.: Above The Aether :. » Technology

I, for one, welcome our talking robotic overlords.

Dave — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:24:52 +0000

Screwpop keyring tool

Dave — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:55:06 +0000

I love stumbling across good industrial design. And when the industrial design involves a tool, it’s even better. I follow several tool/gadget blogs and stumbled into this while reading one of my favorite tool blogs, Toolmonger.

It’s pretty amazing how much planning and effort goes into a little tool like this. You may see a bucket of these tools for sale at the cash register in your local hardware store and never really pay much attention to it. However, someone has put a lot of thought into this little gizmo.

If you like this sort of thing, you’ll probably enjoy these blogs I frequent about this sort of thing:

ScrewPop keyring tool – (via Toolmonger and the Multi-Tool Museum)

Enjoy.

- Dave

Nuclear explosions since 1945

Dave — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:30:28 +0000

Nuclear explosions since 1945

I love interesting data visualizations and happened to stumble upon this map of nuclear explosions since 1945 (high res) on Neatorama.

I have a lot of respect for designers who can take a mass of data and create an elegantly simple visualization like this one.

Original high res image (via Neatorama)

- Dave

Three Frames

Dave — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:24:48 +0000

Sometimes you only need three frames.

This site may hurt your brain. I make no promises.

- Dave

Failure – by Adam Savage of Mythbusters

Dave — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:13:13 +0000

Link to video (via Laughing Squid)

Did you know?

Dave — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:14:16 +0000

Link to video (via TMBLG)

Blahblahfish translation

Dave — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:43:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered what is lost or gained in automated translation services? Have you ever used a web-based language translation tool like Google Translator or BabelFish and gotten a bizarre result?

An amusing site called Blahblah Fish translates your words into the language of your choice and then back out again into english. Hilarity ensues. For fun, I entered some famous lyrics from Lynyrd Skynyrd:

(Original)

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you

Translated to Russian and back to English:

Sweet domestic Alabama
where the skies is so blue
sweet domestic Alabama lord,
I’m coming home to you

Translated from Spanish and back to English:

Sweet homemade Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet homemade Alabama Gentleman,
I’m that returns to house to you

And my very favorite – Translated to Japanese and back to English:

At the point where the Alabama sky of the sweet house is very blue
Alabama main thing and I’m of the sweet house; where it returns to the house in you.

I think the Japanese translation sounds like a beautiful haiku…maybe better than the original lyrics.

Try it out yourself.

Link to Blahblah Fish (via Neat-o-rama)

- Dave