How's your AI
If you think you're up to the challenge, check out National Instuments LavVIEW 6.1 online contest - Vibots. ViBOTS is a robot tournament where LabVIEW programmed virtual machines, in this first generation tanks battling each other.
Entrants must write LabVIEW code which will control their ViTANK, hunting enemy tanks, avoiding enemy missiles and ultimately destroying the opposition before it destroys you. So how does it work? Two robot tanks battle in an arena. Each tank can move around the arena, has missiles to attack the other tank and a scanner to detect objects within the arena. All control of the tanks is via LabVIEW.




- posted by Paula Porter @ 8:14 AM

 
Fun and Functional
That's today's theme kids -- the fun site -- www.ducktapeclub.com. There are duck-tivities, such as make your own ducktape wallet, a ducktape art gallery, clothes made of the sticky stuff, tales of the tape and lots of nifty contests...

For functional, we have www.onlineconversion.com -- where you can
convert just about anything to anything else promising more than 5,000 units, and 50,000 conversions. Just put in a number, click one unit and click on the second unit, both in menus, and the answer appears immediately. For instance -- 46 parsec = 150.0315954 light-year...or the personal favorite of the always rennovating Search Engineer family -- dimensions in feet and meters so you can order just the right amount of paint or carpeting or whatever.

- posted by Paula Porter @ 9:30 AM

 
Baby you can float my car...
Remember those cars in the '50s that rambled down the highway, then dove into the water and putted around? Well, those crazy folks across the pond have tried it again...check out the Gibbs Aquada. It's a 175 HP V6 four speed with 3 independent bilge pumps. Designers claim 100 mph on land and 30 on water and it goes from one surface to another with the push of a button. And the best thing is, it looks like a hot little convertible...

Here's a story about the car from Autothing.com - http://www.autothing.com/funthings/Auto%20News/ATNews%2010-14-03/ATnews-10-14-03-Aquacar.htm. And here's what the BBC had to say about the little car that could...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3077508.stm

If water isn't your thing, how about taking to the air? Mollar International claims to have developed the first and only "affordable" personal vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, the Sky car. Powered by 8 rotary engines, it's supposed to fly about 900 miles at 350 mph on one tank of low-octane gas. On the street, it hits about 30 mph with an electric engine. The bad news is that you need to have a pilot's license to fly/drive it.

Here's another site about the aerocar -- past and present. The present aerocar has a removable aircraft chasis that fits over a sports car -- the Lotus Elise.

If you want to see a retro flying car of the ConvAIRCAR, go to http://www.retrofuture.com/flyingcar.html.
- posted by Paula Porter @ 7:51 AM

 
Authentic Tactical Flight Simulation
Pretty nifty site http://www.etctacticalflight.com/ that shows first hand just what G-Force is, as well as demonstrations of the human centrifuges used by pilots and astronauts in training. On November 12 at 10 a.m. EST they have a live streaming event to watch the introduction of a new simulator in operation. This tactical flight simulation offers a learning environment in which th epilot experiences the same stress experienced in actual flight. If the pilot makes a mistakes in the simulator, he doesn't crash and die, but learns from the experience and tries to correct it.
- posted by Paula Porter @ 9:16 AM