Universal Dork » Dork Science and Technology

Christmas Got you Stressed Out? Try This Fine Head Massage!

konales — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:40:25 +0000

Alright, I will admit it, I buy weird shit sometimes. Who doesn’t? You just see something on TV and it clicks with you. Like it is the long lost piece of your life and it will solve a good percentage of the problems that ale you. In fact, at times I pride myself in being the head of research and development for some of the crazy stuff out there. For example…the finger mouse, to replace your mouse on your computer, well that was not exactly a breakthrough product. So imagine my surprise when I came across this dandy…yeah, OSIM uCrown 2 Soothing Head Massager with Music.

I love how the website kicks off the intro to this revolutionary product, “Finally, a great scalp and head massager designed for home use”, wow…how did they read my mind? I’ve been looking for a great scalp and head massager designed for home use for years, you know something to replace my fingers, and the urge for me to give myself constant scalp and head massages. I believe my prayers have been answered.

But wait, there more! This is not just some run of the mill massage technology; this combines air pressure, vibration, magnetic, heat, and soothing music for the ultimate in head masturbation experience. The only thing this unit is missing is a free phrenology reading! Migraines got you down? Hell, slap this head torture contraption in place and let it go to town.

Now you might ask…but can I, the working person, afford such a luxury? Perhaps you are in luck, it can be yours today for the low price of $200. Your call on the price, if you are desperate for a great at home head massage, then this is a steal. Otherwise…$200? Christ man, I can buy a lot of comic books for that price! And for that price, you can’t even select your own music. You need to select from Wellbeing, Ambiance and Nature. For $200, you would think they could afford a 3.5 mm stereo audio jack so you could pipe in your own hits. Perhaps the music they provide has subliminal messages to keep you from returning the device, or hunting down Brookstone and trying to kill the douche that made this crap. Save this stuff for Delta’s Sky Mall catalog and infomercials, I am going to play it safe and save my hard earned dough.

Robots for Moon Exploration…Yeah!

konales — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:23:49 +0000

Most dorks would agree that the cliché vision of year 2000 (i.e., personal jet packs, flying cars, living like the Jetsons, etc.), is a worn out joke. For the most part we can still dream but I think we have now found more comfort in the vision of our comics and favorite sci-fi movie/TV. While we are settling in with the boring world, it appears that the researchers at the Toyota R&D center in Japan are not as compliant. From personal transporters to truly autonomous robots, they keep pushing technology and with it the vision of the future. Now it appears, Toyota wants to look at placing their Partner Robots on the Moon to begin building infrastructure…

Got your attention…follow the jump for more information.

According to several blogs (Engadget, Otsuka-san, GetRobo) Toyota has continued their complete disclosure of their intentions for developing and investing in Partner Robots. In a recent presentation “Realization of Moon Exploration Using Advanced Robots by 2020”, Toyota researchers released some of the following art to show their vision. This type of research always reeked of super secret organizations and world domination (SPECTRE, Umbrella Corp to name a few), buy you can’t get much more honest disclosure with a presentation title like that! I love big business that is willing to invest that in weird and future concepts.

I realize we need to invest our money here on Earth to sustain our own infrastructure, but movies like 2012 offer up an interesting scenario that can’t be denied. What if the Earth encounters some form of catastrophic disaster that leaves it inhabitable. What is our option…extinction?? Not this dork, I will go down fighting, but I would rather have some options. This type of development exploration is truly testing the limits. By having robots help to build and maintain infrastructure for potential colonization on the moon…or another world, that option at least has a chance to become reality.

So here are a couple more of the inspiring visions provided by Toyota…

Star Trek Cell Phone Bling…The Future In Our Hands!

konales — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:22:30 +0000

Let me guess, there are a lot of Universal Dork followers out there that wish that just a tiny bit…a smidge of the technology we see in sci-fi movies/shows would be real. From teleportation to phasers, or warp speed to food replication…I always thought that Star Trek was one of the most innovative and inspiring shows that pushed the limits with technology…but for some reason you knew it could be real someday.

Well there have been announcements on teleporting photos across a room…cool, but a long way to go till we get to something bigger. May theorists have bought into Warp speed…but again it looks great in the math and on paper. Well wait no more, because now you too can have a Star Trek communicator that works with your cell phone via Bluetooth! All home made, and of course, classic Star Trek style as well, with the flip top and everything.

