An article on the BBC News website describes new robotic explorers that are being tested for the Antarctic, Robotic route for Polar pioneers. If we can send remote operated vehicles to Mars, then surely we can send them to the most extreme parts of our own planet.
This is a pretty cool idea (excuse the [...]
Posted at 22:17 on Wednesday 5th April 2006 in Science tagged climate change, Engineering, Science, technology, with no comments.
One big problem with the current trend of device convergence is that if that one device fails, then so do all of your devices! This means that device failure has a bigger impact, and this impact will increase with the number of functions the device replaces.
Two examples of this. Firstly, I use my phone [...]
Posted at 14:37 on Saturday 18th March 2006 in Blog, Computers tagged internet, mac OS X, Music, technology, TV, with one comment.
Those crazy folk over at Google have updated the satellite imagery around Torino for the winter games, and you can pan down the actual courses on your own computer with Google Earth. How impressive is that, and who would have predicted that 10 years ago. A kmz place file for the venues is available [...]
Posted at 12:08 on Saturday 11th February 2006 in Blog tagged internet, Links, mapping, technology, with no comments.
Concrete Canvas is a fascinating concept in engineering, a self contained, self deploying temporary structure that can last for up to 10 years.
As far as I can see from the website, it is basically a fabric tent coated in concrete powder, with a plastic lining. To deploy, water is introduced to the bag, which starts [...]
Posted at 0:12 on Tuesday 31st January 2006 in Blog, Engineering tagged Engineering, Links, technology, with no comments.
According to the BBC, a ramp has been designed that “_creates_” power as cars drive over it. BBC News story
On first reading it seems that the inventor has conveniently circumvented the laws of thermodynamics, and is creating power from nothing.
I assumed the ramp is to be used as a speed hump, to slow down traffic, [...]
Posted at 13:05 on Sunday 18th December 2005 in Engineering tagged energy, Engineering, technology, with no comments.