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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| High school student improves virtual reality glove |
| 2:23:52 am mst / 15 January 2001 found by paul / filed in inventions / source Christian Science Monitor 84 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| A high school student in Texas has invented a new virtual reality glove that will give users more realistic tactile feedback. When the wearer uses the glove to guide a remote robot arm and pick up an object, small air pockets in the glove inflate and deflate to give the user the sensation of actually grabbing it directly. |
| What a great idea! |
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| Google cache saves the day |
| 8:33:56 am mst / 15 January 2001 found by paul / filed in internet / source Wired 65 hits / 0 comments / 1 e-mail |
| A San Francisco programmer lost 3 years of hard work in his weblog when both the hard drive of his personal laptop and the hard drive for his ISP's server crashed (thus destroying both the original and backup copies). But while using Google for unrelated reasons, he found that it had cached all 400 pages of his website. He's now in the process of reconstructing it, and he has included a new page praising Google for "saving his ass". |
| Even Google semi-seriously said, "Why use an advanced network backup service when you can use Google's cache?" |
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| New motor rotates in any direction |
| 9:22:29 am mst / 15 January 2001 found by paul / filed in inventions / source UniSci 117 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Engineers at Johns Hopkins have invented a spherical motor that can rotate in any direction, as opposed to the single axis of a conventional motor. The motor contains 80 permanent magnets and 16 electromagnets which are controlled by sophisticated software to achieve the desired degrees of rotation. (Pictures are available here.) |
| I liked the analogy of the new motor as a shoulder joint vs. the old motor as an elbow joint. |
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| "Computer gaming studies"? |
| 11:49:32 am mst / 15 January 2001 found by paul / filed in education / source Wired 26 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Professor Robert Nideffer at UC Irvine wants the school to offer a minor in computer games which would include technical courses in programming, graphics, and cognitive as well as humanities/social science courses on the culture of gaming, gender representation, etc. Although the proposal was rejected, Nideffer plans on resubmitting it next year. |
| That way student can write papers about controversial topics like Lara Croft's breast size and get academic credit. |
| read 1 comment |
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| Lucky cell phone numbers |
| 11:23:48 pm mst / 15 January 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source NY Times 22 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Because certain digits are considered lucky in Chinese culture (especially 6, 8, and 9), cell phone number containing these digits have become quite coveted. One number ending in 8889988 sold for $2500 at a recent charity auction; others have sold for as much as $40,000. Other numbers (especially those ending in 4) are considered unlucky. |
| How irrational! Don't they know that 7 is the good digit, whereas numbers ending in 13 are to be avoided? |
| read 1 comment |
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