This tree processing machine is some piece of work! I have seen lots of huge machines that allow a logger to use a joystick in a air conditioned cabin instead of use a chainsaw to fall trees but I have never seen one that was this all encompassing. The only thing it is missing is a conveyor belt that would transport the tree sections directly onto a waiting trailer.

Via: Procrastineering

Many of us who work in IT know these issues all too well. How many times have you had to use one of these when you are caught hanging around the water cooler a bit more often than normal? I love the programming one "Its compiling", that is so true!

Keith has a good example of making a electronic repair with parts at hand. This 300 dollar sign was going to be thrown in the garbage because of a few burnt out and dim LEDs. After the sign was opened Keith would have replaced the 10mm White LEDs if he had some but he didn’t, his next idea was to drill out the rear of the 10mm LEDs and install some 5mm LEDs. As it turns out he didn’t have any of these either. His final solution was to mount some surface mount LEDs to the back of the existing 10mm LEDs. The result is great, have a look at the above (repaired) picture and see if you can see which LEDs were repaired.

"The sign is made of two plastic sheets sandwiching a thicker plastic frame. The front must be glued on, but the back is screwed on for repairability. The right fix would be to replace the broken LED, but I don’t have any white 10mm LEDs on hand, it would take a while to order, frosted 10mm LEDs seem to be more difficult to find (or to find clearly specified as such), and I’d have to wade through long lists of nearly-identical products searching for the one that was actually right. Immediately I thought of a way I could fix it using materials I had on hand — drill a hole into the back of the 10mm LED and sink a white 5mm LED into it. This idea made me cackle with glee, so you can imagine my disappointment upon realizing I don’t in fact have any white 5mm LEDs here. I need to get me some so I can go back and try that yet."

Dana Mattocks has put together one of the coolest Steampunk Computers I have ever seen. Have a look at the pictures, there is intense detail on every inch of this beast of a computer.

"Intel CPU Duo Core 2 E6600
2x Western Digital 320 Gig drives
Linksys Wireless G
XFi-Extreme Gamer Sound Blaster
Corsair Dominator Memory XMS2 (2Gig)
3 Liters of "Fluid XP Ultra Green" liquid
2 Radiators – Each cools CPU and GPU’s separately
2 "EK" reservoirs REV.2  (Largest size)
ThermalChill PA 120.3 Radiators x2
2 SLI NVidea 8800 GTX Video Cards
(EVGA)
680i NForce Motherboard (EVGA)
Tygon clear lab tubing (16 feet total)
Yate Loon Fans 120mm (x6 total)
Samsung DVD write drives x2
Swiftech MCP655-B™ 12 VDC Pumps
5 "EK" water blocks for CPU, Motherboard and GPU’s
Thermaltake Toughpower 850w Power Supply
(2) Best Buy Geek Squad 875VA Battery Backups
22 Inch Samsung LCD Monitor (Widescreen)
Vista Home Premium"

(more…)

If you need to add color sensing to your next LEGO project have a look at this RCX Input Mux & Color Sensor. Full schematics and circuit description is provided.

"Color sensing depends on measuring the intensity of light at different wavelengths. A spectrometer does this by splitting the light with a prism or diffraction grating into its component wavelengths. However, spectrometers are complex and too difficult to build. Another approach measures the light intensity in three primary color bands: red, green, and blue. Then calculates the color or hue of the light in software.
Hue is a single number that describes the overall color of a light. It ranges from 0 to 360, much like the degrees of angle around a circle. In the case of hue: 0 is red, 120 is green, 240 is blue and 360 is back around to red again. Intermediate colors have hues like 60 for yellow, 180 for cyan and 300 for magenta. The calculation of hue from red, green and blue values is a simple algorithm described later.
After substantial experimentation, I found that the blue and green plates were too pale for use individually. Stacking two green and three blue plates created enough filter density for good color measurement. The actual color spectrum of the resulting filters can be seen by photographing sunlight shining through them with a diffraction grating"

Here is a fun piece of clothing. If it’s cold in your area how about a full body swearer to warm up with? There are a few items that need to be enhanced though. Instead of the front face port you need to have a 7 inch monitor tied to your AV system so that you can watch TV, play a video game or get some work done on the computer. It also needs to have a plug added to allow for heating strips to be added for those very cold days.

Via: TechEBlog

We have seen lots of intelligent methods of monitoring and curbing energy usage recently. The hacked Kill-a-Watt comes to mind. This SmartSwitch device is a prototype device that would allow you to feel how much energy you are using. If the light switch is hard to turn on that is because you are already using lots of energy and the internal brake is on. This would hopefully make you think about turning off some unnecessary lights in the house before attempting to turn on the light that was hard to operate. Thanks to people like Peter Russo and Brendan Wypich of  Stanford University for thinking outside the box to come up with cool ideas and solutions like this.

"SmartSwitch embeds intelligence into a traditionally simplistic device – the ordinary household light switch. With SmartSwitch, the mindless activity of flipping a switch becomes an informed decision. Equipped with a network connection and a brake pad, the switch provides its user with tactile feedback about the amount of energy being used either within their household or by the electrical grid as a whole."

Via: Slashgear