Thursday, April 26, 2018

Future-proofing a pine seedling nursery through automation

MuzGadget cousin, Patrick, is featured in this Rural Delivery clip and talks about how he is using technology to automate, sustain and improve his pine seedling nursery.



Read the whole Rural Delivery story at https://www.ruraldelivery.net.nz/stories/Murray-s-Nurseries

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Flippermuzeum, Budapest

On our recent trip to Budapest, we spent an evening at Flippermuzeum - Europe's largest interactive pinball museum. They have over 150 machines ranging from ancient electromechanical machines of the 1960's to modern machines often themed on movies and pop culture. For the museum entry fee, you get unlimited play on the machines.

Target Gallery, 1962

Flying Chariots, 1963

Various machines in the collection


Some games had multiple balls in action. One machine released 13 balls if you hit the right spots. You could manually load multiple balls on some of the older games. 

Multiple balls in action

The strangest game to play was Orbitor 1. The ball moved seemingly randomly over the playfield and I suspect it had electromagnets changing the direction as the ball passed over sensors.

Orbitor 1

There were a few hybrid games where you use the flippers to control a video game but there were also others such as a Pacman Pinball game where you start playing Pacman on the video screen with a joystick and when you exit from the maze a ball is launched and you control it with flippers.
Pacman

Granny and the Gators

The worst game to play was the pinball video game. It did not have the same feel to it after playing all of the machines with a physical ball rolling around and haptic feedback.

See all of the museum's machines listed on the Pinball Owners website.  And for more info on almost all pinball machines ever made, check out the Internet Pinball Database.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Center of Scientific Wonders, Budapest

Last Monday, we spent the day at the Center of Scientific Wonders in Budapest. We enjoyed a wide range of interactive science exhibits, the games and puzzles bar and an escape room. The space exhibit had a series of puzzles and challenges to complete. The cafe tables had multi-player games and puzzles embedded in them. We escaped from the Globetrotter room in about half of the 40 minutes time limit after solving geography puzzles to open locks and get more keys and clues. It was a lot of fun.

I built a leaning tower.

We looked at polarization. 

And ferrofluid.



And played with magnets.


A water vortex.

For more info visit the Center of Scientific Wonders' website: https://www.csopa.hu/en/