Hasta La Gadget!

One of my favorite guns in the history of video games has to be the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2. Perhaps my second favorite is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which admittedly is more of a tool than a gun. Now, the smart guys over at Hack-a-Day have combined them both – sorta, kinda.

How, you might ask? Caleb Kraft took his off-the-shelf model of the Portal gun, and added a levitation device to the front of it – currently capable of lifting a small model of the weighted companion cube. He achieved this by hacking his StellaNova magnetic levitating globe and tearing the magnetic coil from the desktop plaything (throwing the Earth off its axis and ripping a hole in it in the process.) He then attached the coil to one of the arms of the Portal gun, and attached the magnet from inside of the globe to a foam model of the companion cube.

Check it out in action in the video below:

Cool, no? Unfortunately, the magnetic levitation field doesn’t hold up well to movement, and can’t really lift anything very heavy. Too bad. I was really looking forward to picking up some circular saw blades and flinging them at zombies this Halloween.

[via Hack-a-Day (Thanks for the tip, Caleb!)]

While the country anticipates the possible gaffes, pitfalls and implications of the vice presidential debate Thursday night, the candidates are (or should be) prepping to hit each other on certain statistics.

Following the first presidential debate, which changed the course of the election, Joe Biden should be trying to press Paul Ryan on points that many say Barack Obama didn’t do enough to contest.

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Earlier this week when Ohio’s Secretary of State John Husted said he’d appeal a court ruling that would reinstate early voting on the last three days before Election Day, the announcement threw an already chaotic run-up to the elections into further confusion. Local election officials said they don’t know how to inform their poll workers or voters. Ministers have stalled their Souls to the Polls campaigns. And Husted has raised the ante in the latest round between the state’s Democrats and Republicans over expanding or limiting voter access.

“The problem is we have no clue what’s going on,” said Tim Burke, a Democrat and chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Elections in Cincinnati. “I am absolutely convinced that this is part of an overall strategy.”

President Barack Obama’s campaign and Democrats had sued Husted, the state’s election chief, and Ohio’s attorney general for eliminating early voting for most residents in the last three days before the Tuesday election.

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More on Voting Rights

Keyboards aren’t always high on the list of considerations for folks buying a new computer or looking to upgrade an old one. Some may be more likely to splurge on a high-end monitor, or cram in as much RAM as possible. For this writer, though, the keyboard is one of the most important components of a computer, if not the most important. For the past 10 years or more, that’s meant a split-design ergonomic keyboard in the vein of Microsoft’s Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 — at least when not exclusively using a laptop. That style certainly takes some getting used to, and is always guaranteed to start a conversation, but it has some clear benefits for comfort (not to mention the well-being of your wrists) over the long term.

More recently, however, that old standby has given way to a mechanical keyboard with a traditional design — the Matias Tactile Pro 3, specifically. A split-design mechanical keyboard would be ideal, but those are unfortunately quite a rare breed. While a something like the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 has advantages over your average keyboard in terms of overall comfort, it still feels like a regular keyboard. That is, it’s slightly mushy and generally less tactile given its use of a rubber membrane for the keys instead of the individual switches found in a mechanical model like the Tactile Pro.

As anyone who’s used both can attest, the difference is immediately noticeable. With a good mechanical keyboard, you don’t have to worry about a key press not registering; the keys have more spring to them for a crisper feel and (here’s the contentious part for some) they make more noise. It’s not a typewriter-level racket, but there’s a good chance you’ll be frowned upon if you’re sharing a desk with someone, or are trying to take notes while on a conference call. It’s that potential issue that led Matias to try something different with its latest keyboard — one that it claims is the world’s quietest mechanical keyboard. Did it deliver? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Matias Quiet Pro review: a mechanical keyboard with less clickety-clack

Filed under: Peripherals

Matias Quiet Pro review: a mechanical keyboard with less clickety-clack originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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