No Way Out from Arcanum Pictures on Vimeo.
Isolated in a place where twisted creatures torment him from the dark, a man desperately tries to find an escape.
It’s almost difficult to comprehend that this replica of an 18th century gentleman’s tool chest, packed with tools, is only 2 inches long. It is a masterful 1/12 scale reproduction based on the Hewitt chest at Colonial Williamsburg and is by celebrated miniaturist William Robertson — via The Toolchest Site
A single subtle visual trick turns would could be a cumbersome extension into a more natural expansion in this traditional brick Dutch home — a roof form picked up in a strategically-sliced outside wall. Sloped roofs dominate the original, which are picked up in the concrete angles found in the first-level addition by Baksvan Wengerden that creates additional living space and connection to the backyard — via Dornob
If you have a hexagonal-shaped room, decency demands that you turn it into a TARDIS control Room. Jayman White understood this and made one optimised for the Fourth Doctor. It lights up, makes appropriate sound effects and travels through space and time — via Neatorama
Finish your knitted bags and clutches like a pro with this seaming and handle attachment tutorial from Dawn at Knitting Nonstop! — via MAKE
Luxury all the way with this six-bedroom Huf Haus in Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey. Sadly, a price to match too.
This is, of course, a contemporary build, with those clever German craftsmen coming over and constructing this eco-friendly gem using exacting factory-made component parts. If I ever had the land and the money, I would probably give them a call too.
The house is known as Pleasant View (presumably because it offers that, courtesy of Richmond Park) and is everything you would expect from a Huf Haus and more besides.
£2,950,000 is the asking price, should you win the Lotto this weekend. More images on the listing — via WowHaus
On Friday, 19 October the Twycross Zoo welcomed a female Brazilian Tapir calf to Muffin (mum) and Pele (dad). The healthy calf has been suckling well and exhibiting bursts of exuberance, romping around her enclosure and then retreating to the indoor area for a snooze — via ZooBorns
Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered bracelets with snake heads, a tiara with animal motifs and a horse-head piece in a hoard of ancient golden artefacts unearthed during excavations at a Thracian tomb in the north of country.
The artefacts have been dated to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century BC. They were found in the biggest of 150 ancient tombs of the Getae people, a Thracian tribe that was in contact with the Hellenistic world. The hoard also yielded a golden ring, 44 female figure depictions and 100 golden buttons.
These are amazing findings from the apogee of the rule of the Getae,
said Diana Gergova, head of the archaeologist team and a researcher of Thracian culture with the Sofia-based National Archaeology Institute. From what we see up to now, the tomb may be linked with the first known Getic ruler, Cothelas.
The site is at the ancient Getic burial complex near the village of Sveshtari, about 250 miles north-east of Sofia. One of the tombs there, the Tomb of Sveshtari, is included in the Unesco world heritage list for its unique architectural decor showing half-human, half-plant female figures and painted murals — via The Guardian
The Federal Government has abandoned its controversial plan for an internet filter.
Five years after Labor promised to filter the internet, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is dumping the plan.
Instead he will ask internet service providers to block child abuse websites that Interpol includes in its worst of
list — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Micro-blogging site Twitter experienced record traffic as the results of the 2012 US Presidential election were announced on Tuesday night, but the service never faltered despite the increased load — something Twitter engineers credit to the company’s move from Ruby to Java for its backend software.
According to a blog post by Mazen Rawashdeh, Twitter’s VP of infrastructure operations engineering, Twitter users posted an average of 9,965 messages per second between the hours of 8.11pm and 9.11pm Pacific Time.
During a single second at 8:20pm, Twitter users produced 15,107 new posts, Rawashdeh writes, and during the peak traffic period of the evening they generated 874,560 posts in a single minute.
