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Austrian composer Peter Ablinger came up with a way to connect a computer to this piano that analyzes human speech and converts it to key-tapping. It looks pretty great and is reasonably clear considering it’s a piano that’s “talking.” The speaking piano actually recited the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at the 2009 World Venice Forum.

I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound.

Composer gives piano a human voice [Crave]

For as little as $7.95, Warner Bros. is will let you trade in your DVDs for the same Bluray title.  This is a great deal for anyone looking to upgrade their DVD collection to the latests and greatest high-defery.  Check the list of eligible movies out at http://www.dvd2blu.com.

Upgrade Your Warner Bros. DVDs for New Blu-ray Discs [DVD2Blu]

Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.

. . . . .

Beams were first tuned to produce collisions in the ATLAS detector, which recorded its first candidate for collisions at 14:22 this afternoon. Later, the beams were optimised for CMS. In the evening, ALICE had the first optimization, followed by LHCb.

. . . . .

These developments come just three days after the LHC restart, demonstrating the excellent performance of the beam control system. Since the start-up, the operators have been circulating beams around the ring alternately in one direction and then the other at the injection energy of 450 GeV. The beam lifetime has gradually been increased to 10 hours, and today beams have been circulating simultaneously in both directions, still at the injection energy.

Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC [CERN Press Releases]

When Google announced Chrome yesterday morning the company also released the code for the OS, explaining that development will be done in the open from this week on. The Chromium OS project includes Google’s current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development.

As soon as it was released, GDGT engineer Jon Ursenbach got to work compiling the code, trying to see if he could get an instance of Chromium OS running in a virtual machine. And, lucky for us, he did!

You can download a copy of the virtual machine to use in VMware, VirtualBox, and on a USB drive here (300MB compressed / 700MB uncompressed): http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/

Download Chrome OS for Free With VMWare [Tom's Hardware]

Industrial designer Jon West of Indakind Designs is making sure that rechargeable batteries have an even smaller carbon footprint, with a solar sticker that converts any rechargeable battery to a solar-powered one.

The patent-pending design is based on the use of flexible solar panels that can be wrapped around any rechargeable battery to help it harvest solar energy. The Solar Sticker comes with both the anode and the cathode, to make it easy to use.

Eco Gadgets: Solar Sticker makes any battery harvest renewable energy [Ecofriend]

We almost got hit by an asteroid last Friday!

A newly discovered asteroid designated 2009 VA, which is only about 7 meters in size, passed about 2 Earth radii (14,000 km) from the Earth’s surface Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST. This is the third-closest known (non-impacting) Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid. The two closer approaches include the 1-meter sized asteroid 2008 TS26, which passed within 6,150 km of the Earth’s surface on October 9, 2008, and the 7-meter sized asteroid 2004 FU162 that passed within 6,535 km on March 31, 2004. On average, objects the size of 2009 VA pass this close about twice per year and impact Earth about once every 5 years.

Asteroid 2009 VA was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey about 15 hours before the close approach, and was quickly identified by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge MA as an object that would soon pass very close to the Earth. JPL’s Near-Earth Object Program Office also computed an orbit solution for this object, and determined that it was not headed for an impact. Only thirteen months ago, the somewhat smaller object 2008 TC3 was discovered under similar circumstances, but that one was found to be on a trajectory headed for the Earth, with impact only about 11 hours away.

I always knew Ben Affleck would let me down.

Small Asteroid 2009 VA Whizzes By The Earth [Near Earth Object Program - NASA]

Tests conducted in Europe have shown that a boat tail – a tapering protrusion mounted on the rear of a truck – leads to fuel savings of 7.5 percent. The fuel savings, which also means a cut in emissions, were realized by the boat tail dramatically reducing the drag caused by the lower-pressure effect that occurs in the wake of a vehicle.

The boat tail had already proved itself during wind tunnel experiments and computer simulations, in theory and using small-scale models. Now an articulated lorry fitted with a boat tail has also undergone extensive testing on public highways and borne the theory out. The lorry was driven for a period of one year with a boat tail of varying lengths and one year without a boat tail. The improved aerodynamics were dependent on the length of the boat tail, with the optimum length found to be two meters (6.5-feet).

Boat tail reduces truck fuel consumption by 7.5 percent [Gizmag]

Bias comes in many forms. And the end of the 1970s marked a significant turn – and began a dark period – of discrimination against mustached Americans.

While until then it was fashionable to wear a mustache, virtually overnight, it became a fad reserved for the likes of law enforcement, steel workers, motor cross drivers, and members of the Village People.

Enter the American Mustache Institute (AMI) – based in St. Louis as the city is home to the world’s largest mustache – the St. Louis Arch. AMI is an advocacy organization protecting the rights of, and fighting discrimination against, mustached Americans by promoting the growth, care, and culture of the mustache.

AMI continues to battle negative stereotyping that has accompanied the mustache since those glory years of the 1970s – the peak of mustache acceptance – fighting to create a climate of acceptance, understanding, flavor saving, and upper lip warmth for all mustached Americans alike.

American Mustache Institute