An anonymous reader writes "A Piezoelectric Sound Level Meter was demoed at MIT's Battle of the Bands last month, borrowing its display from the do-it-yourself USB LED marquee that was the subject of a previous Slashdot story. This video tutorial describes in detail both the analog electronics plus the C code that runs the system. If this is your first experience at the intersection of digital and analog systems, don't be scared!"

destinyland writes "Want to build a robot this summer? 'Robot-loving Japanese are tinkering with screwdrivers and motors instead of heading to the beach,' and this article identifies the stores and sites serving robot hobbyists. Several sites are actually selling leftover industrial robots, but there's a variety of smaller-size robot vendors, from Tokyo's Vstone Robot Center to Carl's Electronics in Oakland (which sells sound-activated 'Hydradzoids' and solar-powered robots that crawl). Hasbro even sells their own functioning R2-D2 droid with real sonar navigation and a 'voice recognition response module.'"

blacklily8 writes "Gamasutra has published "The History of Rogue: Have @ You, You Deadly Zs." Despite only the most 'primitive' audiovisuals, Rogue has continued to excite gamers and programmers worldwide, and has been ported, enhanced, and forked now for over two decades. What is it about Wichman and Toy's old UNIX RPG that has sent so many gamers to their deaths in the Dungeons of Doom, desperately seeking the fabled Amulet of Yendor? This article covers the history of the game, including the Epyx failure to make a ton of cash selling it in 1983. It also goes into rogue-like culture and development."

An anonymous reader writes "Ever wished your iPhone could do more than just play some cool games? How about using it as a spread spectrum transmitter to fly your R/C Toys around, complete with using a Linksys router as a receiver?"

sciencehabit writes "'Researchers have developed a material that almost instantaneously (30 ms) changes from clear to dark blue when exposed to ultraviolet light, and it just as quickly reverts to clear when the light is turned off. The new material, one of a class called photochromics, could be useful in optical data storage as well as in super-fancy sunglasses.'" A comment to the article notes some of the potential dangers of quick-change sunglasses.

Edge Online has an in-depth look at the beginnings of the first PlayStation console. It starts at Sony's partnership with Nintendo, the purpose of which was to integrate a CD-ROM drive into the SNES. A falling out between the companies led Sony to stubbornly pursue a market dominated by Nintendo and Sega. The console's technology and Sony's unusual position in the industry quickly attracted the interest of many developers and publishers, eventually leading to sales that emphatically won that round of the console wars. "'There was a huge resistance inside the company to actually being in the videogames business at all,' explains Harrison. 'The main reason why the Sony brand wasn't really used in the early marketing of PlayStation was not necessarily out of choice, but it was because Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-year old brand. They saw Nintendo and Sega as toys, so why on Earth would they join the toy business? That changed a bit after we delivered 90 per cent of the company's profit for a few years.'"

AshboryBassPlayer writes "Ugobe has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy — i.e., not reorganization but liquidation. We first discussed the company's Pleo robotic dinosaur toy in 2006. According to the company, 100,000 Pleos were sold in 2008. CEO Caleb Chung is optimistic about the auction value of intellectual property that Ugobe holds. Pleo featured 14 servo joints, a camera, and an SD Card for storage. The final street prices were commonly between $275 and $350, much higher than an earlier hoped-for price point under $200."

Kaliann writes "Toys that respond to brainwaves are the next generation of unique user interfaces. The Washington Post looks at the current market appeal and future uses of technology that can meaningfully respond to the thoughts of a user. Currently the toys have a fairly simple basic idea: the harder you concentrate the more the object moves. A sensor on the forehead picks up brain waves that are associated with concentration, then levitates a ball in response: basic biofeedback. While this may seem to be a rather humble beginning, progress in this field could have astounding consequences in the advancement of technologies devoted to thought-controlled devices. As the author points out, Jedi Beer Pong is within our grasp."

darkjohnson writes with this impressive excerpt from Rocketry Planet: "On April 25, 2009, history will be made. At Higgs Farm in Price, Maryland, Steve Eves will enter the history books as the person who flew the largest model rocket in history. The rocket will weigh over 1,600 pounds, it will stand over 36 feet tall and it will be powered by a massive array of nine motors: eight 13,000ns N-Class motors and a 77,000ns P-Class motor."

Tesladownunder writes "This huge LED is on steroids and then some. It is intended for use as a streetlight. It has a 7000 lumen output at 100W and will burn a hole in a CD case without focusing. And that's without the infrared that a halogen or discharge lamp has. Very efficient and low maintenance. Stronger than HID car headlights or a 500W halogen. Hit the site for lots of data and pics of it in action including burning and irresponsible bicycle luminosity. You'll want one to attach to your keyring, too."

