Wired: Hair Apparent

"Today, surgeons are able to harvest and reimplant as few as two hairs at a time, making the transplants look more natural. Still, the supply-and-demand problem remains. In the early 1990s, Colin Jahoda, a researcher at the University of Durham in England, took a step toward solving it. He stripped a few cells off the root of a mouse's whisker follicle and implanted them into its ear. Out grew a whisker. Next he took a section of follicle cells from his own head and implanted it between the fine, pale hair on his wife's arm. A thick, dark hair emerged, complete with male DNA. This demonstrated that the cells at the base of a follicle can and do regenerate into self-contained, preprogrammed hair factories."

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Johnny Lee, Will You Marry Me?

Joli and I just bought a Wii, and we have been playing the games nearly every night, marveling at the function of the machine. In tennis, if you tilt your wrist inward on a return shot, you hit cross-court, something that has recently amazed me in its accuracy. (Sadly, I am unable to do such things in real life.) Yet I haven't spent much time wondering what's inside the thing. To me, it has just been a magical white box that allows me and Joli to go bowling in our living room.

But Johnny Chung Lee, a PhD-seeking graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University has already hacked the device to use in other applications, such as an interactive white board and a head-tracking display device, which makes a 3D display possible (videos of both projects are posted below).

It's guys like this who make computer science seem like punk rock.

Head-Tracking VR:


Interactive Whiteboard

Animal-Inspired Robots!

DIY Robot!

A PORTRAIT-DRAWING ROBOT!

Comcast DVR Hack - 30 Second Skip!

Joli and I got the Comcast DVR when we moved into our new place, and it's kind of changed our [TV-watching] lives. We've found so much quality programming that the truly great shows have actually elbowed out the shows we previously considered good: no more Scrubs; no more Sex and the City; no more America's Next Top Model (a former favorite Joli's, not mine). No, now it's Frontline, Top Chef, and Wired Science.

But the DVR realm is not a level playing field. Some people prefer the Tivo interface (Joli and I both felt like we were being pandered to with all of the goofy sound effects), and others like the Dish Network DVR. I am one of the latter, simply because of the skip ahead feature. When we first got Comcast, I missed it so.

But thanks to a guy named Moe, there is a hack to solve the problem. Make sure you skip step 4.

While I am grateful for the ingenuity people have, I wonder a bit about this type of discovery. I liken it to the fact that a credit card with a "dead" magnetic strip can be changed into a working credit card by placing a plastic bag over it and sliding it through again. Who thought to try that first? These people should be placed in history next to the person who first ate an egg.

Superconductor Anyone?

Get your own HERE.