A Magic Wand

Wow. Now you too can be Harry Potter in your own home (just don't try to ride the broom, please!) with your very own magic wand. They Kymera is everything from a universal TV remote to something that can control the fans in your house - or anything with a sensor - all with the flick of a wrist. For real.

Thrillist notes: The wand uses a tiny silicone chip to measure g-forces and detect even the slightest movement in any direction, letting you assign specific motions to particular functions (adjust volume, change channel, skip track ...), and is all wrapped up in a sleek scepter design, with its own presentation box made from "faux dragonhide", since the real stuff is pretty pricey, and is compoletely imaginary.

ENJOY!

Walk a Mile ... or more.

"Lots of people spend a year abroad, but how many decide to spend it traveling thousands of miles on foot? That’s exactly what Christoph Rehage did, and the travails of his journey can be read not just on his blog, but on his face, as you can see in The Longest Way 1.0 Web video.

Setting out in November of 2007, Rehage initially planned to walk from Beijing to his home country of Germany. He didn’t quite reach his goal, but he did walk almost 2,900 miles over varying terrain. He recorded almost daily self-portraits, with diverse locales behind him—the imperial burial grounds in Shaanxi, the Great Mosque of Xi’ian, the ruins of the ancient city of Gaochang—quickly flipping by. The result of a lot of sun and wind shows, as well as the passage of time through beard growth and increasingly wild hair. Cleverly edited to the Kingpins “L’aventurier,” this five-minute-plus clip shows one man’s adventure in a new and very entertaining way."


http://vimeo.com/4636202

Breaking the Sound Barrier - You can see it!

I thought this was really interesting - I guess it appealed to the science/physics geek in me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090630/sc_livescience/whatsupersoniclookslike;_ylt=Au74cVzUh2S.E34KCPFpVpiCfNdF

Basically you can actually SEE the moment the airplane breaks the sound barrier. Pretty amazing and really interesting.

"The phenomenon is not well studied. Scientists refer to it as a vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg, and it's thought to be created by what's called a Prandtl-Glauert singularity.

Here's what scientists think happens:

A layer of water droplets gets trapped between two high-pressure surfaces of air. In humid conditions, condensation can gather in the trough between two crests of the sound waves produced by the jet. This effect does not necessarily coincide with the breaking of the sound barrier, although it can."

Enjoy :)

Bubble Rings

Bubble Rings

Very cool article and video of dolphins blowing bubbles into a ring and then playing with the rings! Who knew!?!?! These dolphins tip their heads and expel brief bursts of CO₂ through their blowholes; internal forces break the bubbles’ centers open to create tightly structured, spinning rings. The dolphins then flip the rings around, poke their noses through them, twirl them into different shapes — they even bite them in half. It’s evidently one of the best shows in Orlando today, and these aquatic impresarios thought it all up on their own. Enjoy!!! :)

I've been slacking, I know! A new one for Monday morning! :)

http://www.veryshortlist.com/web/daily.cfm/review/1020/Website/zoo-borns/?tp gives you the background and leads you to http://www.zooborns.com/ a blog dedicated to newborn zoo animals. Newborn red pandas, meerkats, a turtle, tawny frogmouth chicks, and an orphan Sifaka hugging a stuffed animal will make you want to change jobs and be a zookeeper that works with newborns. Sign me up! And oh my gosh the hippos is adorable!

So, so, sooooooo cute. :)

Happy Monday!