We’ve all been told that it’s dangerous to shine a laser pointer straight into someone’s eye, but that’s just with the laser pointers you can pick up at your local dollar store. Now, imagine far more powerful laser dazzler weapons–using multiple wavelengths–that boast enough energy to pop a balloon. This can cause pilots not only to get distracted or temporarily blinded, but they could even suffer from more permanent eye damage. In fact, the US FAA says that there are over 2,000 incidents each year where pilots have lasers pointed at their planes.

Protecting pilots against one wavelength at a time just isn’t good enough, so the UK MoD turned to Thin Film Solution, based out of Glasgow. The resulting prototype has a composite structure where the polycarbonate layer has a special light-absorbing dye. When bonded with the glass lens, the wavelengths can then either be filtered out or reflected out, helping those pilots retain their optimal vision. They’re still working on it, but I can see how these laser-filtering goggles can become standard issue for at least all military operations.

[Ministry of Defence via Source]

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Old Schol Mac to iPad conversion Photo: Flickr

Do you happen to have some old computer gear kicking around collecting dust? Do you want to find some fascinating new use for it that would resurrect it into the 21st century? With the Apple iPad, you can.

Flickr user Mapgoblin has come up with a creative way to re-use an old Macintosh computer. As you can quite plainly see, the ancient desktop computer has been gutted, having its old display replaced with an Apple iPad. This could make for a great conversation piece!

Yes, there are all sorts of different cases and stands available for the iPad these days, but very few are quite as retro-tastic as this one. Can you imagine placing one on an end table in your living room, providing quite access to everything from TweetDeck to iBooks.

The downside? I’m thinking the racing games that involve the accelerometer may be a little more cumbersome. Holding that big beige box and tilting it from side to side can get pretty tiring! Even so, this is definitely better than using the old Mac as an aquarium!

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Yes, you could have your netbook turned on and your device attached to one of the USB ports, but this is a much more direct connection. You are literally plugging a USB cable into the battery.

The guy in the video below, who happens to be from the Czech Republic, hacked up a battery from an MSI Wind netbook so that it had a powered USB port. He used this battery to fully charge his iPhone twice and it still had enough juice to power his netbook after that.

You’ll have to be a little brave to hack around with the harmful chemicals surely found inside netbook batteries, but if you want to give his mod a try, the guy has a tutorial on his site. I wonder if the OEMs are paying attention. They should make a commercial version of this.

Source: Crunchgear

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