Legos are the best toys

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When I was a kid, I always wanted Legos for my birthday and Christmas and I received quite a lot of them. Most of the sets I got were basic or general themes such as trains or underwater. I loved it when the technic Legos were released. The gears were one of the things that influenced me to become a mechanical engineer. The mindstorm sets have improved on technic even further. It is a shame that Lego is also producing so many custom movie themes where the parts are too specific. Maybe my imagination is not as good as when I was a kid because I think it would be hard to create something non Harry Potter related with parts from a Harry Potter set. I will definitely buy Legos for my kids (if/when I have them).

Below is a great example of what can be done with Legos, patience, imagination, and some programming knowledge.

Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory

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I found Ishikawa Komuro Lab, part of the University of Tokyo, through one of their YouTube videos (of course). The first video I found was an demonstration of ScoreLight, which is a laser that follows contours and produces sound that changes with curvature and other properties of the curves. There are a lot of movies and demos on their website.

The Khronos Projector is another project that is also very interesting. It uses a touch screen as an interface to a video so that where you touch the screen the movie advances through time.

Here are videos of some of their other research.

Rare Exports

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Rare Exports Logo

Rare Exports Logo

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is a Finnish movie I saw this past Monday at Alamo Drafthouse. It turns out that Santa Claus is not jolly and instead steals/boils kids. He escapes his burial tomb and goes on a rampage near a Finnish village. A group of Finns capture and try to sell him.
The movie was better than I expected. The acting was quite good as well as the story even though it was a little odd. Here is the official website – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale and the trailer.

Space Nazis

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I recently saw the trailer for Iron Sky. The movie is a Finnish sci-fi comedy about Nazis that escape to the dark side of the moon in 1945 and plan to invade Earth in 2018. It is made by the same people who made Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a sci-fi comedy where the Star Trek and Babylon 5 worlds collide. I hope Alamo Drafthouse picks up Iron Sky when it is released (approx. late 2011). If you want the production companies to distribute Iron Sky in Austin, you can demand the movie on their website – www.ironsky.net.

Here is the second trailer for Iron Sky.

Werewolf, Vampire, Nazi Zombie

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Call of Duty: World at War, a first person shooter game, takes place during Word War II. A special survival mode can be unlocked after the campaign is completed, where four players have to survive and defeat waves of nazi zombies that attack a building the players occupy. Here is a video that spoofs this mode.

Nazi Zombies

Keg of Glory is floated

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Victory is mine, victory is mine. Great day in the morning, people, victory is mine. I drink from the keg of glory. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land. I have finally finished my Masters of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. I shall be known hence forth as Master Yin, god among mortal men.

Austin Aztex Victory!!!

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I just got back from watching the Austin Aztex vs. Miami FC Blues soccer game. The Aztex won 3 to 1. The game was very entertaining to watch but I was slightly disappointed by how dirty the game was. Both teams were fouling quite a bit. There were 7 yellow cards and 2 red cards. The red cards occurred after two players started “fighting”. The fight ended with the Aztex player double slapping the Miami player. One of the worst things is when a player clearly fouls someone and then tries to act like nothing happened (argues with the ref). I still enjoyed the game though and it was definitely a show of skill.

Story Idea

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In the story’s world, everyone would have a life score. People would get positive points for good actions and awards (i.e. perfect attendance award) and negative points for bad actions. The scores would be displayed on badges worn at all times. The scores could be given by a computer system or the government. Instead of a class system based on birth or wealth, it would be based on one’s score. People with high scores get perks and more authority. The plot could be based on someone finding out about corruption in the point giving system in the government or hacks of the computer.
A religion could be based on the system. You get into heaven if you have a minimum score and hell if you have a low or negative score. There could also be a purgatory for low scores. There would also be tiers in heaven and hell.
The scores would probably have to be normalized for age so an older person doesn’t automatically have a higher score. It wouldn’t be proportional since age should count for something.
Maybe points can be converted into money or yearly tax deduction.
The government could be harsh and kill anyone whose score goes below a certain level (i.e. -50). You would probably get a warning in the mail saying, “Warning: Your score has fallen below acceptable limits! Please do good deeds to raise your score.” Of course this means that you can murder someone and get away with it as long as you do enough good deeds.

Most Useless User Interface

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I use SolidWorks for my research and this window pops up when I use Cosmos (a FEA add-on).

They should have just put an “x” at a top corner of the window and everyone would know how to close the window. Also, the “How do I close this window?” text isn’t even clickable.

Catch up

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Sorry to all for not blogging recently. Here are some videos I found that are pretty hilarious.

This movie is going to be awesome!

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