3d illusion arts: Walyou

Walyou

Scrap Metal Transformers Bring Chinese Farmer $160K a Year
InfiniteUSB Makes USB Cable Stacking a Reality
Boeing to patent force fields – and that’s not just sci-fi

Scrap Metal Transformers Bring Chinese Farmer $160K a Year

Posted: 24 Mar 2015 10:27 AM PDT

There are only two good things people could ever do with scrap metal: recycle it or repurpose it by building geeky Transformers sculptures that bring in tons of cash each year for you and yours.

Chinese farmer Yu Zhilin and his son Lu Yingyun went for the second options, for obvious reasons. For the past three years, the two have turned scrap car parts into beautiful Optimus Prime and Bumblebee sculptures that don’t only look good, but also generate quite a lot of profit.

Needless to say, getting from a pile of metal as the one seen in the above picture to an enormous sculpture takes a lot of time and effort, but the results are worth every penny, especially since Yu Zhilin has been selling these for 1 million yuan (north of $160,000) a year.

If the Transformers franchise wasn’t so successful in China, maybe the sculptures wouldn’t have attracted such big profits, but it looks like people in that country have great love for Optimus Prime and his metallic gang. Even though I’d like to think that’s because of the cartoons and the comics, the truth is that Transformers sell like hot donuts there, regardless of the media, and that schlep Michael Bay‘s movies are probably playing a big part, too. After all, when it comes to blowing up, no director is his equal.

What’s interesting about the creator of these sculptures is that Yu Zhilin, despite currently being a farmer, has a background in fine arts. The Optimus Prime and Bumblebee sculptures are built in his spare time, which means that he still dedicates most of his time to his main job.

Ironically, these sculptures are made of scrap car parts, whereas the Transformers disguise themselves as cars and trucks. In this Universe or in a parallel one, the Transformers and Yu Zhilin’s sculptures surely share the same origins.

It will be interesting to see how the copyright holders will react as soon as they get wind of this. In my humble opinion, they should mind their own business, as this something made by fans of the franchise for other fans, but chances are they might want a slice of this metallic pie. Well, the copyright holders launch miniature action toys, whereas these modern artists are selling gigantic sculptures that make the former green with envy.

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InfiniteUSB Makes USB Cable Stacking a Reality

Posted: 23 Mar 2015 01:59 PM PDT

What’s the right number of USB connectors for you? Regardless of how many USB gadgets you need to charge or how many flash drives you need to transfer data from, with InfiniteUSB, you always use only one USB port on your laptop or desktop PC.

What if a single port was enough for charging and transferring data from multiple devices? In this context, Apple definitely looks like a visionary company, with its single USB Type-C port-equipped Macbook. However, InfiniteUSB is confident that this could be achieved in a much simpler way, without having to spend a fortune on hubs and adapters.

One of the cable’s ends looks perfectly normal, having a microUSB, female USB or Lightning connector. Obviously, it’s the other end that makes this little gadget extraordinary. That double-connector plugs into USB ports at a right angle and enables users to plug another InfiniteUSB cable into it and so on, until there are plenty for all their charging or data transfer needs.

Speaking of charging, this might turn out problematic when using multiple InfiniteUSB cables for this purpose, as in the end, they are all charging from a single USB 2.0 port. On the upside, the bulkier end is magnetic and allows users to stick the connectors together, fold the cable and tuck everything away. This particular feature is not something entirely original, as some microUSB cables have had this design for a couple of years, now.

InfiniteUSB is currently featured on Kickstarter, where backers can pledge $12 or more before April 22 to get one magnetic cable in June. The funding goal of $10,000 has long been exceeded, even though the crowdfunding campaign has just started, and now the pledged sum rests at around $45K.

While the concept is interesting, I’m pretty sure that InfiniteUSB will share the same fate as pressy, the $27 3.5mm dust-plug/shortcut button for Android smartphones that got $0.79 clones in no time. In other words, Chinese manufacturers might catch wind of this design and turn into something of their own. To be honest, InfiniteUSB seems a bit over-priced, so cheaper versions may be out, soon.

Price aside, it’s great to see that there’s still room for innovation in this field, and while the implementation may not be the best, the developers for InfiniteUSB are definitely worth a bit of praise.

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Boeing to patent force fields – and that’s not just sci-fi

Posted: 23 Mar 2015 10:48 AM PDT

Creating a force field isn’t such a far off, futuristic concept if the Boeing team and their latest patent are to be believed.

The latest patent by Boeing claims to be a “Method and system for shockwave attenuation via electromagnetic arc”, and is for all intents and purposes, a force field. This system was designed to be used by military vehicles, especially the ones transporting soldiers, yet it can’t protect against bullet impacts or phisical objects, but is aimed to stop shockwaves of nearby impacts – say, missiles or bombs that explode nearby.

In order to achieve this, the system uses a sensor that detects the shockwave, and is then connected to an electromagnetic arc generator that ionizes the affected area creating a plasma field that intercepts and weakens the wave before it ever gets to the vehicle, and the carriers.

What this device does exactly is changing the density and temperature of the air so it acts like a shield. This is nothing like the movies or videogames, where forcefields last for several seconds or even minutes, but an instant process that activates at the time of the impact only. The required energy to use this technology is huge, and is the greatest problem the Boeing team are facing. Furthermore, this technology is, as of now, harmful to the users inside the force field, and even blocks light, which render the concept interesting, although unusable.

This is just a patent, as of now, and a long time might pass before something comes off of it, yet it is a first step to create the futuristic technology we imagine when we think of future wars. Who knows, maybe the battle fields of the future will be safer…

Via USPTO

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