The Technonaut

I absolutely hate it when a blog I read goes quiet for a while, and then the author writes some lame post about why he’s been absent for so long. Usually, I think to myself that I could care less about his excuses and explanations, and how I really only want more good content.

Well here’s my excuse: I just got married on Saturday, and am headed to Hawaii for the next 2 weeks for my honeymoon.

In an attempt to defray the lameness of this post, here are a few cool links that I would be posting, if I were not going to be lying on a beach instead.

• Everything is Big in Texas - $3.4 Million Home Theater
• Eyeing the Flood of Electric Cars
• The Germans and Their Crazy Indoor Man-Made Tornado (Video)
• Learn Spanish, Russian, Greek, German, Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, French, Italian, and/or Polish Online for Free

On October 15th, Singapore Airlines became the first to accept delivery of the Airbus A380, the largest airliner in the world. In its most cramped configuration, carriers have the option of packing 555 people into the A380. But Singapore Airlines is taking a different tack. Beginning with their first flight, scheduled for tomorrow, SA will offer three cabin classes: coach, business, and a new super-first class called Singapore Airlines Suites.

This new class is meant to be the pinnacle of airline travel, and hearken back to the golden days of flying boats in the 30s and 40s.  Singapore Airlines hired famed yacht designer Jean-Jacques Coste to design the suites.  Each fully-enclosed private cabin features a leather recliner, upholstered by the world-renowned Poltrona Frau, a plush double bed, and flat-screen television.

Take a video tour of all three classes and check out the link to the Singapore Airlines Virtual Cabin Experience after the break…

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It seems that both Sony and Microsoft are trying to take a piece of the “casual gaming” pie from Nintendo, by positioning themselves as close as they can to the Wii’s $250 price tag. The Wii’s accessibility and low-price have propelled it to the top of the sales charts thus far.

In response, Sony has announced a new 40GB PlayStation 3, to be available November 2nd for $399. To cut costs they’ve dropped their backwards compatibility chip, known as the Emotion Engine, but have left in the Blue-Ray player. The high-end 80GB PS3 will also be getting a price reduction, dropping to $499. While these prices are still well above the Wii’s, the sticker-shock is tempered by the fact that the PlayStation 3 is the only console with a built-in next-generation DVD player.

The most exciting news is coming from Redmond. Microsoft hasn’t officially announced their strategy, but a mysterious new XBox 360 “Arcade” has been spotted in stores, for only $279 (that’s not even $30 more than the Wii). Strangely, Microsoft has yet to issue a press release, but this bold move puts the XBox 360 squarely in the Wii’s price range. This will really mark the first time the Wii has had a serious competitor in its class. While, the base unit doesn’t ship with a hard drive or HDMI cable, those can be purchased later, allowing you to effectively upgrade your ultra-cheap XBox 360 Arcade to full-on Elite status. I can almost hear Steve Ballmer in his office right now, and he’s shouting “Eat that, Nintendo.”

Sony and Microsoft have made their opening moves for the holiday season, it will be interesting to see if either them can knock Nintendo from its perch.

This cool video shows the view from inside a four-stroke internal combustion engine. It was taken using a tiny camera shooting at 1000 frames-per-second. You can see the piston moving at the bottom, with the intake valve on the right, the exhaust valve on the left, and the spark plug in between them at the top.

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If you’re unfamiliar with the basics of a four-stroke internal combustion engine, this animation describes what you’re seeing in the video above.

1. Intake stroke - Air and vaporised fuel are drawn in.
2. Compression stroke - Fuel and air are compressed and ignited.
3. Power stroke - Fuel combusts and piston is pushed downwards.
4. Exhaust stroke - Exhaust gas is driven out.

In an interesting analysis, Gadget blog Crave asks the seemingly unlikely question, is the Nintendo Wii just a fad? It’s hard to imagine, given that it’s been the best-selling console worldwide this generation, and it’s still difficult to find one in stores almost a year after its release. However, according to an article in The Nikkei Business Daily, third-party developers are concerned about the poor sales of their titles. The vast majority of popular games for the Wii have been developed in-house, and the head of one unnamed design firm even went so far as to say “…the bubble is about to burst.” The Business Daily also points out that sales of the Wii have been slowing in Japan.

