The Geek Church

There’s not going to be a lot of posts today, because I’m sort of taking a “day-off”.

You may have noticed that Irreverent Reverence didn’t post either, and I have a reason for that, too. I will explain that one later.

We’ll start with this Blue Flow monitoring asthma via mobile phone.

Apparently, there are problems with the HTC Desire and HTC Legend in Europe.

This is the Dragon iPad docking station.

This is a new Vodafone Italy ad that is very, very awesome.

This is The Mint: A Swiffer robot.

Lastly, check out this Champ Sofa.

Have a good weekend.

When dealing with a large group of violent protesters or looters in a riot situation, law enforcement and military personnel have used a variety of equipment to help restore order. Such tools for crowd control include tear gas, high-powered water hoses, dogs and rubber bullets. Now, Bruce Lund and his company, Lund & Co Inventions have created a new weapon for the war on town and city riots. However, you might be surprised to learn that this is the same company who made the Tickle Me Elmo doll.

Bruce Lund himself recently designed a gas-powered, potentially lethal bean bag cannon that the Pentagon has taken great interest in. However, the technology for this riot cannon actually originated from a toy rocket that Lund created for the toy company, Estes. Lund & Co Inventions is actually a research developer that aids major toy companies like Tyco and they do not specialize in directly selling their own products. After the Tickle Me Elmo doll sold for millions, Lund was hired by Estes. The toy rocket designed by Lund works by converting regular tap water into Hydrogen and Oxygen gases, then recombining it into H20 to generate energy and expanding gases that cause this energy to launch the rocket upward for more than 200 feet. Then Lund applied this technology to the development of his Variable Velocity Weapon System, which he named “The Big Hurt”.

The idea behind “Big Hurt” is to solve the problems that exist with most projectile weapons for crowd control. Common riot weapons that use non-lethal rounds like rubber bullets and beanbags have a problem with their velocity. Such weapons are safe to use at fifty yards but become potentially lethal at five yards and weapons designed to be non-lethal at five yards don’t have an effective projectile velocity at a fifty-yard range. So, Lund solved this problem by designing his “Big Hurt” cannon to automatically measure the range of a target and adjust its muzzle velocity accordingly. The Pentagon loves Lund’s design but wanted him to add a manual override function that allows the user to switch from lesser than to a full velocity setting so projectile rounds can be used for lethal force. Other design modifications were made as well. Now, that’s quite an interesting progression. Lund went from creating new toys to designing crowd control weaponry. Maybe this inventor has a future in the research and development of new weapons technology.

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When using portable devices like an iPod or a smartphone to listen to music or watch videos, the headphone is the common tool of choice for ensuring sound quality. Headphones can also be used with large, electronic appliances such as television sets, stereo systems and computers. However, a headphone’s effectiveness in providing great sound quality to the user is limited since most headsets come with only two speakers (one for each ear). Thus, your sound experience with listening to music and watching videos is only as good as the quality of the headset you’re using and some brands do give poorer performance than others. So, a Canadian company called Psyko Audio has developed their own unique headset to resolve the problems people tend to have with regular headphones.

Instead of creating a headset for regular performance in sound quality, Psyko Audio sought to take the sound experience with headphones up to another level entirely. The concept behind their specially designed headset is to provide the user with real surround sound quality from the headphones themselves. In their unique design, this company deliberately ignored the conventional practice of only making two speakers for the ears alone. Instead, they developed a headset called the 5.1 PC Gaming Headset System, which actually uses five speakers that are located on top and along the headband. Then the sound is carried through tubes leading into the ear-cups, which spread the sound out over the front and back of your ears. Furthermore, this process of surround sound is also strongly supported by subwoofers built into the ear-cups.

Psyko Audio presented the 5.1 PC Gaming Headset System at the Gaming Expo during CES this past January. I was actually there at the time and had the opportunity to try out their special headphones for myself. It truly is a surround sound experience wearing the headset. The sound itself fills your ears in the headset, cutting off noise from the outside world around you and giving you unhindered performance quality with whatever you’re listening to. This headset is amazing and quite ingenious in its design and execution. The 5.1 PC Gaming Headset also comes with a detachable mic for gaming online and the whole set is available for $300 at websites such as Newegg and Tiger Direct. With the development of such effective headphones, I wonder what other products Psyko Audio plans to release in the near future.

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