I love technology (.org)

Back in the mid 90s, British inventor Trevor Baylis  came up with his most famous invention, the wind-up radio (also known as clockwork radio). The idea was simple; to make do without batteries/mains connections.

You wind the device up and then it works for a certain amount of time. When it runs out, you can wind it up again.

Since then, a few other devices have been developped based on a similar design. Wind-up torches are now very popular, wind-up mobile chargers are starting to emerge, and Tevor Baylis’ company, Freeplay, has announced the wind-up media player.

I might be asking for too much technically but i’d like it if someone came up with a design for a wind-up kettle, a wind-up digital camera, and a wind-up alarm-clock. 

Additional resources:

 Wind-up radio http://keetsa.com/blog/eco-friendly/wind-up-radio/

Eco media player cranks up the volume http://stephenfry.com/blog/?p=28

Redland Shire Council, Australia, is using Orion solar bollard as part of two schemes on the highway.

The bollards use solar energy to generate lighting for pedestrian walkways. Not only are they good for the environment, they are also quicker and cheaper to install, as they require no digging of ducting trenches into the ground.

While this solution might not be adequate in countries with low sunlight, more and more companies provide such devices.

Solion is one of them, and is based in the UK. Their website does not give details of who their clients are but there is a picture of a curved sollar cell for street furniture attached to the top of a London bus stop flag. As a londoner, i cannot say i have noticed them so far but i will keep my eyes open

Additional resources:

Source article on Redlang Shire Council  http://www.infolink.com.au/articles/Solar-power-lights-up-the-Sunshine-State_z159353.htm

Solion http://www.solion.co.uk/commercial.htm

Very often, when using the hatch pattern “dots” in AutoCAD, you can be met with the “hatch spacing too dense” error message. It’s infuriating!

The options are to either select a less dense scale for the hatch or to split the hatch area in two smaller areas, hatching each of them separately.

Well, there is no need to compromise on the scale you want or to do any extra work!

You can fix this if you type the following in the command line:

(setenv “MaxHatch” “10000000″)

MaxHatch is an environment variable that determines the maximum number of entities in a hatch area. In the case of the “dots” hatch, if you use a small scale, you will have many dots. If you reach the maximum allowed by your setting, you will get the “hatch spacing too dense” error message.

Luckily, you are able to change the value of this environment variable. Set it to 10000000 and you’ll be sorted

Additional resources:

AutoCAD 2004 customization tutorial: environment variables http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/autocad/tutorials/select/parsai_environment_variables.htm

Working with environment variables through AutoLISP http://hyperpics.blogs.com/beyond_the_ui/2005/12/working_with_en.html 

Since the advent of computers, audio technology has revolutionised how musicians work.

Before, it was pretty straight-forward. You picked up a physical instrument, you learnt how to play by practising scales and so on to improve your finger dexterity, you went into a studio, you played your bit, someone pressed the record button and presto, the single was ready for release.

Then, synths and samplers arrived. Synths could produce sounds an acoustic instrument was incapable of and samplers would allow a new generation of musicians to manipulate audio without being restricted to thinking in terms of notes and chords, physical instruments and finger dexterity.

Later, computers arrived. So synths and samplers became “soft”, people could record at home and mix and edit in a way much easier than the old way, when you had to slice a tape to make an edit.

Well, here comes the new audio revolution.

Almost a decade ago, AutoTune took the world of recording by storm. It was a bit of software that allowed people to change the pitch of audio. Let’s say your singer couldn’t sing in tune - well, run it through AutoTune and you could fix it! At least, it was the theory. Various companies launched similar products, and Celemony came to dominate the market with “Melodyne”, which could not only change the pitch but also the length and the position of a note.

Celemony is about to unleash the next musical revolution. Up until now, their product was only able to work with monophonic audio; that means, audio that only contains one note at a time. So it would work with the human voice, or a flute, or a trumpet, but not with guitar chords or a piano.  

Well, they have just announced Melodyne 2, to be released in October. It will be able to recognise each note within an audio recording, and you will be able to change their pitch, length and position individually!

Samplers and synths created new ways of working and new musical styles, such as dance music, electro, and hip-hop. Will Celemony Melodyne 2 do the same?

 Additional resources:

Watch Celemony video about their new technology http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna

Music Thing article on Peter Neubacker, the man behind Celemony http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2008/03/celemony-melodyne-dna-has-this-man-done.html

British 23 year old Dan Sheridan has designed a see-saw that could provide electricity for a school.

Following a trip to Kenya, the student was inspired by the energy of the children and kept thinking about ways to use this to generate electricity.

He hit upon the idea of a see-saw and started work on his design. He has since won two grants, which will enable him to develop and test his see-saw design. His dream now is to design a whole energy-generating playground.

Simple inventions are often the best. For me, this is in the same category as wind-up radios and torches. So simple, yet so effective.

Additional resources:

BBC News article on Dan Sheridan http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7301354.stm

Coventry University news item on Dan Sheridan http://www.coventry.ac.uk/latestnewsandevents/a/4352