geekosystem

Artist Joseph L. Griffiths has devised a bicycle-powered drawing machine which creates colorful gyroscopic patterns of varying sizes on walls with the turn of a set of pedals. Per Neatorama, "His interactive installations explore man’s relationship with machines and involve the audience in the creative cycle."

Don't go too crazy about that NASA press conference about extraterrestrial life (Bad Astronomy) Go a little crazy about this mouse anti-aging thing, but be reasonable (Wired) Verizon to announce 4G network (BGR) Creator's notes on the origins of FFIX (Mistwalker) The five-year console cycle is dead (CNET) Japanese manga makes French wine-maker a cult hero (BBC) Kim Jong-il Looking at Things (KJILaT) (title pic via APOD)

Sandal company Teva is teaming up with fancy-stuff company Grey Ant on a line of $330 stiletto heels, which you, too can wear while climbing trees or pushing wheelbarrows. Why? No idea, but it's funny. >>>More pics at Styleite.

This has been around for a while, but it's new to us and very cool: A site called SubZin is a sort of speedy, multi-purpose search engine for movie quotes. Can't remember which movie a quote is from? Type it in here -- with quotes around it if you're sure of the exact wording -- and you'll be able to trace it back to a movie without the usual search clutter. It also gives you the time the phrase appears in the movie, fuller context if you click the magnifying glass button, and, if applicable, a Netflix page. Advanced search options let you screen by title and genre. (SubZin via Daring Fireball)

This french bulldog puppy, named Emma, has found the perfect mortal enemy to help her display maximum adorability.

(via reddit)

Back in the day of the height of the Final Fantasy series, each game generally had some sort of fun mini-game, two of which, Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII and Tetra Master in Final Fantasy IX, were addictive collectible card games. By way of an announcement over on 4Gamer.net, Square Enix let the world know that a real life Final Fantasy trading card game is being developed, and will be released in Japan on February 25 of next year, published by Hobby Japan.

The folks behind Buckyballs have given us 3 sets of the magnetic desktoys -- which normally cost $29.95 -- to give away to you, our loyal readers. Here's how you can win: On our Facebook wall or in the comments below, explain in one sentence how magnets work, a subject that has baffled many of the great minds of our time. Scientific rigor is not required, but originality and creativity are. (No Wikipedia copy-pasting!) Unfortunately, this contest is only open to US winners. Bonus that applies beyond the contest: Through December 15th, enter "Geekosystem" in the section on getbuckyballs.com that asks you for a promo code and you'll receive 15% off your order. Buckyballs demo video below:

"It was a miracle of rare device / a 26-foot tall statue of Optimus Prime made of ice." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, slightly edited Artists Antti Pedrozo and Michel de Kok created this giant ice Optimus Prime; more pics here. [Warning: autoplay dub music.] (Antti Pedrozo via TDW)

Retired French electrician Pierre Le Guennec revealed 271 previously unknown works of Picasso that he had sitting around in his garage, worth about $80 million. Though Le Guennec claims he legitimately received the pieces as gifts, the Picasso family is suing Le Guennec, claiming he stole the works.

I can't possibly improve upon Tampa Bay news station WTSP's headline on this story, so I'm not even going to try: A University of Florida student and Publix employee named Zachary Garcia idly Googled himself only to discover that his photo had been circulated by the Polk County Sheriff's Office in connection with a murder. But the suspect in the felony murder case in question was Zachery Garcia -- that's Zachery with an "e." Zachary Garcia, the one who's not a murder suspect:

"I was just very shocked to find my picture and the article saying that I was convicted of a felony murder charge," he said, "and I was just very shocked and angry that someone put my name up there and said I did something I didn't do." "Everybody makes mistakes," Garcia added. "I work at Publix and I might get somebody's sub (order) wrong. But for somebody to get (the photo of a suspect) wrong...it's not a sandwich, it's somebody's life you're playing with."

And now as this story spreads, non-murder suspect Zachary Garcia is going to see his name pop up in all of these murder-related stories about how Googling his name used to erroneously cause his photo to turn up in connection with a murder case. D'oh! (WTSP via Fark)

Once upon a time, the human race populated a world in which regular, edible toast was the only kind of toast. Tired of being relegated to a one-toast world, a company, Archie McPhee, rose from the ashes to provide us with a toast alternative, so we would experience the liberating freedom of being able to choose between toasts. Presenting, inflatable toast: Because real toast is hard to keep in your pocket.

When "net neutrality" is a matter of defending highfalutin open Internet principles and P2P sites, it's hard to get average people too excited about it: But threaten their cheap Netflix, and matters get serious. The New York Times reports that Netflix partner Level 3 Communications, which delivers Netflix's streaming video to customers' computers, will have to pay recurring additional fees to ISP Comcast for continued carriage of their content. Level 3 is not too happy about this, and says it constitutes an assault on the open Internet and net neutrality.

Remember Oliver Kreylos, the US Davis researcher who wowed us with his 3D video reconstruction using the Kinect's dual camera? Well, he's back, and this time, he's got two Kinects worked in tandem for even better 3D, though some interference is created.

First test of merging the 3D video streams from two Kinect cameras into a single 3D reconstruction. The cameras were placed at an angle of about 90 degrees, aimed at the same spot in 3D space. The two cameras were calibrated internally using the method described in the previous video, and were calibrated externally (with respect to each other) using a flat checkerboard calibration pattern and manual measurements.

(via Engadget)

It's been observed in the past that the Nook Color, with its color LCD display and its Android operating system, blurs the line between e-reader and tablet computer; consider that line erased. The Nook-hacking community has rooted Barnes & Noble's $250 reader, and as the triumphal Angry Birds photo above indicates, this means that the Nook Color is now open to sideloaded Android apps. With an 800 MHz ARM Cortex A8-based processor, 512 MB RAM, and storage capacity of 2 GB, expandable to 16 GB with microSD (compare to the iPad's 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 256 MB RAM, and storage from 16 to 64 GB), that's not too shabby for the price. Full Nook Color rooting instructions available here, but be warned:

For reasons unknown, extreme sports-type person Mike Wilson wanted to do a quadruple backflip into Lake Tahoe from a height of 99 feet. As you can see from the video above, he proceeded to do this, fueled by his mom's sandwiches. (via THD | Profile of Wilson)