Don't throw that electronic junk just yet! - Top 10 Ways to Modernize Your Old, Retro Gadgets

Despite the strong possibility that I will be labeled as a hoarder, I have no qualms in admitting that I find it extremely difficult to throw away old electronic gadgets that have lived out their intended usages. So for me, this article was a discovery that brought me joy and comfort.

Turn your old 'about to be garbage' junk electronic gadgets into something useful. Floppy drives can be converted into pen holders, Nintendo controllers turn into USB gamepads or even pen drives, VCR heads become momentum based scroll wheels - possibilities are only limited by the limits of imagination!

These projects sound fun, and even though practicality of the final products cannot be guaranteed, it will surely bring loads of fun experimenting with these ideas. If you succeed, you get to keep your favorite electronics with added value. If you fail, well, not much is lost.

Just one piece of advice, as the article rightly reminds - don't tear down anything you might want back!!

Read it all here.

iPhone 5 - was there ever a hype?

Hypes are just what they are - hypes. Making something slimmer and lighter has become obsolete as a marketing strategy to attract customers, particularly if it fails to bring any sort of 'wow'. And thats what the new iPhone has done. With a taller and slimmer look and the new A6 chip, it hasn't brought anything new to the table. I thought Apple got more publicity in its bickering with Samsung than it will get with iPhone 5.

However, as this article says in its closing comment, the only positive thing to hope for from this release is a little boost in the US economy that Apple products have more or less regularly produced.

Oh, it says something about a cool charger for the phone, called 'Lightening' or something. ehh!

Mr. Bean - simply amazing!

I Love Mr Bean!!!

British actor Rowan Atkinson (well known as Mr. Bean) once saved a plane-load of passengers during a flight, after the pilot fainted!!

The Mr. BEAN star was traveling from Mombasa to Nairobi in Kenya with his family on a private plane, when the pilot fell unconscious. At 4,877 meters, the comedian stopped the plane heading towards the ground, despite having no experience of flying an Aeroplane. Rowan's wife SUNETRA frantically tried to wake the pilot by shaking him and throwing water over him while her husband took charge of the plane. Luckily for the family, the pilot regained consciousness after a few minutes and landed the plane safely!!

Source: Did you Know?

Nanoelectronics just got smaller - Graphene and Boron Nitride in atom-thick semiconductor fabrication

Cornell University researchers have found a way to stack Graphene and Boron Nitride layers and produce integrated circuits that are nanometers thick. The resulting electronic chips would be slimmer, smaller and flexible. The fabrication process sounded pretty similar to present day IC fabrication methods, involving etching and lithography to fuse the layers together.

There are still huge kinks in the technology to be corrected before this can become a reality, but the possibilities in applications are endless. This will be a huge breakthrough in flexible and transparent electronics - reminds me of Minority Report, although that's not the first movie to show the possible use of transparent electronics.

Read more here.

The (not so) secrets of American food industry!

When making money becomes the sole purpose of business, ethics and humanity goes out of the window. Compassion for animals is the last thing people have in mind. The powerful US meat, milk and egg industry  in collusion with government agencies responsible for supervision of this sector are simply showing how low they are willing to stoop to get rich.

Al Jazeera reports on the horrendous animal abuse going on in the name of industry and profit-making in the US.

Redhead Girl - Drawing with ballpoint pens!

This is what the description of the following image said: 

"Redhead Girl is an amazing portrait that was drawn, believe it or not, entirely with only 6 different colored ball point pens plus black. This artist has truly mastered the art of using ballpoint pens as shown in this piece and any other in their gallery." 

Amazing? I know! More about it at DeviantArt.

Solar Energy - future or just a dream?

We are in desperate search of clean renewable energy and out of all available prospects, solar energy is surely the best thing we have. The drive to put a hold on the continued damage we have so enthusiastically done to our climate and environment since the Industrial Revolution is recently seeing positive results - big tech companies are investing more time and resurces in developing solar energy technologies. Panasonic has been recently awarded the IEEE Corporate Innovation Award for developing HIT. They have improved efficiency of heterojunction solar cells up to 22%, which is actually quite an achievement.

I still see solar energy being used as much as conventional sources as a sweet but distant dream. Projects like this one in the Maldives are a bright start, but that's all. The technology is still new, undesirably lacking efficiency, disturbingly expensive, and most importantly, still not as popular as many would like to assert - specially with governments and corporations who thrive on the milking of the fossil fuel industry. Maybe all we need is a worldwide 'Energy-Source Spring'!