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Posts Tagged ‘bizarre’

The Large Hadron Collider experienced overheating problems this week after – and we’re not making this up – a bird dropped a piece of bread onto part of the machinery.  According to LHC Machine Coordinator Dr Mike Lamont, “a bit of baguette on the busbars” caused temperatures in portions of the system to rise from their regular 1.9 Kelvin to almost 8 Kelvin; the LHC is not currently operational, after previous – more serious – overheating issues back in September, but scientists working on the project claim it would have merely automatically shut down had the bird bombing occurred during actual testing.

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Bizarre, metal and electrically powered, if you thought the Cupcake Cars were too cutesy then The Electrobite might be just up your street.  Otherwise known by its mouthful of a Latin name – Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobiteis – the battery-run bug is the handiwork of Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate and is another ex-Burning Man oddity.

the electrobite

Video after the cut

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Remember how Sony launched a PS3 at a BRAVIA flat-panel TV pretty much just for the fun of it?  Well, they seem to have triggered a new trend of firing gaming hardware at solid objects, as French gaming magazine Amusement have included a photo-shoot involving Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP Go being fired through walls.

nintendo ds shot through a wall 540x334

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With LCD displays and even consoles being reasonably common among upmarket cars these days, you need to go a little further if you’re going to attract significant amounts of attention.  For Toyota and the Microsoft Xbox team, that meant seemingly crashing a Toyota Tacoma truck first through a Jurassic Park themed paint display before throwing all the gaming and custom hydraulics to hand at the tricked-out interior.  Even then, you’ve still got some way to go to match the Toyota Tacoma All-Terrain Gamer (ATG) concept shown at SEMA this year.

Toyota All-Terrain Gamer XBOX Tacoma 1

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I think it’s fair to say that if you make one of these DIY virtual reality headsets, your kids will definitely be the coolest in the playground.  The handiwork of Recombu’s Andrew Lim, the cardboard headset takes advantage of an accelerometer-packing HTC Magic, an old pair of lab goggles and some boyish enthusiasm to create a head-tracking view of the world.

diy virtual reality goggles 2

Video demo after the cut

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I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at Sony Australia when they came up with this one.  ”Guys, it’s a worldwide recession, we need a promotion to keep people buying the PS3 and BRAVIA HDTVs.  I know some of you want to run a competition and give the darned things away, but I think we’d be far better off firing one against the other and sticking it up on YouTube.”  Hence how we end up with a video of a PS3 being launched at 22 meters per second toward a poor, defenceless flat-panel TV.

sony bravia ps3 crash test 540x415

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Weddings are reasonably good fun for those attending, but being expected to provide an often-expensive gift can sometimes irk.  So how about giving a present that demands a little more than simply scribbling a thank-you card; that’s just what Mikal did for the friend who introduced him to Arduino tinkering.  He constructed the Reverse Geocache Puzzle, a wooden box that would only be unlocked when within 2km of a location Mikal preprogrammed into it.

reverse geocache puzzle 1 540x382

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In an ideal world someone would read this and send me a monome of my own to play with, but the button-encrusted control surfaces are in short supply (and not too cheap).  Since controlling music isn’t the sole use of a monome, but still the task most people connect them with, some owners are pushing forward their DIY projects showing that a monome can be pretty much anything you have the imagination for: here, Robert Böhnke repurposes his as a low-res Twitter display.

monome twitter display

Video demo after the cut

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superheadz digital harinezumi 1Retro-camera addicts may have remembered mutterings of Superheadz’s Digital Harinezumi camera a few months back, the unusually-shaped Japanese shooter promising Super 8 style images and silent video.  At the time, finding one outside of its native country was tougher than selling Nokia shares, but now arch-importers AudioCubes have stepped in with a $169.99 sticker price.

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While it might resemble an automatic blood pressure monitor for those with huge arms, or a pedestal-mounted personal Stargate, you’re actually looking at James Dyson’s latest rethink to domestic appliances.  The Dyson Air Multiplier is the UK engineer’s attempt to replace the humble fan, dropping the blades into the base section and re-routing the air through the ring.

dyson air multiplier

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