Hackszine.com: Body Archives

Archive: Body

May 14, 2007

10 ways to improve your night vision

Sam Noyoun posted an Instructable with 10 ways to improve your night vision. Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson covered some of these techniques in Astronomy Hacks (including the pirate eye patch trick), but there are a few I hadn't heard of:

1. Protect your night vision

It takes approximately 30 minutes for the human eye to adapt to darkness. Protect your night vision: do not look directly at bright objects (for instance car headlights when driving).
...

10 ways to improve your natural night vision - Link

Robert Bruce Thompson, who has had a lot of experience looking at dim objects in dark places, says that only a red filter will work: green and blue won't do the trick. Robert also says that the elite forces and soviet special forces techniques don't work.

Related:

Astronomy Hacks - Link
Snopes on carrots and night vision - Link

April 2, 2007

Body Hacking: If You Can't Open It, You Don't Own It

Magnet Implant

Quinn Norton has posted the slides from the popular Body Hacking talk she gave at O'Reilly's recent ETech conference. She defines body hacking as:

Acting on yourself, with or without assistance, to enhance the function of your body or your perceptions. Body hacking is, like all other forms of hacking, ultimately a form of violation: the freedom to enact your will upon a system.

Going beyond the more obviously transgressive body modifications (such as scarring, piercing, tattoos, and subdermal implants), she shows that much more is at stake than cosmetics, for both body hackers in particular and society in general. Co-opting Make's mantra ("if you can't open it, you don't own it") to our own physical body, she points out the need for control (or at least an attempt at control) of our most important asset: ourselves.

Quinn herself has a rare earth magnet implanted in her finger, giving her a "sixth sense" (in addition to the obvious ability to lift small metallic objects with a single finger), which is itself fascinating, though not nearly as interesting as hearing her describe the process of getting it, her reaction and response to it in her body, and the larger implications for such a procedure.

I heard Quinn deliver a more informal version of this talk to a smaller, rapt audience last year, and all indications suggest that the response is the same every time she gives it. If you haven't had the chance to hear it directly from her, you'll want to check out the slides and video links at the end of this post. Quinn's really putting body hacking on our radar as a fascinating area that's moving quickly.

Links:

(via Boing Boing)

March 29, 2007

Health Hacks at Ignite Seattle

Ignite Seattle

Brady wrote to announce details on the next Ignite Seattle event, scheduled for April 5. With just a few sessions announced, Candace McNaughton's Health Hacks should be of interest to Hackszine readers:

Natural medicine quick fixes. Eight simple solves for common issues. Candace McNaughton is a naturopath who specializes in diabetes and practices in Capitol Hill.

It's already shaping up to be an "eclectic night of life hacks, geekery, and war stories," with more speakers to be announced over the next few days, so if you're local or if your travel plans bring you to the Great Northwest next week, keep your eyes on the Ignite Seattle site and mark the date in your calendar.

Related:

February 21, 2007

Coffee and global warming

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It's official coffee is the solution to, and cause of, every problem... National Geographic -

It's hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks--replacing the ubiquitous beer--facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee--or Diet Coke or Red Bull--to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn't exist.

Slurped in black coffee or sipped in green tea, gulped down in a soda or knocked back in a headache pill, caffeine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug - [TreeHugger points to global warming...] Link to National Geographic article...

February 17, 2007

Caffeinated sites

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Are you an over the counter stimulant junky? It's ok to admit it, you're among friends here. I drink about 5 cups of black coffee a day, but I'm always looking for something that less rocket fuel tasting.

My pal Mikey pointed me to Energy fiend, a fantastic site that has new caffeinated energy drinks along with caffeine content in each drink - Link.

Also - Celsius just popped up on my radar, 400mg and no corn syrup, anyone try this yet? - Link.

Fun fact from energy fiend...Sweden, Denmark and Norway -- all around 400mg of caffeine per person per day. Cracking DRM, running pirate bay - it all makes sense now.

Pictured here, my brief experimentation with caffeine soap.

January 10, 2007

See Better with Pinhole Eyes

Pinhole Eyes

Bre Pettis, Make: Blog's resident Media Maker, adds this photo and description to the Hacks Flickr pool:

If you wear glasses like me, you'll forget them at some point or you won't have them on and you'll need to read a street sign. The magic of a pinhole can help. By looking through the hole you make with your pointy finger, middle finger, and thumb, you will be able to see, in focus, things both close and far away.

He adds the obvious caveat that this hack doesn't work in the dark, but as a woefully bespectacled hacker myself, I've already found this tip helpful in broad daylight.

Related: