ACPAD was born out of necessity. A need for flexibility, live stability and creative freedom. Berlin musician Robin Sukroso needed a piece of equipment that would allow him to bring his love of both electronic and acoustic music together; that could withstand playing every night, that was easy and intuitive to play, and that could let him explore an entirely new world of sound.
The ACPAD began as an idea and a desire. After 3 years of research, development and a lot of trials, the ACPAD is finally ready for the world. Sukroso along with his partners at IIT Bombay created a new 2 mm thick interface having no wires or screws, a stick-on wireless MIDI controller that is powered by a rechargeable battery. ACPAD is a device with true portability and tonal versatility.
The ACPAD allows players to blend both acoustic and electronic sounds with FX and assignable tap pads. Create whatever sound you want with ACPAD. It is strong, flexible and offers a new world of creativity you have been looking for. ACPAD is an electronic orchestra in your hands!
For when you’ve had enough of the weatherman, which is like, always. The Tempescope is a cool invention that lets you know of tomorrow’s weather forecast by actually simulating sunshine, rain, fog, and even lightning indoors.
Created by Japanese designer Ken Kawamoto, the device features a small box that gathers weather information online and then simulates that forecast using a combination of LED light, water, and ultrasonics (for the fog). Great if you’re too lazy to get up off the couch and look out the window.
DIY experts can help themselves to Kawamoto’s open source version for the Tempescopeby accessing it at ‘OpenTempescope’. Others will have to wait a bit longer as the Tempescope team is still getting ready to launch a Kickstarter campaign later this year.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD MY LITTLE PONY BECAUSE OF COURSE
Even if the movie wasn’t the biggest smash hit of the year, the way it should have been, Mad Max: Fury Road has certainly taken the prize for the film with the largest permeation on the internet. The number of essays and articles written about George Miller’s post-apocalyptic, people-driving-in-a-straight-line action film became a must-see for fans of cinema and discourse about gender roles, internal politics, and blind devotion. It’s also precipitated all sorts of awesome DIY projects, par exemplesome Mad Max Power Wheels.
The newest and, we admit, most absurdly awesome of these projects are custom-made (and totally unofficial, via artist Kelsey Wailes) Mad Max: Fury Road My Little Pony figurines. That’s right, two weird worlds that are even weirder together. The artist used the older variety of My Little Pony dolls, from prior to the Brony days, and Polymer clay, acrylics, leather, and faux fur to create highly-accurate equestrian representations of Max Rockatansky, Imperator Furiosa, Nux, and Immortan Joe.
They look so happy together, don’t they?
Both the Nux and the Max figures had heads that could rotate, but all four figures have the ability to drive cars (not true). I don’t know which is more impressive — Joe’s toothy face mask/breathing apparatus or Furiosa’s mechanical artificial hoof. They somehow even managed to get the look of pure chrome-fueled martyrdom in Nux’s eyes, although I seem to recall that’s just how My Little Ponies looked anyway.
The figures were available for sale at last weekend’s Awesome Con in Washington, D.C., so unfortunately that’s over, but you can still witness them in their full glory in the gallery below.
Mad Max Fury Road Ponies: Because I am a monster.
They were super fun to make and super horrifying (I’m looking at you, Immortan Joe)
Made with My Little Pony toys, Polymer clay, acrylics, leather, and faux fur.
The long-awaited continuation of the series based on the novel written by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan come on FX channel on Sunday, July 12. This information appeared on the website IMDB and official confirmed.
The second season of this bloody show promises to be very exciting – ancient vampire The Master begins a full-scale invasion of New York. More and more people infected with the worm, and thus become slaves to the will of Jusef Sardu. To stop the spread of the “Strigoi worm” CDC employees Nora Martinez and Eph Goodweather come up with a plan.
Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain had a fantastic first season that I enjoyed watching. FX has announced that vampire series will return with its second season on July 12th. From then on out you’ll be able to watch the show on Sundays at 10pm.
