Hasta La Gadget!

I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen an R/C plane fly like this one does. That’s because it is one of a kind. This plane dances and does an amazing ballet in the air thanks to user-edited software and an ultra-light fuselage.

Dutch R/C plane enthusiast Nando Te Riele wanted an airplane that was responsive enough to coordinate its movements with music. Mission accomplished. Check out the video to see how graceful this thing is as it dances and twirls without a care in the world.  It is really amazing to watch.

Riele installed lights on the wings to augment the plane’s graceful movements. I think we have hit upon a new geeky form of allet that I would actually pay to see. The performance took place at this year’s Electric Indoor Masters meeting, an event that showcases some of the best indoor R/C plane pilots in the world.

[via Geek]

Design Festa is a two-day biannual international art event held in Tokyo which showcases an enormous array of original artwork with over 10,000 artists exhibiting, buying and selling works created in multiple mediums. The 37th Design Festa will be held this year on May 18th and 19th (Sat-Sun). You can check out the highlights from last year’s events in the video bellow.

With the thousands of designers that will exhibit, attend and participate in the event we wanted to know what happens to them as a result of showcasing their designs and products. So we asked the organisers of Design Festa to share with us some success stories of past exhibitors.

TaroShooten are a pair of toy designers who first exhibited at Design Festa back in 1999 from which they launched into commercial success with their popular “Korejanai Robo” (Not This Robot, Robot) series which spoofs the fact that kids don’t always receive the right gift from their parents, elaborately constructed suicide buttons and other humorous products. Korejanai Robo has even entered into the pop culture sphere spawning its own merchandise such as USB sticks, costumes and cameras featuring character designs. The designers even created a funny backstory and orignal theme music for the series as well.

Shikano Takashi is another Japanese designer who enjoyed more recent success as a result of demonstrating his product at Design Festa in 2012. His “Shirt-ties” which are made of colourful felt can be fixed onto any shirt button are designed to be easily worn and fashionable and currently on sale at Tokyo iine.

Korean illustrator, artist and picture book author Seo Miji has boosted her career expontentially after showcasing her unique illustrations at Design Festa back in 2006. Having been interviewed and featured by mass media outlets including NHK and CNBC she is now invited to give regular talks and presentations at schools and colleges. Most of her artwork and stories are aimed at and about young children. You can check out her most recent artwork and contributions on her website.  The video bellow shows a live paint demo by Seo Miji at a the 33rd Design Festa.

Canadian

The artists above have shown that attending events such as Design Festa can significantly enhance exposure to one’s artwork and products, raise media attention and contribute to increasing commercial prospects.

To find out more about the next Design Festa event check out their homepage, facebook and twitter pages.

By: Mike Wall
Published: 03/25/2013 05:33 AM EDT on SPACE.com

An unfavorable planetary alignment will force NASA’s fleet of robotic Mars explorers to be a lot more self-sufficient next month.

Mission controllers won’t send any commands to the agency’s various Mars spacecraft for much of April, because the sun will lie between Earth and the Red Planet during that time. Our star can disrupt and degrade interplanetary communications in such an alignment, which is known as a Mars solar conjunction, so spacecraft handlers won’t take any chances.

"Receiving a partial command could confuse the spacecraft, putting them in grave danger," NASA officials explain in a video posted Tuesday (March 19) by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

Transmissions from Earth to the Mars rover Curiosity are slated to be suspended from April 4 to May 1, officials said. No commands will be sent to Curiosity’s older rover cousin Opportunity or NASA’s Mars-orbiting craft — Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) — from April 9 to April 26.

Both rovers will continue to do stationary science work throughout the conjunction period, relying on commands sent up to them beforehand. [How NASA Deals with a Mars Solar Conjunction (Video)]

"We are doing extra science planning work this month to develop almost three weeks of activity sequences for Opportunity to execute throughout conjunction," Opportunity mission manager Alfonso Herrera of JPL said in a statement.

MRO and Mars Odyssey will continue science observations as well, though on a more limited basis. The orbiters will also continue their role as rover communication links, receiving data from Opportunity and Curiosity.

Odyssey will send information — its own observations and the rovers’ data — Earthward throughout the conjunction period, though the mission team anticipates some dropouts, so Odyssey will send the data again later as needed.

MRO will take a different tack, storing everything from April 4 until after conjunction. The spacecraft’s operators estimate it will have about 52 gigabits of data onboard when it’s cleared to transmit to Earth again on May 1.

Mars solar conjunctions occur every 26 months, so all of the spacecraft have dealt with them except Curiosity, which landed on the Red Planet last August. Opportunity has been through five conjunctions since arriving on Mars in January 2004, but Odyssey is even more experienced.

"This is our sixth conjunction for Odyssey," Chris Potts of JPL said in a statement. Potts is mission manager for Odyssey, which has been orbiting Mars since 2001. "We have plenty of useful experience dealing with them, though each conjunction is a little different."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

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The United States is changing. Latinos will soon outnumber Anglos in California. Politicians and pundits who once did their best to stand in the way of what they derisively called “amnesty” now support a pathway to citizenship for the country’s estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants, in order to curry favor with the increasingly powerful Latino vote.

Many people still fear the growth of the Latino population, however. During a debate over a proposal to keep undocumented immigrants from paying in-state tuition at Kansas colleges, state Rep. Allan Rothlisberg (R-Grandview Plaza) went off on a rant about drug cartels and railed against the Spanish option on automated phone menus. Boston columnist Jeff Jacoby slammed Gabriel Gomez for using a few sentences in Spanish during his English-language message announcing his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat.

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Tweaking the design of his bizarre pump-action Oreo gun, Joerg Sprave has built a smaller version designed to take office warfare to the next level (if the next level is a long two-hour talk with human resources). Made only using stuff you’d find around the office—like cardboard, glue, staples, and rubber bands—the pump-gun is able to fire euro coins, US nickels, or M5 washers. More »