Weird

Pigeon-guided missiles

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According to Wikipedia, some folks tried to design a a pigeon-guided missile.. And it appears that those folks were lead by B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist psychology pope:

The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognise the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Three pigeons were to control the bomb's direction by majority rule.

Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. However, Skinner's plans to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was apparently too radical for the military establishment; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously

Related: bat bombs: a World War II proposal to drop bats carrying tiny incendiary bombs over Japan.

Another Furby hacking

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eecue.com is into Furby hacking! Here is his research agenda with this marvelous toy:

The coolest thing I saw once I opened up Furby was that the board designers were nice enough to leave nice large pads for the RSC-4128 diagnostic interface, which hopefully should allow programming of the Furby. I am not sure, but I think the diagnostic port is a serial interface. I have ordered the development kit from Sensory Inc, and I'm sure this will help answer some of my questions. If I do end up being able to alter the programming / data on the Furby here are some things I plan on doing:

Give Furby a more colorful vocabulary Teach Furby some tasteless jokes Change Furby's voice tone to be less cute and more evil Give Furby a funny accent and maybe a lisp and a twitch Hook up some of the unused I/O ports to control other things (the chips has 24 I/O ports with 10mA outputs) Expand Furby's memory Utilize the voice recording function of the RSC-4128 Make Furby a voice controlled DTMF dialer Utilize the MIDI synth contained in the RSC-4128

Here is what I plan on doing even if I can change the code or data:

Add nicer switches to the make the Skeletal Furby easier to Pet Feed Tickle Turn off LEDs that light up when Furby moves Volume control for the speaker Put the Furby head on a Robosapien body

Extreme tinkering: Microwave oven against missiles

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One year ago I blogged about microwave oven hacks and yesterday I ran across this intriguing usage of microwave technology: NATO pilots during the war in Kosovo has been fooled by microwave ovens they bombed, believing it was Serbian tanks. Some more information here:

According to a British officer who spent six months in the region and offered his own assessment of bombing damage, the Serbs lured the NATO planes using household microwave ovens to simulate the emissions of armored transport systems. (...) A NATO officer who gave an anonymous interview to the British Herald stated that only three tanks were found. "The Serbs use a lot of tricks to elude NATO bombs. The use of microwave ovens from houses in Kosovo to thumb their noses at the alliance was only one of their ruses." (...) it demanded nothing of them, since they used 100-dollar decoy devices (microwave ovens) which were available in every household. And the guided bombs cost around 30,000 dollars.

Yet another example of a lowtech jamming trick... Any this is a good example of how people hack existing technologies for other purposes.

Update: Spot on this topic, I just saw this on Boing Boing: a book about "extreme tinkering and radical self expression through technology" (which is obviously one of the topic I am fascinated of). It's entitled "Adventures from the Technology Underground : Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them (Hardcover)" by William Gurstelle who also blogs here.

Use plants to do photography

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Via Wilfried Houjebek's delicious, an intriguing project he calls "geranium as camera"

many natural things are sensitive to light. Long ago people noticed the effect of light on green plants, or how it made coloured fabrics fade. It is the effect of light on plants that makes Roman Photography possible. (...) if you drop a small amount of a solution of iodine on it [chlorophyll], the starch turns black. So that's it really. All you have to do is get a plant to produce lots of starch in the right place, then stain the starch with iodine. Don't let a few details prevent you starting straight away.

The webpage proposes a curious way to make a picture with plants, try to follow it.

Smash my XBox

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An intriguing performance organized by smash my xbox:

After we collect $430 in donations, we will take that money to a local unspecified retailer, which opens at 12am on the launch date. We will purchase the Xbox 360, and destroy it in front of the other Xbox fanboys who are already waiting in line. We will try to be at the very front of the line. The whole thing will be shot on film, and displayed on this site. This is only a social experiment, for the entertainment of the donors, and visitors of this site. For more info

The blog about it gives some details like:

November 22nd 2005 - 10am - Well, after 55 hours of pain, cold, and suffering, we have got our Xbox 360 and successfully smashed it outside Best Buy minutes later, with a large sledgehammer in front of a few Xbox Fanboys who just bought brand new 360s. Short video clip will be posted tomorrow (23rd) and the longer documentary style one will be posted with the next few days. For now, enjoy these pictures!

