Here, Star Wars, I Fixed Your ‘Force Awakens’ Lightsaber Crossguard For You

The first Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer features all kinds of things that make my diehard Star Wars soul quiver and dance, but the crossguard on the dark side lightsaber spotted in the teaser, while initially cool, increasingly isn’t one of them. It looks ultimately very impractical, and I couldn’t help but to offer some engineering tips for the weapon’s designer.

Let me explain: While the design looks like it was inspired by the kind of guard you’d see on a claymore, for instance, which prevents an opponent’s blade from sliding down yours and, say, cutting off your fingers, it seems unlikely to serve that function. The emitters extend from the hilt, as you can see, which presumably means they’re vulnerable to the opponent’s blade, which, per Star Wars lore, can cut through pretty much anything (except for Mandalorian iron, Force-imbued weapons and some other noteworthy materials). The whole point, however, of not using metal for the sword itself is that lightsabers can cut through most without issue.

So, to make an effective guard for a sword hilt, which does seem like something worth the time of lightsaber artisans, I propose a couple of design tweaks.

The first moves the emitters, placing individual vertical ones across the bottom of the guard. This means there’s a continuous field of energy blade, ensuring that any sliding opponent blade won’t just cut straight through the horizontal emitters at the T-joint in the original version.

The second version assumes that a series of small, power-limited vertical emitters aren’t technically practical, or don’t provide a continuous field, and instead extends a metal guard around either end, which point emitters across the field of the central blade. Once again, you get an unbroken energy beam with a cross-section that is presumably stronger for the overlap, if anything.

Of course, it’s possible that a) the blade is made through some kind of secret Sith ritual that means the emitters at the hilt are fine, or b) the guard isn’t a guard at all, but merely additional, dagger-like blades designed to help wound in close combat.

It’s also possible that I have too much time on my hands.

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Kiran Upadhyay

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