Keep reading for more info after you transport to the jump page!

In a recent Engadget blog, Diana Eng and Dave Clausen have posted instructions on the net on how you can build your very own Bluetooth enabled Federation Communicator. If you follow the link to Makezine.com you can see all of the detailed instructions and shopping list of parts needed to start your project. With the unit Bluetooth enabled, it will work with any cell phone that uses a Bluetooth headset…how cool is that?

Link to Communicator Instructions!

So, you want to add some spice to your Samsung…or how about some intrigue to your iPhone? Just enable the Bluetooth on the phone, put it in your pocket, and talk to all of your favorite Star Fleet buddies over your comm! Here is a video that covers some of the highlights of the building project as well.

I realize this is hard top when it comes to cell phone bling…but one notable mention has to go out to the recently announced Michael Jackson cell phone; being release in Japan…soon??? (I wish I could read Japanese to relay the details).

So here is a dream scenario…
You get dressed up in your Star Fleet uniform, put on your shiny black shoes and sparkly glove…and moonwalk the night away while perpetrating like you’re talking on your Star Fleet issue communicator. Oh yeah, shoot for the stars!

Dorks, and Dating.

J. Hall — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:17:45 +0000

Dating has been a long time challenge for extremely smart men with active imaginations (Dorks). But luckily there are some great dating services out there to help those lonely souls in need of companionship. After watching this we might need to bring video dating back to the forefront of the singles scene.

PigeonNet vs. DSL…And you thought all they did was crap a lot!

konales — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:13:27 +0000

Wow…slap in the face is an understatement on this one folks. In case you are not aware, ancient carrier pigeons are still faster than some of today’s methods of carry high volumes of data. According to BiongBiong.net, a South African IT company got so fed up with the national Telkom’s notoriously poor Internet service that they decided to set up a race that pitted the Telkom’s network against a carrier pigeon. Yeah, and the pigeon won.

Apparently a Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm, Telkom. Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles – in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL.
Ah man, you gotta love this. Some crap laden bird that has a wee bit of training totally school this DSL service. What does that say about the state of technology? Are we still in the Bronze Age…or the age of Steel…definitely not in the data age. To take this to the next level of dork amusement, some fine IT dorks did a little quantitative analysis on other scenarios.

“Over pigeon-traversable distances in which latency isn’t an issue, the pigeon will always win. A random web-page promises that a carrier pigeon can bear loads of up to 1.7 oz or about 48.2g. My postal scale says that my 64GB SD card weighs 2.05g. This means that a pigeon could carry twenty three (23) 64GB SD cards, or 1.472 terabytes. In the Telkom race, the pigeon traversed 40km in 2 hours. I think that even the best commercial ISP in the world would be hard-pressed to deliver 736GB/h between two customer DSL end-points. Likewise, I think that even the greatest pigeon on the world would be hard-pressed to deliver even one bit of information from Cape Town to New York. “

So in the end, the pigeon does have its limits, but let us just revel in the moment a bit. When a large company can eat the droppings of our fine feathered friends that means I have to move the pigeon down on my scale of shitty scavenger “poop on everything” birds. The first place is held by Seagulls, but now I will move the Morning Dove into second place and slide the pigeon back one place to turd! HA!

What’s next?…Robot Fornication?!?!??

konales — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:52:23 +0000

I just can’t get over this. We have this level of robotics and technology and those funny guys at the Taiwan University of Science and Technology just make them kiss. I realize that the dudes that pulled this technology together have more brains in one pinky that I do in my whole body. But as their professor/adviser…wouldn’t you just flunk them on the basis of spending money and time on this. This ends up looking like a really fancy version of Chuck E. Cheese in my opinion…but alas…less you nor I shall impede on the progress of technology!

I like how the students even took time to put the female robot’s hand on the pec of the guy bot. You know, if they are so smart, I want to see some touchy touchy with the kissy kissy! I hear a little foreplay can go a long way with an aluminum mechanical frame. YOWSERS!

Actually that is not a pectoral muscle, it is the multivariate flux transiting diode dual purpose hydrating sensor system…I know this for a fact…I looked it up on the internet.

So to spin their life’s work, they stage up the robots for a make out session during part of Phantom of the Opera…I now reference an earlier Universal Dork blog from Saturday, Aug 29th…Creeps…