The PICDEM Z demonstration kit is an easy-to-use ZigBee Technology wireless communication protocol development and demonstration platform. The demonstration kit includes the ZigBee protocol stack and two PICDEM Z boards, each with an RF daughter card. The demonstration board is also equipped with a 6-pin modular connector to interface directly with Microchip’s MPLAB ICD 2 in-circuit debugger (DV164005). With MPLAB ICD 2, the developer can reprogram or modify the PIC18 MCU Flash memory and develop and debug application code all on the same platform. Link.

Camouflage, you might think, is about blending in. But just as often, and especially these days, it’s about standing out. Camouflage hides shapes by generating hints of many other possible shapes. Instead of staying silent, in other words, camouflage succeeds by being noisy: it hides signal with noise. Socially and esthetically, too, camouflage is more and more often about advertising allegiance. Link.

Tim Hunkin has a neat page with the history of safes and how to crack some of them- An illustrated lecture about the history of Safes and Safe breaking. The lecture is based round a large wooden safe with a video camera inside, projecting the inside of the door mechanism on a screen. This is currently my favourite lecture to perform. There’s something very satisfying about the simple ingenuity of safes and locks. Its also an area of engineering design that has not been transformed by science or maths, and to me illustrates intuitive aspect of the subject, which often now gets forgotten. Link.

Here’s an origami-liek chair project. The site has the history and step-by-step of making chairs from the from the “spam signs” you see all over towns, especially during election time. The street spam lounger uses more than 95% of the material from 21 of the picket-sized signs, and more than 50% of the material from 1 of the “election” signs. There are only two different part blanks–one for the picket signs that form the “skin” of the chair, and one for the election sign which makes the structure. Link.

This a really cool blog- X-37…First Try: June 16, 2005 – Today was targeted to be the first flight of X-37, but unforeseen problems caused the flight to be scrubbed. The X-37/White Knight pair did taxi to the end of Rwy 30 for a short time, and then back to the hangar. Hey, folks, that’s just how it is in the flight test world. No date has been announced for the next attempt. [via] Link.

Here’s a photo of a ton of PSPs perched on a window. Are they about to jump, fearing their firmware is about to get rolled back to 1.0 to play homebrew games? Or are they waiting to swoop down and snag memory sticks. I’m not too sure either, but it might be some new form of DRM, you’ll need to buy a new PSP every time you want to play.

I don’t think this is real, but I’ll check it out- In a suburb of Toronto, Canada, a small company called Rothman Technologies, Inc., has in fact discovered not one but two viable methods for breaking down ordinary water into hydrogen and oxygen. Neither method involves the need to spend a billion dollars. They are simple answers. The existing engines in our automobiles could work with these systems with very little alteration and no need for an external support infrastructure like the one now provided by gas stations, and which would be required by fuel-cell technology. Link.