Archive | July 13, 2009

Teen dies after being sucked into pool pump

Nathan Clark, 14, died after lifting a grille in a pool at a Thai water park in an attempt to retrieve his goggles.

He was sucked into the pool’s pumping system and it took 30 minutes for pool engineers to check the pump room.

When they did, Nathan’s body slid into view of the engineers and his horrified father, who claims lifeguards ignored his pleas for help.

via Teen dies after being sucked into pool pump | World News | News.com.au.

This sorta stuff shouldn’t happen.

Regardless of the boy’s actions, he shouldn’t have paid the price of his stupidity with his life – in my humble opinion, that’s just far too high a price to pay.

Shame on the guards, and rightly so. Would it have killed them to waste a precious minute to check?

This. Is. Awesome.

_oneliner

_oneliner is a self-reflexive installation consiting of a long line of interconnected VGA monitors, 64 in total. Each driven by a microcontroller, the monitors form a line of characters, like a giant ticker tape in which each monitor is limited to displaying a single character. The monitors are connected through self-designed and built “open” hardware. The work itself also reflects this openness: all wirings and microchips are exposed to the public’s critical inspection.

[…]

Every VGA monitor is capable of displaying a single character. Every monitor is run by a microcontroller which generates a VGA signal for a specific character. The Arduino is the controller of the installation: it continuously decides which monitor in the row displays which character, thus creating animations. There are 8 possible “programs” which can be run. The program number can be set using the 3 switches on the arduino shield, and pressing the reset button on the arduino. The LED then blinks as an indicator that it is running.

via _oneliner.

Click through the link to download technical documentation, including the source code, and other tasty tidbits.