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OK, NYC has it’s reasons to be a little careful but Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism may be just a little bit too careful. As the Village Voice reports that the city is just a little worried that the good citizens might just report too many false alarms. If you read through the comments, a couple of people had the same thought I had. Smoke alarms give false alarms very, very often, and if you have an alarm system the firetrucks are coming just in case. Don’t some smoke detectors measure radiation increases? Plus in the greater New York area you can’t sell a house without a Radon Test and in some houses there is a powered radon detector so you get a warning if the abatment system fails. So if I can’t have one of these. Can I use this?
(I had one of these as a kid. Of course back then we thought nuclear energy would save the world. ) It’s not a ""Geiger" counter but detecting alpha particles is better then nothing, I wonder what Mr. Falkenrath’s reaction be if he knew I could get this - Nuclear Isotope Generator
for $250.00 (plus shipping) from United Nuclear who clearly state.
You might also want to include some decontamination spray in your order for $22.00
So get yours now! All the products mentioned above are available from United Nuclear
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Above is a video from Johnny Lee, a Computer Engineer who has chosen the Wii Remote as one of his main hacking platforms. Johnny was kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to do an interview with us.
Alan Parekh: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview with us. Johnny Lee: Your welcome, it’s a pleasure to chat with you. AP: I get the feeling that you are a very busy person. Selling your cool steadycam units, JL: Haha,I’m not sure. If you ask my friends, they might actually say that I don’t seem to be that busy. I guess I just spend a lot of time on my hobbies that I really enjoy doing and it turns out that my hobbies end up being productive. Even the Wii remote work started as a way to procrastinate working on my on my thesis. Sometimes projects can grow it’s own legs, like the steadycam. Enough people started buying them that I can now pay people to help me manufacture and sell them. That way I can move on to do other things. AP: Your display technology that you worked on as your Thesis Project has been featured on JL: Well, I created the first slow location discovery version while I was at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Boston. We were working on creating a “retail store” of the future to using projected light to augment the appearance of products or present co-located information. Like have the environment of the store changing based on your preferences. Project alignment was a systemic issue that plagued all of the installations. So, we came up with this approach of using structured light to discover the locations of pre-installed light sensors for alignment. There seemed to be a large enough body of executable future work that it made sense to use it for my thesis work. The key was just finding a single topic that was large enough and tractable. AP: Your Wii projects have been taking the Web by storm! What attracted you to the Wiimote JL: Well, I was excited by the Wii Remote ever since the original press release about it’s capabilities was public. Ironically, I was an intern at Microsoft the summer before the Xbox 360 was launched. Several internal people, including me, were still trying to convince the Xbox group they should put an accelerometer into the controller. That, of course, didn’t happen. The Wii remote is one of the most sophisticated input devices available today and an amazing piece of engineering containing an accelerometer, camera, and wireless communication. Combined with the ease in which you can connect it to a computer made it an obvious choice for experimentation. AP: Have you had any discussions with Nintendo? Do you think they could use some of your techniques to JL: I have not formally had any contact with Nintendo about this. I speculate that the Nintendo engineers who developed the controller probably knew of this technique, but probably passed on the idea or were saving it for a later product launch. But, these ideas can definitely be used in a Wii title assuming they would be willing to bundle a little bit of new hardware with it. I know several game developers are starting to look at the idea. Hopefully, the game concepts will make it all the way to market. AP: What made you choose Computer Engineering as your field of study? JL: I’ve always had an engineering spirit in me growing up and computers are one of the most versatile tools out there for exploring your imagination. I felt electrical engineering or computer science were too narrow for my interests. Computer engineering provides a nice balance between hardware and software giving you the skills and perspective to modify/create any component of a computational system. Nothing is a given. This has served me very well in my research. AP: What can we expect to see in the future? Any cool projects that you have dreamed up but haven’t JL: Hehe, I have a LOT of un-implemented ideas. My to-do list is always growing much faster that I have time to accomplish. Sometimes, I just wish I had an army of developers working for me. Hopefully, my future work will be as cool as the one’s I’ve already done. Usually, I only pick ideas that I think are cool to work on which has, so far, meant other people will probably like them too. But, it’s probably best for me not to talk about them too far in advance otherwise I might burst my own bubble. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see. Sorry to be a tease. AP: Thanks again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview with us Johnny. JL: My pleasure. |
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Been reading for a while and not quite sure where to jump in? Maybe you would just like to learn more details? Hardware modding/hacking is lots of fun, and can have a very rewarding outcome.
For starters, here is a great article for beginners, covering pretty much all the bases. Also Wikipedia is an excellent source for some beginner knowledge, everything from capacitors, to resistors, to solder, and much much more. |
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I don’t know about you but sometimes you just need to take a note or a quick sketch. Rite in the Rain was always done it for me. Just add a pencil or a write everywhere pen. There are a bunch of sizes and types from spiral bound to stapled. 8.5 by 11 down to the 3 by 5 ones you can slip into a pocket. Where else can you find tactical copy paper in either green or desert tan? Added bonus: Need some quad ruled paper, isometric graphpaper or maybe just a sheet of Herbicide Application Record after all the stores are closed? No worries. Just fire up your printer and head over to their free forms page. |
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Hacked Gadgets welcomes Bob Funk as a new writer on the site. The picture of the Moon Doggie above is from the coffee company that he and his wife own and operate. I am sure Bob will keep us in current with the latest caffeinated trends, caffeinated soap comes to mind. Bob has also spent many years working in the high tech sector developing cell phone base station equipment, I looked up one of his patents… I think Bob may have to explain it to me over a cup of coffee one day because most of it is way over my head. To learn more about Bob, have a look at his bio. 
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The wife and I are going to China for the holidays |