The series is based on the horror thriller from del Toro and Chuck Hogan, and it was apparently the most-watched new cable drama of 2014. That's not really surprising, because of how good the show was.
The first episode of the second season will begin at 22:00 on channel FX. Wait is quite a bit!
The Strain TV series
FX announced the most terrible TV show of summer 2015. They release it on July 12
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Famous Mexican producer Guillermo del Toro in 2009-2012 wrote a book trilogy: "The Strain", "The Falling", "The Night Eternal". Their story was inspired by the famous novel by Bram Stoker's "Dracula". Books were written in Spanish and Chuck Hogan helped with the translation of these books into English. In America, they had enormous popularity. On this wave of success Del Toro decided to film the first part of the trilogy. TV Show script made by Carlton Cuse.
About "The Strain":
TV series is based on the 2009 novel by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan named "The Strain". FX announced 12 episodes in first season of TV show starting from July 12. Forget about ordinary vampires - FX fearless show you true face of evil this summer.
First episode starting in New York. Transatlantic liner landing to airport with dead passengers on the board. After some time they all become alive, it is not only people, but fiends, ruthless vampires... From this moment the terrible strain begins, which triggered the epidemic. All of America is flooded with ruthless vampires. To protect humanity are seemingly not the right people: Ephraim Goodweather epidemiologist, Professor Abraham Setrakian, exterminator Vasiliy Fet and doctor Nora Martinez. Only together they can stop pandemic before it goes woldwide.
The Belgian non-governmental (NGO), non-profit organization APOPO has made it their incredibly admirable mission to train the highly intelligent African giant pouched rats aka HeroRATS to use their noses for such humanitarian purposes as expediently detecting bombs in post-conflict countries and detecting tuberculosis in developing countries, thus potentially saving the lives of thousands of people. The rats are trained from a young age and are rewarded through positive motivation.
APOPO trains the rats through operant conditioning, using a combination of a click sound and food rewarding. Training starts at the age of 4-5 weeks, with socialization. The young rats are weaned from their mothers and APOPO’s trainers begin socializing them to the sights, sounds, and textures of the human world. Once our rats are six weeks old, click training begins, where we teach the rats to associate a click sound with a food reward – usually banana or peanuts. After two weeks at this stage, the rats learn that click means food, and are now ready to be trained on a target scent. After these steps, our rats specialize in a target scent in either TNT for detecting landmines or TB for detecting TB in human sputum samples. After odor imprint, the complexity of their tasks gradually increases until they reach the final training stage where they have to do a blind test in order to be accredited.
As of this date, none of the HeroRATS have died in the line of duty and the trainers take special care to apply sunscreen to the rodents’ ears when they are working outside. Anyone wishing to contribute to APOPO can either donate directly or “adopt” a HeroRAT with an ongoing subscription.
Metal heroes portray wildlings on latest episode of hit fantasy show
Mastodon on Game of Thrones … You know nothing, Jon Snow. Photograph: PR
They are savage, brutal men from a remote place, barely attuned to civilization. And so are the wildlings, which might be why Mastodon were invited to appear as the wild men from north of The Wall in the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
The metal quartet appeared in the episode that was broadcast on Sunday 31 May in the US and goes out on Monday 1 June in the UK, at the invitation of the show’s creator/executive producer Dan Weiss.
mastodon is an American heavy metal band from Atlanta, Georgia, formed in early 2000 and composed of bassist Troy Sanders, guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher and drummer Brann Dailor. Their musical style features progressive concepts and unique instrumentation. All four members participate in vocals, creating a unique blend of singing styles and voices.
Mastodon’s Brann Dailor said, in a statement that contains spoilers unlikely to be central to the plot:
“It was such an incredible experience to be on set as extras for our collective favorite show Game of Thrones, and to be wildlings murdered and then brought back to life by White Walkers was beyond amazing. I watched my best friends, Brent and Bill, murdered right in front of me as I myself was stabbed in the stomach and had my throat slit multiple times, and I didn’t mind at all. It made me love being in Mastodon even more. We are more than privileged and honoured to have been a part of one of the greatest stories ever told on film –
There are few places more dazzling in the Robot Restaurant located in Shinjuku, Japan. We use the term 'restaurant' very loosely because it's more like a variety show, that you just happen to be dining at.
