Guy – Analysis to come

[S]eems like something that would be on Swans on Tea

Well, now it is

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Rhett now has a detailed analysis posted in which he explains how the thrust is generated, and estimates the power the pump must have to do this.

One thing to note about this is that it works because much of the propellant is not being carried onboard. The rocket is lifting the water in the feeder hose, but that’s all — after a few seconds, that water has been expelled. But the jetpack continues to fly, because additional water is being supplied. This is one of the big problems for rockets. They need to carry enough propellant to lift the payload, and all of the propellant and fuel (for some systems, e.g. ion drives, the propellant and the energy source aren’t the same thing). This is why rockets are really inefficient, and have such a small ratio of payload/rocket mass.

This is Who Watches the Watchers

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When You Watch These Ads, The Ads Check You Out

Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there’s a slim – but growing – chance the ad is watching you too.

Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity – and can change the ads accordingly.