Gadgetopia

Mythbusters draw a MONA LISA in 80 milliseconds ! at NVISION: Watch this video to the end — the last five seconds in slo-mo are worth the whole thing.

The Mythbusters were presenting at some conference, and they built a massive parallel paintball gun, loaded with specific colors in specific barrels, then fired it at a canvas, The result is the Mona Lisa, fired from a shotgun.

California: Green cars too quiet: It seems every advance comes with drawbacks.

Electric and hybrid vehicles may be better for the environment, but the California Legislature says they’re bad for the blind.

It has passed a bill to ensure that the vehicles make enough noise to be heard by visually impaired people about to cross a street.

A Dream Come True: U.S. Approves The First Google Phone: The FCC has approved the first Google-powered phone: Dream.

[…] with the smartphone’s certification behind it, it is possible for T-Mobile, the nation’s No. 4 wireless carrier, to go ahead with plans to debut the phone next month and begin selling it ahead of the Christmas shopping season.

I still have my Sanyo Katana, which badly needs to be replaced. Hopefully, unlike an iPhone, I can get service for this Android phone.

BRABUS smart fortwo wins latest Cannonball Run: What is the state of the automotive industry when a Smart Car wins the Cannonball Run?

Amazingly, despite all of the high-power entrants into this year’s race, a smart fortwo managed to take the victory after traveling some 3,000 miles. The machine was already a few years old and had been modified with a revised engine map from BRABUS along with some basic suspension goodies. Other than that, the little two-seater was basically stock.

Still, they only got 35 m.p.g. which never ceases to surprise me. Geo Metro’s were getting 46 m.p.g. back in the 80s.

The £50,000 jetpack that lets you become a real-life James Bond: This is somewhat huge breakthrough.

[James ] Bond’s belt was the most successful — but it could only keep the superspy aloft for 30 seconds before it ran out of fuel.

More fuel was impossible because the belt couldn’t handle the payload.

Mr Martin said his revolutionary design can stay aloft for 30 minutes, a flyingtime that he believes will make it a best-seller.

Amphicar Swim In cars go into lake: Great video footage from a Amphicar gathering in Ohio.

One of the largest exhibits of Amphicars in the world is held during the Celina Lake Festival at Grand Lake St. Marys in Celina Ohio. Amphicars were cars made to travel by land or in the water. Exhibitors come from all over the world to show off their unique vehicles.

These are the original Amphicars produced in the 60s.

DEFENDER of the Favicon: Ah geez, this is the stupidest, coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

DEFENDER of the favicon was done in 3 nights, from start to finish. Each frame of the game is generated on the fly in JavaScript into a 16?16 canvas element, then converted to a 32bits PNG image and used in place of the favicon. The core of the game act as a state machine. Notice a few details such as the pause when this window is not focused, and the resuming and game over transitions.

This, my friends, is the future of the electric bike.

The Optibike is a purpose-built e-bike with all the electronics, batteries, and motor built right into the frame. The base model has a 400 watt motor and NiMh battery pack that will scoot you along at 20+ mph for about 20 miles, and the high end model, with an 800 watt motor and Li-Ion battery, will go 30+ with a little pedaling for almost 60 miles!

The Motorized Bottom Bracket® (MBB) is a patented design that keeps the mechanicals of the bike as simple as can be, allowing the use of standard bicycle equipment to get variable gear ratios for different terrain, which is something you can’t do with most e-bikes. The motor is available with output levels that vary from 400 to 850 watts, depending on which model you pick. The aluminum monocoque frame is unique, providing protection for all the electronics, and making for a stiff yet lightweight bike.

All in all, a very slick looking bike that has the potential to become a good alternative mode of transportation for a lot of people. The biggest obstacle of course is the price — $5,000 for the base model, up to $13,000(!) for the limited production OB-1 custom model. I guess bleeding-edge technology usually comes with a high entry fee. I doubt I’ll be able to talk the CFO at my house into spending that much money on an e-bike any time soon… But here’s to hoping that volume, economies of scale and competition will help to bring the entry price down out of the stratosphere. Soon.

And not just to Mac (and Linux) users. Mini seems to think so too.

