Thursday, 22 March 2012
Did 'The Hunger Games' really rip off 'Battle Royale'?
Its inevitable: Every time we start a conversation about Hunger Games, someone always starts a "Battle Royale did it first" argument. It's unavoidable. So we decided to compare both series, to settle this debate once and for all.
Both stories originated as books. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins came out in 2008 and Battle Royale by Koushun Takami was published in 1999. While we didn't have a copy of Takami's book handy, we did get a chance to screen the Battle Royale Blu-Ray release, which is what we're using as basis for most of this debate. So please, if we've missed something vital from Takami's original book, let us know.
Now let's get started, here are all the similarities between the two...
HERE
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Feats per Minute: A bicycle that allows you to play records on its wheels as you cruise through the city...
What if you would be able to generate music by the simple act of riding your bike? This project started with that question. We have build the first prototype and thanks to Jeffry Sol and Vincent Beijersbergen we were able to do so in a month. And yes it was pretty difficult, but loads of fun.... the idea is pretty simple; basicly, a wheel and dynamo work the same way as a record player. But it was not as easy as it looks. First, we had to come up with a solution for the wheels; how can we change the records? The forfork was blocking the wheel. That's why we changed a 30 year old bike into a lefty bike; and build a construction that would still support the weight and would be strong enough for people to ride on it. The biggest challenge of all was to make sure that the needles would stick to the record and follow the grooves, without skipping too much. Therefor we bought two vertical record players and took them apart, to see how they worked. Also; we wanted our bike to be as low tech as possible; that's why the only "extra" energy we used was a 9 volt battery to support the amplifier. In order for the records to run smoothly, we also had to change the crank of the bike and the chain. After that, we build our own horn, to have some extra volume, and we sprayed the whole bike black. We had some sponsors like bikestores, handy people and DJ's and that's how our dream in progress turned out to be real... Here's to the crazy ones; thank you guys, you rock. - Merel, Pieter and Liat
www.featsperminute.com
Via
Man Successfully Flies With Custom-Built Bird Wings
Using videogame controllers, an Android phone and custom-built wings, a Dutch engineer named Jarno Smeets has achieved birdlike flight.
Smeets flew like an albatross, the bird that inspired his winged-man invention, on March 18 at a park in The Hague.
“I have always dreamed about this. But after 8 months of hard work, research and testing it all payed off,” Smeets said on his YouTube page.
Smeets got the idea from sketches of a futuristic flying bicycle drawn by his grandfather, who spent much of his life designing the contraption but never actually built it.
When Smeets began studying engineering at Coventry University in England, he realized the physics of a flying bicycle just didn’t pan out. Instead, he drew inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s wing drawings to build his flying machine. Along with neuromechanics expert Bert Otten, Smeets brought his design into reality
The design is based on mechanics used in robotic prosthetics. The idea is to give his muscles extra strength so they can carry his body weight during the flight.
Smeets (and his arms) did just that today with the help of a pair of 37-ounce wings made out of fabric, according to a press release.
Working with the fabric was difficult because it was very fragile, Smeets wrote on his blog. “It’s important to sew the seams carefully, and give the wing shape extra strength without making it too heavy. The top part of the kite will be folded around the ribs to create an aerodynamic shape. For extra lift and control I’ll stretch a piece of kite fabric between the legs, as some sort of tail wing.”
According to Smeets’ calculations, he needed approximately 2,000 Watts of continuous power to support his roughly 180-pound frame and 40-pound wing pack. His arms could only really provide 5 percent of that, so the rest would have to come from motors. His arms and pecs would basically serve to guide the device and to flap the wings.
He built his electronic, wireless wing set out of Wii controllers, accelerometers harvested from an HTC Wildfire Android phone and Turnigy motors.
When he landed after the 60-second flight, he said, “At one moment you see the ground moving away, and then suddenly you’re free, a really intense feeling of freedom. The true feeling of flying. A [bleep] magical moment. The best feeling I have felt in my life.”
Daniela Hernandez @'Wired'
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