The Wii is great fun at first, and it’s $250 price tag makes it an easy purchase for buyers to justify, but does it have staying power? Will people keep shelling out money for new games, or will it be relegated to the backs of closets once the novelty wears off? Ultimately, it may not matter for Nintendo, considering the Wii is the only next-generation console whose hardware is actually profitable. But given the amount of hype surrounding the Wii, it will be interesting to see if it maintains it’s popularity, the way Sony’s Playstation 2 has over the 7 years since it’s release.

What do you think?

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You may not be planning any trips right now, but this is one site you’ll definitely want to bookmark for the future. New web service TripIt makes it incredibly easy to gather all the information about a pending trip in one centralized place. You don’t even have to sign up for an account first. All you do is forward your travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com, and they automatically organize your info into a master itinerary, adding Google Maps, weather information, Wikipedia articles, and more along the way. Then, you can easily print the information to take with you, or share your itinerary with friends and family.

This is one of those ideas that are so useful, you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. I’ve been using this site to help plan my honeymoon, and it has been a real time saver. Last time I took a long trip, I had to manually enter all my destinations, car rental information, and hotel contact info into Outlook, just so I could print it out in a nice calendar format. This time around, all I had to do was forward TripIt a couple emails, make a few corrections, and I was ready to go.

Lavish praise aside, TripIt is still a work in progress.  They could stand to add a few more viewing options, and they’re continuously tweaking their email scraping for accuracy.  But overall, it is shaping up to be an incredibly useful site.

[TripIt]

In a world where most gadgets, like the iPhone, are moving towards buttonless, minimalist designs, the Aaron Adding Machine collection is a breath of fresh air. Each apparatus is refreshingly furnished with an assortment of brass buttons, dials, knife-switches, cranks, and keys.

Sure, there may be more powerful calculators, and there are certainly cheaper calculators, but none with more style.

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This Picture of the Day is a bit of a mystery. The photo was taken by Susan Barstow in Bethel, Alaska. Do you have any idea what happened to create this interesting impression in the snow? Keep reading for the prevailing theory.

A rabbit went out for a stroll. He hopped into view from the left, only to be snatched from the ground by a passing owl. All that was left of the poor rabbit were his tracks.

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It’s been over 21 years since the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and the shattered remains of Reactor 4 are finally being sealed off. For the past two decades, a hastily constructed concrete sarcophagus has been the only thing preventing the continued release of radioactivity, and it has been slowly crumbling to pieces. A 19 mile Zone of Alienation remains around the site to this day.

On September 17th, Ukrainian officials announced a contract with French company Novarka to build a safer encasement, in the form of a massive steel vault. The roughly 650×600 foot arch-shaped building will be constructed on rails next to the reactor, then slid over the wreckage. Construction is expected to last 5 years, and cost a tidy $1.4 billion. Once the New Safe Confinement is in place, operators can use remote controlled equipment to demolish the unstable components of the old containment structure.

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Every time I see one of these awesome Japanese sports cars it takes me back to high school, when all my friends and I would lament the recent passing of the Toyota Supra and Mazda RX-7, and would dream of the day when the Nissan Skyline and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution would come to the United States. We wondered why the Japanese got to enjoy their rediculously awesome low-displacement sports cars, while we in the United States were stuck with either run-of-the-mill Mustangs and Camaros, or bland, de-tuned import approximations.

Things have been improving for a number of years now, as evidenced by the Infinity G37 (the american Skyline), and now the most recent iteration of the sports-tuned Mitsubishi Lancer, the Evolution X.

Mitsubishi made the Evo X official on Monday, announcing it will have 295 HP and 300 lb-fts. of torque (from a 2.0 liter I4!), all-wheel drive, and offer a new 6-speed twin-clutch automated manual transmission. Expect the new Evo to go on sale stateside in the next few months, and come in around the $26,000 - $32,000 range, dependent on features.

The heyday of Japanese sports cars has finally graced our shores. Now, if only I could afford one.

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