igargoyle

Introducing: My Technomadism Hacks

I haven't been posting much, but I have been researching, developing, rapid prototyping, and hacking. I'm applying my love of desert camping, travel, wearable technology, and embedded computing to my urban flagship; a duosport motorcycle. Here's a first look:

solar-nav-storage:

This photo shows items I transformed into a top case and a tank bag.

While commuting, the top case can hold gear from errands. While touring, it can carry as much gas a my tank holds plus water. I can remove it anytime. This allows off-roading without extra fuel sloshing around in an enlarged tank. It is made from an LP case, and stability tests will determine if it's indeed more versatile than a top case and replacement gas tank; easily at a savings of at least $200.

The tank bag is made from a folding map case, magnets, and wiring. It's appropriate that it holds my phone with GPS, a non-networked highway infrastructure computer, compass and pencil pack, map, and a solar battery charger for my bike and auuxilliary device battery. I'm sure it'll still also hold an actual paper map or two. I can't find many tank bags with top map pockets that will fit my sloped gas tank. So, I made a form-fitting one that mostly multplies the functionality of the feature I wanted most anyway; a large map pocket.

iLimb Arm Unnaturally Powerful

Accompanying Touch Bionics' prosthetic finger and hand (shown above), comes the iLimb Arm. It's interesting to read how its superhuman capabilities may be intentionally scaled back before they will become available. Hacking the limb to its designed capabilities may become more akin to unlocking than overclocking.

link via Engadget

Life Extension Workshop datablast

In this quick digest about my attendance of the Life Extension Workshop yesterday, I will drop a lot of names and links on you while I attempt to digest the profound content of the day. Thanks to everyone whom I met for being so cool and sharing your passion for your interests; even when you could not talk about certain things for various reasons.

The presenters and panelists included Doctors Stephen Coles, Aubrey de Grey, and Michael Rose, followed by David Kekich and Peter Voss. I will be helping Dr. Coles post video online; I'll post when and where that will be available.

Gerontology Research Group
Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)
M Prize
Methuselah Foundation
Benford & Rose
Gregory Benford
Persona Foundation
GTCbio
Mediox

There were various plugs for books, which will reach you through links, slides, and video of the workshop. I want to mention a book that was not part of the day's official proceedings, which I learned of when I met Gregory Benford. He and Elisabeth Malarte have authored Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs, and I'm excited to check it out.

innovate or die

Google and Specialized are searching for the brightest engineering minds on earth for the first ever Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest. $5,000 and a nice new bike go to the winners, who create the most innovative and revolutionary design. It's simple, you and up to four others build a zero-emission machines that transform human pedal power into a new and useful purpose then upload a video of it in action to YouTube by Sunday, December 15th. See the innovate-or-die.com website for full details.

Cheap Tabletop Fusion Reactor

Purdue scientists have produced a cheap tabletop fusion reactor, that extracts fuel from seawater and uses sound waves to ignite the reaction.

For the same unit mass of fuel, a fusion power plant would produce 10 times more energy than a fission reactor, and because deuterium is contained in seawater, a fusion reactor's fuel supply would be virtually infinite. A cubic kilometer of seawater would contain enough heavy hydrogen to provide a thousand years' worth of power for the United States.

Tabletop fusion: check. Now, where's my skycar?

[ Link via Purdue University ]

SRL German V-1 Pulsejet

Ah, the smell of a German Pulsejet in the morning! I'm trying to expand the scope of this blog a bit to include some of my more dangerous interests, like Survival Research Lab's mounted V-1 pulsejet, which they recreated from WWII's "buzz bomb", a breakthrough missile that Germany fired 8,000 times on London.

This engine was a masterpiece of simplicity and heralded in the dawn of what we now know as the cruise missile or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Little was known about this engine until the end of WW2 when the allied forces were able to examine a number of complete and partly constructed V1s recovered from formerly occupied territories along Europe's western coastline.

When SRL originally built their V-1, it wasn't an exact replica of Germany's V-1. Due to a lack of machine tools, they didn't have an exact valve intake assembly. It wasn't a major problem, except that each time the engine was run for any length of time, several valves would break off and disappear.

When they finally were able to build a proper valve intake, they decided to run the thing, which you can see in this test video. The best part is the end where a crowd of firemen show up and SRL has to explain why they have a gigantic jet that spews fire and acts as a frequency generator in their work yard. The best part is while he's explaining why they're recreating weaponry from WWII, he's eating like it's no big deal, and the firemen decide to leave after he tells them they're not going to run it any more.

Above: SRL's new and improved valve intake assembly for the V-1 pulsejet.

Here's a couple of videos of buzz bomb launches to give you some insight into what this thing was capable of. For more information on the design, see this.

[ Link ]