Pool Anyone?

New Scientist has an article on an interactive pool table designed to improve your game.

An interactive pool table with a laser that points out exactly where the best shots lie has been created by Danish scientists. With the help of a virtual coach called James, it can also lead you through a practice session designed to improve your play.

Pretty cool.
I didn’t think much of the articles title though: “Magic pool table creates wizard potters”. Groan!

Internet Enabled Fridges

It seems that internet enabled fridges are getting to be quite common! LG Appliances have just brought one out, the wonderfully named LRSPC2661T. This follows the two Daewoo models, the FR-631ND and FR-710ND, released earlier this year. Samsung are releasing their Digital Network Refrigerator soon.

They all seem to have web browsing, email, some sort of monitoring of the fridge contents, etc. The LG also has TV, MP3, radio, a photo album, and a built in digital camera. The Samsung will have TV, Videophone, and the display can be removed and used remotely from the fridge.

Interestingly the Daewoo site is the only one which goes into great detail about its refrigeration capabilities; ‘3D cooling’ no less! The others barely mention that they are fridges. One thing they all have in common is that they are huge US-style monsters.

I don’t suppose the setup at my house; PC in the kitchen between the fridge and the freezer is in the same league as these though. 😉
picture of my pc

This story should really be in Geek stuff but Cool stuff seemed more appropriate 🙂

Thanks to TS for the original link.

New Toy!

I finally managed to find myself a cheap digital camera!

I got myself a Vivitar Vivicam 20

  • 640 x 480 Resolution
  • PC Video camera mode (13 fps CIF)
  • Focus Free
  • Auto Flash
  • 8 MB Internal Memory
  • LCD Status display
  • USB Connectivity
  • Optical viewfinder
  • Auto white balance and auto exposure
  • 10 second self-timer and tripod socket
  • Auto power-off (2 minutes)

The internal memory is Flash so it shouldn’t lose any pictures if the batteries fail, unlike some models in this price range. I’ve not played with it extensively yet, but I have had it working as a webcam. I’ll take it to work with me tomorrow and get some daylight pictures.

It claims it keeps the images as BMPs which means no compression. Not good for fitting many images on the internal memory, but as the quality is not that good to start with it’ll help. Whilst the supplied software, Arcsoft’s PhotoImpression 3, saves to disk as JPEG, I can transfer directly from the camera into Paintshop Pro, presumably uncompressed.

(click for larger image)
Vivicam 20

More when I’ve had a play.

Silly Games

In my wanderings around the net, I found Spank The Monkey again:
Hi, I'm Spank the monkey
I managed to pull my self 🙂 away after a while, but was reminded of this:
Poke the Penguin
Poke The Penguin, funny, but not as addictive as Spank The Monkey! Play the game buy the T-shirt honest!

Update: Link fixed!