Such numbers are unusual for Twitter, Rawashdeh says, and they represent an evolution in how customers use the service. While in the past Twitter has experienced brief traffic spikes to mark particular events, such as New Year’s Eve or the close of a sporting event, this was the first time such heavy traffic lasted for such a sustained period. It was also the highest volume of traffic during an election since Twitter launched — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Bernard Mont, calls the bike a TT3 Difazio
— an imagined collaboration between the engineers Fabio Taglioni and Jack Difazio — via Bike EXIF
Experimental concrete that patches up cracks by itself is to undergo outdoor testing.
The concrete contains limestone-producing bacteria, which are activated by corrosive rainwater working its way into the structure.
The new material could potentially increase the service life of the concrete — with considerable cost savings as a result.
The work is taking place at Delft Technical University, the Netherlands.
It is the brainchild of microbiologist Henk Jonkers and concrete technologist Eric Schlangen — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Luca Zanaroli designed a house in an olive grove in Morciano di Leuca, Italy — via CONTEMPORIST
High winds in Australia swept these two Tawny Frogmouth chicks from their nest in Dundas. Lucky for them, they landed in someone’s backyard who notified Taronga Zoo and local wildlife centre staff — via ZooBorns
Emma Architecten have completed a new visitors pavilion and cafe at Fort Diemerdam in Amsterdam — via CONTEMPORIST
ECAL Low-Tech Factory/Rocking-Knit from ECAL on Vimeo.
Is there anything more relaxing than the back and forth motion of a comfy rocking chair? Of course there is — rocking while sporting a stylish knit cap you made yourself, which is made all the more easy with this rocking chair knitting machine — via Gizmodo Australia
It sounds like the theoretical impossibility of perpetual motion, but engineers at the University of Michigan have created a pacemaker that is powered by the beating of your heart — no batteries required.
The technology behind this new infinite-duration pacemaker is one that we’ve discussed before at length on ExtremeTech: piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity is literally pressure electricity
, and it relates to certain materials that generate tiny amounts of electricity when deformed by an external force. Piezoelectricity is exciting because it can harvest energy from kinetic energy that is currently wasted — the vibration of machines, the straining of floorboards in public/commercial spaces, the wobbling of bridges, the soles of your feet as you walk.
A conventional pacemaker. The long electrode is embedded in the heart. The main unit must be replaced when the battery runs out.
Or, in the case of the perpetual pacemaker, the vibrations in your chest as your heart pumps blood around your body. Piezoelectric devices generate very small amounts of power — on the order of tens of milliwatts — but it turns out that pacemakers require very power, too. In testing, the researchers’ energy harvester generated 10 times the required the power to keep a pacemaker firing — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A team of scientists working out of Bangor University in Wales has developed a commercially affordable method of using Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) over fibre optic lines, which could deliver broadband ISP speeds that are 2,000 times faster than current services.
But the three-year project (OCEAN) is not the first to make use of OOFDM, which typically splits a laser down to multiple different optical frequencies. The data can then be broken up and sent in parallel streams via the different frequencies. Last year a team of Sydney University scientists found an energy-efficient way of using a single laser to transfer data down a 50km long single-mode fibre optic cable at speeds of up to 26Tbps (Terabits per second).
The key difference with OCEAN is that this work is capable of “significantly saving the network installation and maintenance cost for both [ISPs] and equipment vendors” by using low-cost off–the-shelf components and end-to-end real-time OOFDM transceivers via currently installed fibre networks (FTTH etc.). It also provides a Green” solution due to the “significant reduction in electrical power consumption
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
IT vendors, already under attack for stonewalling the Australian government’s IT pricing inquiry, have received a blunt warning from the ACCC: don’t lie about why your products are expensive in Australia.
Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims says the watchdog is already looking into vendors’ claims that the “Aussie tax” is due to the country’s 10 percent GST, high wages or transport costs.
It’s a move that will probably jolt the vendors far more than the parliamentary inquiry. There’s no practical way to legislate price parity across international markets — but the ACCC has considerable powers to crack down on companies that mislead the public (without needing any new legislation).
Sims told the AFR that while the usual bleating complaints from vendors might account for a 30 percent price differential, if the price difference is 300 percent, then it’s a different matter
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
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