I thought that I was pretty hot shit when I climbed on a stool and double-sided-taped glowing stars to my ceiling, but their waning green light never captured the night sky like DIY fibre optics.

One home-modder plugged bundles of fibre optics into tiny dremel holes in his ceiling. Using just a touch of glue to hold each star in place, 250 dots twinkle…maybe even brighter than real stars.

Even for a lazy glob of lard such as myself, the install sounds wicked-easy thanks to a step-by-step tutorial over at Instructables. That said, I’m still the type of guy to hire out. [instructables via Hack a Day via lifehacker]

You may not be lucky enough to have fibre optic in your home, but at least you can feel its powerful pulses of light all over your body when wearing the LumiTop Sophia.

We’re not saying that we enjoy dressing up in women’s clothing when no one’s around. We’re just saying that, when we’re talking about garments woven from fibre optic cables, a simple dress transcends the artificial social norms of male or female attire. It becomes something greater, something OK for a typical man’s man to don during Mardi Gras, Carnival, or hell, any old weekend on the couch watching sports while throwing back some brewskies.

Plus, the LumiTop Sophia costs over $US2000. And if you have that much cash to throw around on one item of clothing in this economy, chances are, everyone will be kissing your butt for a job, not questioning your techno-effeminate taste in fashion. [LumiGram via 7Gadgets]

The Mist Bench is described as a “light sculpture,” and it set to make it’s debut at the ‘09 Senseware exhibition’ at Milan design week. So, I wouldn’t expect to pick one of these up at your local furniture store anytime soon. [Tokyo Fiber via Designboom]

This incident even knocked out 911, so it’s safe to say that everyone involved is pretty pissed right now.

AT&T OFFERING $100,000 REWARD IN BAY AREA NETWORK VANDALISM
Fibre Cables Cut at Locations in San Jose and San Carlos, Calif.

AT&T* today announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for incidents of vandalism to the AT&T network near San Jose and San Carlos, Calif.

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AT&T’s networks were declared National Critical Infrastructures in recognition of their importance to the nation’s security. Anyone who tampers with, destroys or disrupts the company’s network or its components is in violation of federal and state laws and AT&T will assist with any prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

The early-morning vandalism incidents today involved cuts of fibre cables in manholes at two locations:

· The intersection of Monterey Highway and Blossom Hill Road overpass in San Jose.
· The intersection of Old County Road and Varian Road in San Carlos.

Restoration efforts were under way immediately.

Tips can be given to the San Jose Police Department at 408-277-4161 (ask for Detective Carlos Melo or Detective Dan Phelan);
Tips can be given to the San Carlos Police Department at 650-802-4423; and
Anonymous tip for either incident can be made to CrimeStoppers at 408-947-STOP.

[Photo Paul Chinn, The Chronicle]

Coverage of the game includes 35 high-end cameras, all focused on never missing even the smallest of details. They’ve rewired Tampa’s stadium with 50 miles of fibre-optic cable to transmit the feeds from all of them, and are nearly doubling the on-site production crew compared to a typical Sunday Night Football broadcast. Aside from the expected overhead and goal line cameras, they’ve placed a camera in each goal post and in the hallway leading to each locker room for reasons I wouldn’t want a football fan to explain to me.

The main cameras are Sony HDC-900/950s, with HD Canon lenses, and several “X-Mo” cameras for frame-by-frame analysis of the sidelines and goal lines. And just to be on the safe side, NBC is bringing along “several” 450-kilowatt backup generators.

Luckily, NBC won’t be carrying over Fox’s horrible dancing robot. Thank god for that. [Broadcasting and Cable]

Designed by Ettore Cimini, the Ra features two fully adjustable steel and technopolymer arms that separately deliver and focus light from a 100W fluorescent bulb from the tip of their snake-like head using fibre optic cable. The light itself can be adjusted to taste via a built-in dimmer control.

On the downside, it appears that the lamps are custom made to order—which surely means that it is far, far out of most of our price ranges. [Lumina via e-potpourri via TFTS]

Verizon technology director Vincent O’Byrne declared 2009 the year America finally breaks the 100Mbps barrier that Hong Kongers have, well, long since passed. O’Byrne was quick to note that the bump in speed isn’t really essential to most Verizon customers, but that the number represents more of a marketing milestone that could give them a one-up on chief competitor Comcast.

Later, a Verizon spokesperson contacted Telephony Online, the original reporter, to perform some spectacular hedging: “Verizon expects to have its delivery processes for speeds like that locked down in 2009 so that service with speeds approaching 100 Mb/s would be enabled in the very near future,” the spokesperson said. So Verizon is going to hit that landmark 100Mbps soon, but it appears for now there’s no guarantee. No pricing was made available, either, although the current fastest tier, at 50Mbps, costs $US145 without bundled phone service. [DSL Reports]

The 160 x 30 cm LumiTable come with power adapters, so you can trip over the cables running from your dining table to the electricity socket. For $US196, you can’t ask for more. No, no, no. You can’t. [Lumigram via 7Gadgets]

The technique, spearheaded by Bo Albinsson at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, encodes DNA in a way that, when mixed with light-receptive molecules called chromophores, self-engineer themselves into a natural photo-sensitive wire that can accurately transmit light–similar to those found in some algaes. The technique may also someday be used for artificial photosynthesis systems that may power next-gen solar cells. [New Scientist, Image: DNA visualized in a cDNA microarray from Wiki Commons]