TEDChris writes "The Allosphere, being created at UC Santa Barbara, is the most ambitious attempt yet at creating powerful 3d visualizations of raw scientific data, such as the structure of a crystal, or how quantum effects take place. Researchers watch from a bridge inside the 30-foot sphere, looking at data projected 360 degrees around them and listening to 3D sound. The first major public demo of the facility has just been posted at TED.com. Optimists would argue that many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs happened through a new visual way of imagining data. Penicillin and relativity come to mind. So this is either a killer new research vehicle, an incredible toy, or just an insanely expensive art project."

coondoggie writes "Next month, with the help of a variety of high-tech gear, researchers will begin a wide-ranging project to better understand the origin, structure and evolution of tornadoes. The National Science Foundation has given $9.1 million to the project called Vortex2 (of course it has a convoluted backronym), which will take place from May 10-June 13. Researchers say Vortex2 is the largest attempt in history to study tornadoes, and will involve more than 50 scientists, 40 research vehicles, and 10 mobile radars, and will cover 900 square miles in southern South Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas panhandle, and western Oklahoma."

Liam Hoekstra is only 19 months old but he already has washboard abs and amazing strength. Liam suffers from a rare genetic condition called myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy. The condition promotes above-normal growth of the skeletal muscles; it doesn't affect the heart and has no known negative side effects, according to experts. Liam has about 40 percent more muscle mass than normal and needs a lot of food because of his increased metabolism. "He's hungry for a full meal about every hour because of his rapid metabolism," said his adoptive mother, Dana Hoekstra. "He's already eating me out of house and home." When Liam wants a toy, Liam gets a toy.

Bomb disposal teams were called in and a nearby pub evacuated after water company engineers mistook a Monty Python film prop for a hand grenade. After nearly an hour of examination by bomb experts, they counted to three. No more. No less. Three was the number they counted, and the number they counted was three. Four they did not count, nor two, except to proceed to three. Five was right out. Once the number three had been reached, being the third number, they declared that the grenade was actually a copy of the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" used in the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail. A police spokeswoman confirmed that the device was a toy and that it had been no danger to the public.

Mike writes "With auto show season hitting its stride, there's no shortage of incredible prototypes on display. First up is a brand new 100-mpg supercar by Lighting Hybrids. The biodiesel-fueled vehicle has its sights set on the automotive X prize and uses a hydraulic compression system to store energy from regenerative braking. Next, the Liv Inizio, a sleek fully-electric roadster that boasts a scorching top-speed of 150 mph and a 200-mile range, placing it in direct competition with the Tesla roadster."

Brietech writes "This is a homebrew laptop project based on a Picaxe microcontroller. It has 16kb of RAM, 256kb of storage, sound and a self-hosted development environment! It has a simple CLI, file-system, 'EMAXE' text editor and a programming language called 'Chris#.' Oh, and yes, it runs Linaxe."

CNETNate writes "A tour of Sennheiser's Hanover factory reveals for the first time how its audiophile headphones are assembled by hand. The company recently announced its most expensive and innovative headphones to date, the HD 800, which discarded the conventional method of headphone driver design for a new 'donut-shaped' ring driver idea. Only 5,000 of these headphones can be made in a year, and this gallery offers a behind-the-scenes look at the construction process."

Some people care about bags; obsession is a better word. (See the Bags subforum of the Every Day Carry Forums for evidence.) How are the straps attached? Is that 1050 denier, or 1600? Makers like Crumpler, Ortlieb and Maxpedition inspire impressive brand-loyalty, but probably no bag maker has customers more enthusiastic than Tom Bihn's. (There really is a Tom Bihn, too -- he's been designing travel bags since he was a kid; now he has a factory with "all the cool toys" to experiment with designs and materials.) When I started looking for a protective case for my MacBook Pro, I discovered that a few of my coworkers were part of the Bihn Army, and after some Tupperware-style evangelism I was convinced to buy a few items from the Bihn line-up: a backpack (used); then a messenger bag (new); then a mid-sized briefcase, used, which is now my portable filing cabinet. (Take this bias for what you will; I stuck with my previous messenger bag for more than a decade.) For a just-completed trip to Israel, which I couldn't quite make in true one-bag travel fashion, I brought along one of the newest Bihn Bags — the Checkpoint Flyer — and found it to be worth its (considerable) price. Read on for my review.

reifman links to his thorough and thoughtful review of the experience of reading a newspaper on the Kindle 2. "I've been eager to try The New York Times on the Kindle 2; here's my review with a basic video walk-through and screenshots. I give the Kindle 2 version of The Times a B. Software updates could bring it up to an A-. Kindle designers should have learned more from the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, my Kindle display scratched less than 24 hours after it arrived. As I detail in the review, Amazon customer service was not very accommodating. Is it my fault — or will Kindle 2 evolve into an Apple 1G Nano-like $22.5M settlement? You can read about Hearst's e-reader for newspapers from earlier today on Slashdot."

tytso writes "I've recently started exploring ways of configuring Solid State Disks (SSDs) so they work most efficiently in Linux. In particular, Intel's new 80GB X25-M, which has fallen down to a street price of around $400 and thus within my toy budget. It turns out that the Linux Storage Stack isn't set up well to align partitions and filesystems for use with SSD's, RAID systems, and 4k sector disks. There are also some interesting configuration and tuning that we need to do to avoid potential fragmentation problems with the current generation of Intel SSDs. I've figured out ways of addressing some of these issues, but it's clear that more work is needed to make this easy for mere mortals to efficiently use next generation storage devices with Linux."