The hate mail section is also curious.

gameboy + pedal effects = rock gameboy

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6955 is a great gameboy-hacker who is using a gameboy to do music. Of course it's very common lately but I like the way he does it: he combines gameboy with pedal effects which is amazing:

I started this project as a street–side busking thing in Toronto back in ’98. 99.9% of street musicians are irritating Bob Dylans. I wanted to do something a little more interesting. Gameboys are battery powered. So are pedal effects. I found a battery powered amp at a salvation army, threw all my gear in a suitcase and hit the streets. My setup has evolved into a solid, self–contained box housing a ton of effects, an amp and speakers. And it all runs on 12volts.

The sole sound maker is a Gameboy running the Gameboy Camera—it has a lo–fi music sequencer–type thing reminiscent of a TB–303 interface. I run the output of the Gameboy through a bunch of effects: filters, distortions, tremolos, delays, pitch shifters. Most of the stuff I built myself using schematics off the web. I try to modify everything… get more range on filters, more distortion, extra controls. I stumble across a lot of mods while debugging the stuff I build. For recording, I use the same gear, and record on a 4–track. I do every song in one take—I do all the effects in real time. No post–production. No computer tricks (...) there are people making Gameboy music, but I’d have to say that I sound far different than most of the Gameboy music. It’s a lot noisier, more rock. Gameboy rock.

Mosquito sounds to avoid teenagers loitering

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The IHT has a strange story about a device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying,"), that emits a high-frequency pulsing sound which can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30.

So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in south Wales. Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside. "On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for customers," said Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the store. "On the high end, they'd be in the shop fighting, stealing and assaulting the staff." (...) The results were almost instantaneous. Where disaffected youths used to congregate, now there is no one. (...) Stapleton is considering introducing a much louder unit that can be switched on in emergencies with a panic button. It would be most useful when youths swarm into stores and begin stealing en masse, a phenomenon known in Britain as "steaming."

Kind of scary, will we see that in France to avoid car fires?

Fender-Intel Guitar to surf on information superhighways

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According to the very tech-related journal "The Sun", Intel and Fender are working on an internet guitar:

A NEW guitar allows rockers to surf the internet and send emails while blasting out riffs. Technology built into the Fender instrument allows musicians to download chords from the net to play instantly — and check their record royalties online.

The Intel Concept Telecaster Guitar — currently in the design stage — is likely to cost thousands of pounds if it hits the shops.

Picture by Aeropause.

Remote-contolled turtles

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After the remote-controlled humans, Ananova has this good headline: A Russian scientist claims to have created remote controlled turtles for spying missions:

Alexei Burikov, head of the biology department at Rostov-on-Don State Pedagogical University, said a human controller could direct the turles through devices fitted to their shells. The device sent vibrations through the shell to the turtle which could be trained to change direction. The scientist added that a tiny camera fixed to the turtle's shell could relay reconnaissance pictures of an area to a command and control centre. (...) "Monitoring could be conducted for both environmental and defence purposes," he said. Turtles could be used to observe other wildlife in a way that no human would ever be able to do, he added.

Melted Barbies by David Kime

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I recently discovered the work of David Kime through the great blog strange new products. I like this DIY vision:

His sculptures, made of chicken wire, yarn, melted crayons, shredded plastic buckets and aluminum cans, doll heads and other found objects, represent a kind of exorcism of the demons which have plagued his subconscious mind.

This "Pre-hysteric # 26" made up of "Doll Parts, melted crayons, and mixed media" is awesome:

Control your car with your cell phone

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Via strange new products, this crazy application: a wireless access protocol (WAP) version of Guidepoint™ that:
allows subscribers to track their vehicle, unlock doors, start the engine and honk the horn with a wireless device or cell phone. (...) The vehicle tracking service displays a map pinpointing the vehicle location, as well as a text readout of the street address where the vehicle is located.

Here is what says the website:

“The addition of WAP and our recent move to digital reflect our drive to deliver value innovation to customers. Our goal is not to create bleeding edge technology. Instead, we are focused aligning innovation with utility, price and costs to deliver a unique experience,”

"Aligning innovation with utility?", " deliver a unique experience"... mmmh are those the promises of location-based services people expressed in the last 5 years?