The positive response to my earlier anamorphic Pac-Man post led me to dig up this oldie-but-goodie from Boing Boing. This “UP” signage is only one of several anamorphic signs from The Eureka Tower Carpark in Melbourne, Australia. The anamorphic projections, designed by Axel Peemöller, only read properly when viewed from the correct angle.
YouTube user brusspup created this anamorphic projection of Pac-Man chasing a ghost across a complex surface in his apartment. It only looks right from the one angle; as the camera moves away, you start to see how the lines have to wander willy-nilly across the walls to create the effect. [via Neatorama]
Physical chemist Bartosz Grzybowski and colleagues at Northwestern University have created a microfluidic system that solves mazes like a lab rat. The system is very simple–besides the maze itself, there’s the dyed drop of acidic oil that actually traverses the maze, the basic hydroxide solution that fills the maze, and the acidic lump of agarose gel that marks the maze’s exit–but results in an apparently complex behavior. The droplet at right actually took a couple of wrong turns and back-tracked to correct them. [via Neatorama]
Adam writes to us from Melbourne, Australia: This is seriously cool, open source, too (running Gentoo). Basically it’s a MIDI controller, built into a guitar, with a pressure-sensitive touch screen. Misa
The Jakks Pacific EyeClops brand made waves back around the 2007 holiday season with their super magnifying camera toy, which set a successful design strategy they’ve since followed up on with their Night Vision 2.0 and PROJECTOR NAME toys: Take a professional piece of digital optics and make a functional $50 toy version.
I bought both their active night vision and video projector toys for my nephews this last Xmas. The older of the two, Michael, agreed to review them for us:
This wall-mounted flyer titled IN CASE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK was produced by the city of Portland, Oregon, some time between 1981 and 1985. Thanks to step #7, I now know the international stick-figure symbol for “Comfort the dying.” [via Geekologie]
Here’s another method for cutting glass bottles, by Mike is bored: How to cut a wine bottle with acetone and a string.
