Generative Shan Shui landscape paintings via Boing Boing

{Shan, Shui}* is art-generating code that produces traditional Chinese landscape paintings. It's running here and here and each time you load the page, you'll get a new landscape.

 
{Shan, Shui}* is inspired by traditional Chinese landscape scrolls (such as this and this) and uses noises and mathematical functions to model the mountains and trees from scratch. It is written entirely in javascript and outputs Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format.

Read Generative Shan Shui landscape paintings via Boing Boing

---

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

Raspberry Pi Greenhouse: Raspberry Pi Plant Watering via Arrow

Recently, my wife’s many-years-old Keurig stopped working. Like any engineer/hacker/maker, my first instinct was to poke around, clean out certain parts, etc. to see if I could fix it, and after some time I did get coffee flowing once again. Along the way, however, I noticed that it was rather nasty inside, and that these machines are not made to be easily be taken apart and serviced. Normally, I’d say this is a bad thing, but when dealing with water plus enough electrical current to raise water to a very high temperature, one can understand why it was made in such a way.

So, it was a time for a new unit, which actually looks quite nice on our counter now. The old one, however—with a water tank and means for dispensing it—seemed like a perfect hacking target to turn into a sort of Pi-based gardening setup!

Read Raspberry Pi Greenhouse: Raspberry Pi Plant Watering via Arro

---

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

SlothBot is the cutest way to monitor endangered ecosystems via Input

Read SlothBot is the cutest way to monitor endangered ecosystems via Input

---

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

My venture in hacking a fake vintage radio via Huan Truong's Pensieve [Raspberry Pi]

For a year or so I have owned a nice fake-vintage radio/bluetooth speaker that originally caught my eye for sale in a FedEx office. The front has a quite nice VFD-style LED to show the status, a volume knob and four hard buttons. It has Bluetooth, USB, AUX and FM input. The radio and bluetooth was not bad, but there was nothing to be impressed about. It was definitely not "smart."

I decided to hack it to make it a bit smarter: to do AirPlay and be a smart alarm clock and whatever else I could think of. Since it was inexpensive, I had nothing to lose and everything to win. I thought putting a Raspberry Pi 0 or something in it would be nice.

Read My venture in hacking a fake vintage radio – Huan Truong's Pensieve via Huan Truong's Pensieve

---

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

Are There Problems That Computers Can't Solve? via Tom Scott on YouTube

All about Hilbert's Decision Problem, Turing's solution, and a machine that vanishes in a puff of logic.

Read and Watch This Youtuber Dismember Popular Devices to Make See-Through Gadgets via MAKE: Blog

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

ESP32-Cam Does Time Lapse via hack a day [Arduino]

Just a few years ago, had someone asked you how much a digital camera with WiFi would cost, you probably wouldn’t have said $6. But that’s about how much [Bitluni] paid for an ESP32-CAM. He wanted to try making the little camera do time lapse, and it turns out that’s pretty easy to do.

Read ESP32-Cam Does Time Lapse via hack a day

---

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

Home School: The Sentences Computers Can't Understand, But Humans Can via Tom Scott on YouTube

The Winograd schema is a language test for intelligent computers. So far, they're not doing well.

Watch The Sentences Computers Can't Understand, But Humans Can via Tom Scott on YouTube

 

Flipdots, Without The Electronics via hack a day

We are used to flipdots, single mechanical pixels that are brightly colored on one side and black on the other, flipped over by a magnetic field. Driving the little electromagnets that make them work is a regular challenge in our community. [Johan] however has a new take on the flipdot, and it’s one we’ve never seen before. Instead of making a magnetic field to flip his dots he’s doing without the electronics entirely, and just using a magnet.

Read Flipdots, Without The Electronics via hack a day

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

Watch This Youtuber Dismember Popular Devices to Make See-Through Gadgets via MAKE: Blog

As an adolescent in the mid-80s, I got a see-through Swatch watch (with translucent green trimming) that showed the internal structures and the gears in motion. It was my favorite, and ever since then I’ve been a big fan of clear casings on electronics. I often wonder why they’re not more prevalent — the motors, circuitry, and wiring are so much more interesting to look at than a dull grey plastic cowl.

With that, the new youtube channel Useless Mod is quickly turning into my favorite place to find unexpected see-through variations of popular gadgets. From an iPhone SE 2020, to Airpods (standard and Pro), to a Mavic Mini and a GoPro Hero 8, the channel’s mastermind Dennis is putting very real devices under the knife. No throwaway thrift store goods here, these are legit items getting the “invisible shell” treatment.

Read and Watch This Youtuber Dismember Popular Devices to Make See-Through Gadgets via MAKE: Blog

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading

A look at ICARUS, a new approach to tracking animals, tagged with transmitters, over long distances using new equipment aboard the International Space Station (Jim Robbins/New York Times) via Techmeme

The new approach, known as ICARUS — short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space — will also be able to track animals across far larger areas than other technologies. At the same time, ICARUS has shrunk the size of the transmitters that the animals wear and made them far cheaper to boot.

Read A look at ICARUS, a new approach to tracking animals, tagged with transmitters, over long distances using new equipment aboard the International Space Station (Jim Robbins/New York Times) via Techmeme

---

An interesting link found among my daily reading