The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was founded to save the whale. They have used controversial methods to stop whaling craft in the past, and critics are divided in their opinions, who either passionately defend or attack them with supreme zeal. Now the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has unveiled a new super sleek weapon to stop whaling craft, the 78 foot trimaran power boat, The Earthrace.

What makes The Earthrace such a potential threat to whaling vessels, is that it can reportedly deflect radar, which means it is ‘invisible’ to ships until they are within close proximity to it. Considering The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s tactics of ramming, boarding, scuttling and sinking ships in the past. The Earthrace is a very scary prospect if you’re serving on a whaling craft in the South Pacific.

The Earthrace originally grabbed the headlines back in December 2007, when she was used in an attempt to break speed records travelling the globe. What made her particularly unique was that she ran on biodegradable fuel, which reportedly came from the Captains stomach via lipo suction.

Now she has a sleek paint job, and is currently being prepared for an anti-whaling in Auckland harbour, in New Zealand. In December she will travel to Perth to collect supplies, before rendezvousing with another Sea Shepherd vessel, The Steve Irwin.

Both vessels will then attempt to stop Japanese whaling vessels from hunting whales, in protest of the countries three month industrial whaling programme. Tactics at this stage, are unknown.

What makes it worse if you’re serving on a whaling craft is that the Earthrace looks like the Bat – Boat. That has to be a bad omen if you’re superstitious!

Source: Life.

Recently we posted about the different energy saving displays you can buy for your house. The videos in that blog post were made for E-Day 2009 on the Isles Of Scilly. And today is Tuesday 6th October 2009, the actual day of the experiment!

On the dedicated website, e-day.org.uk, they have a very cool page which shows a range of different ‘National Electricity Meters’. The different meters show; real-time demand, co2 emissions, electricity bill and cumulative demand. You can view them all on this page on their website.

At the time of writing here is what one of the displays says, this ones show an estimate of the UK electricity bill so far today. It is from midnight and it is now coming up to 11am GMT, so only 11 hours worth of electricity!

Image Source: screenshot taken from the eday website linked to above.

Laser accurate microphones do not provide a means to you can shoot the singer if you do not like them, sorry to disappoint, but instead represent a new kind of recording technology which is the brain child of David Schwartz, a man who hold several recording patents, one of which is the basis for the MP3 format.

Conventional microphones work by recording airflow around moving parts in the diaphragm of the mic. Though refined over the years, this process does add a certain “colouring” of the sound that is recorded.

Laser accurate microphones, work by measuring the airflow using a laser, rather than moving parts, and so in theory, the sound should be “pure”.  Also, as the laser reacts quicker than the parts in the diaphragm of the mic, there should be a greatly reduced sound lag.  

David Schwartz though, does not feel this is the end to a culture of microphone trickery which is inherent in the music business. “The color that certain microphones bring can be fantastic. The problem is, you can’t have all of them, all of the time, meaning that all music recording is a compromise of some sort. With Laser-Accurate technology, all the tonal processing would take place after the sound is converted to a voltage, not during the act of recording it.”  So girl and boy bands can relax!

It is believed that this could lead to a market of sound processors similar to model guitar processors, whereby classic mics of yesteryear could be recreated.

The technology will be unveiled next month at the AES convention in New York, where a Laser Accurate Microphone will be put to the test. Karaoke fans will no doubt be watching with interest.

Here is a cool viral video. It is video diary highlights of Project Orick, here two engineers are determined to make IT management easier with a tool in the form of a glove that literally puts power at the tips of their fingertips.

Click play now to view. To watch it in full screen use the icon in the bottom right hand corner.

If you like the video social bookmark it or send it to your friends.