A visual feast for the senses, where the every which way you look is a kaleidoscope of colourful lights and relentless noise, where drummers are armed with glow sticks, cyber strippers fling themselves around neon poles and life-sizes robots go head-to-head in boxing matches.
But the fun doesn't end there, we haven't even mentioned the flying Terrordactyls, giant sharks, bigger Anacondas and the dance off between robots starring a bevy of scantily clad women, naturally.
So if you're in Japan and literally want to have your brain overloaded to the point where it's nearly melting, make sure you head to the Robot Restaurant, it's an experience you won't forget anytime soon.
It’s hard to imagine an experience more perfectly suited to Tokyo, and one less likely to exist anywhere else, than Shinjuku’s Robot Restaurant. With a stage show that stretches the definition of terms like “elaborate” and “bizarre,” the restaurant has quickly become one of the city’s most popular venues.
We were dazzled by the Robot Restaurant from the moment we spotted it. The entire facade was illuminated in blinding LED lights, and towering lady robots with giant bouncing breasts were roving about the foyer. A band inspired by Daft Punk was rocking out behind the robots, and everything was flashing and loud and over-the-top. Sensory overload? Definitely. And we hadn’t even picked up our tickets yet. I suspected that the performance was going to be more like sensory assault.
Having arrived well in advance of the evening show, we passed the extra time in the restaurant’s upstairs lounge. You’ll want to do the same, because the lounge is unbelievable. It’s as though the world’s most outrageous interior designers were given crayons, glue sticks, glitter and mescalin, and told to go crazy. Everything is mirrored and shining. On every table, there’s a robot dinosaur. On the stage, a lady-band clad in metallic bikinis and angel wings is playing soft lounge music. The drinks are cheap and the vibe couldn’t be better. You and the people around you are in a place unlike anywhere any of you have ever been, and you’re all excited and giddy and talkative. It’s a bonding experience.
Now, however, it’s showtime. You and your new friends head into the underground theater, take your seats, and await the spectacle. Soon, the lights go out, the speakers switch on, and giant vehicles appear on either side of the narrow stage, ridden by ladies dressed as Amazonian war princesses from the year 3000. They’re pounding on drums, rotating around the stage, screaming and dancing to the music, and you’re just… confused. What the hell is happening? It’s hilarious, pointless, impressive and overwhelming in equal measure.
And that’s just Act One! By the end of the show, which stretches out across seven or eight acts, you’ll have perhaps seen boxing robots. Women riding huge mechanical cows. An alien-eating shark robot. Huge motorcycles and airplanes with pole-dancing lady passengers. A tank, I think. There was definitely a freedom-fighting panda. The shows change frequently, so you might see other things entirely, things which no sane human would ever be able to predict.
We had fun from the moment we entered the Robot Restaurant, and I’m not sure my brain has yet been able to process everything we saw. Almost as much as the show, we enjoyed watching the spectators sitting across from us. Without exception, they had their eyes wide open and huge smiles plastered across their faces. I’m sure it’s how we looked, too.
A new super short teaser for the upcoming Starz series Ash vs. the Evil Dead (previously) features just one word: groovy. The show, based on the Evil Dead movies, is scheduled to premiere in fall 2015.
…we present a novel single-sheet structure that self-folds into a centimeter-sized mobile robot that subsequently walks, swims, and dissolves. The robot is controlled using an external magnetic field exerted by embedded coils underneath the robot. Equipped with just one permanent magnet, the robot features a lightweight body yet can perform many tasks reliably despite its simplicity. The minimal body materials enable the robot to completely dissolve in a liquid environment, a difficult challenge to accomplish if the robot had a more complex architecture. This study is the first to demonstrate that a functional robotic device can be created and operated from the material level, promising versatile applications including use in vivo.
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