Feb 16
An entire drowned city has become the world’s most mind-boggling scuba-diving attraction. Consider booking a trip to Qiandao Lake, China, where you can wreck-dive a 1,800-year old flooded metropolis.
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Oct 22
Photographer Louis Helbig is archiving aerial views of Canadian villages drowned by the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway on his website Sunken Villages. The photos are haunting and gorgeous, almost emerald-like, but often difficult to read. Outlines of houses and roads barely emerge from the silt like scenes from a dream by J.G. Ballard, resembling flooded stage sets in the water that, in some photos, are lazily criss-crossed by boats.
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Mar 12
They Might Be Giants: Particle Man
Posted in: Today's Chili
Although the album was released about eight months before the cartoon premiered, They Might Be Giants’ Flood will probably forever be best associated with the Warner Brothers/Amblin Entertainment animated series: Tiny Toon Adventures. If you grew up in the 1990s, it’s all but impossible to not picture Plucky Duck getting pummeled in a wrestling ring whenever Particle Man is played. More »
Oct 27
Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute
Posted in: Today's Chili 
How was your week? We got to spend a couple of days trekking around the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh, PA to check out some of the latest projects from the school’s world renowned Robotics Institute — a trip that culminated with the bi-annual induction ceremony from the CMU-sponsored Robot Hall of Fame. Given all the craziness of the past seven days, you might have missed some of the awesomeness, but fear not, we’ve got it all for you here in one handy place — plus a couple of videos from the trip that we haven’t shown you yet. Join us after the break to catch up.
Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Oct 24
Here’s another extremely cool offshoot of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. Platypus LLC build autonomous robotic airboats that can be deployed for a wide range of usages including environmental data and monitoring hard-to-reach spots after natural disasters like flooding. The hull of the boat looks a good deal like a boogie board, built from polyurethane. On top, you’ll find a propulsion fan assembly, just behind a hard plastic electronics compartment that houses internals like the Arduino board. That microcontroller communicates via Bluetooth with a smartphone that sits in the front of of the boat, safely cocooned inside an Otterbox case.
The models we saw this week were carrying Nexus S handsets — relatively cheap solutions bought second-hand off of eBay. Just about any Android phone should do the trick, but in the case of this project, where phones can get wrenched loose or just outright pilfered, cheaper is certainly better. Platypus’ proprietary app helps control the boat autonomously, using the handset’s camera to provide situational awareness. Sensors mounted on the boat, meanwhile, offer up information on oxygen and PH levels, temperature and more.
Continue reading Platypus airboats have a Nexus S for a brain, we go eyes-on (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Robots, Science
Platypus airboats have a Nexus S for a brain, we go eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sep 29
Hard drive shipments recover from floods in Thailand, expected to reach record high
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Last year’s floods in Thailand caused hard drive shortages after wreaking havoc on a number of electronics manufacturers, but new stats from IHS iSuppli indicate that the HDD market for PCs has fully recovered and is poised to hit an all time high. The firm expects 524 million units for internal use in PCs to ship this year, besting the previous record by 4.3 percent. What’s giving the recovery an added boost? According to the analytics group, the extra demand comes courtesy of Windows 8 and Ultrabooks. Unfortunately for deal hounds, the company noted in a report earlier this year that prices aren’t expected to dip below the pre-flood range until 2014. If IHS iSuppli projections hold true, total annual hard drive shipments could reach 575.1 million by 2016.
Filed under: Storage
Hard drive shipments recover from floods in Thailand, expected to reach record high originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Sep 2012 16:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sep 14
Floods are becoming more and more common these days. Probably because people are still cutting down trees like no tomorrow and throwing their trash everywhere (which clogs up all the overtaxed drainage systems.)
It’s ironic, but what usually happens during extreme floods are water shortages all over the place. Not of floodwater (obviously), but of clean drinking water.
So designer Wang Can came up with the Source of Water concept. Basically it’s a tube filter that’s meant to be thrown right into the water that has accumulated outside. The water surrounding the canister exerts pressure on the tube, pushing the waters inside and through the filters, purifying it in the process.
Just think of all the lives that can be saved with Can’s concept – if it works to actually purify the dirty flood waters, that is.
[via Yanko Design]
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