One of the pages on the miniusa.com site will load a Flash animation showing a car trying to parallel park (link). When the driver finds there isn’t enough room (and bashes the bumper of the truck behind him) he lets out a string of curse words — or rather characters — that includes the Windows logo.

Now that’s funny!

via Jalopnik

I need a new phone. I have had a Sanyo Katana for over a year, and I absolutely love it.

Sadly, however, it’s developed two characteristics which are undesirable in a phone:

1. Sometimes, it just fails to ring
2. Sometimes, it just shuts off

Additionally, the outer screen is broken. To find out who is calling, I have to answer. Given that I get a lot of sales reps who call me, this is a problem. Screening calls is not always rude.

I am holding out for a Android-powered phone. I really want one. They announced the other day that they’re still on track for Q4 2008 (though many manufacturers have pushed back their specific models back to 2009), which makes me think I should hold out, but how realistic does this seem to everyone?

Who here thinks Android phones will ship in Q4? Or should I just bite the bullet and buy the new Samsung Instinct, which I played with the other day and by which I was overwhelmed by its sheer awesomeness?

Update: Before you recommend an iPhone — we can’t get them here. Sioux Falls does not have AT&T service, thus no iPhone. There are all sorts of rumors that if you talk to “some guy” somewhere he can exploit some loophole and get you one, but, to date, I have never seen an iPhone in Sioux Falls.

Saudis get serious on oil prices: Viewed objectively, this is awful. The Saudi’s are apparently seeing what happens when gas gets expensive — we get more responsible and develop more efficient technology — and are terrified of it.

The Saudis are widely believed to be concerned that escalating oil prices - crude hovered around $134 a barrel Thursday, nearly double what it cost a year ago - will cause a permanent drop in demand as consumers get more efficient or, worse, the global economy slows.

”[..] a permanent drop in demand.” That’s great for us. Horrific for them. They simply have to keep us addicted to oil. Put another way, they are not doing this to help us.

I’ve said before that the Kingdom’s biggest fear is a country full of Priuses (Prius animosity of late nonwithstanding). They’re trying to stamp that out by keeping us sucking down cheap oil.

If I convince my employer to replace my cube with one of these, I believe I become an honorary Dark Lord of the Sith.

via neatorama

I witnessed something this afternoon that made me a little angry, and I need some help in knowing what to do about it.

I stopped to fill up my tank on my way back to work after lunch ($3.85 this afternoon, up 5 cents from yesterday, and an average of about 26mpg on this tank; not bad for a 13 year old Suzuki Sidekick). I drove into the station behind a city-owned street maintenance truck, and while I was filling up (and checking the oil & washing my windows) the truck sat there in the parking lot, idling. A 2 1/2 ton diesel-engined truck, idling for at least five minutes.

Living in the upper midwest, I know that there are times when it’s not a good idea to start & stop a diesel engine; usually in the dead of winter when the cold temps make restarting a diesel engine difficult (years ago I worked with a guy who drove an old Mercedes diesel, and he let the thing run 24 hours a day from mid-November through March every year so that a. he wouldn’t have trouble starting it in the cold, and b. so he’d have a nice warm vehicle on those cold cold mornings.)

But the temperature today is in the low 70’s and the sun is shining. So I’m left wondering; is there a compelling reason for this guy to have left his engine running during a five minute snack stop? Or is this an example of fraud/waste/abuse in our fine city’s workforce that warrants a letter/email of complaint to the street department?

I would’ve said something to the guy at the time — after all, he is working for me — but… Can anyone help me out here?

Toyota Prius vs Jeep Patriot: the great MPG test: Apparently the onboard computer in the Prius lies through its teeth. These folks did a test between a Prius and a Jeep Patriot. At the end, the Prius claimed 57 mpg. Then they checked actual fuel levels to see how much had been used:

The result was astonishing: both cars had used nearly identical amounts of fuel. The Jeep had averaged 38.9 mpg - only 3.1 mpg less than its computer had recorded. However, the computer of the Prius appeared to be telling whoppers: it actually achieved just 39.9 mpg - a massive 17.1 mpg less than it had claimed.

I maintain that the Prius is something of a crock. Though it did get us all thinking green, this thing isn’t close to as wonderful as they all claim.

Update: This article claims that this test is flawed. Due to the type of fuel tank used by the Prius, the method they used to calculate real-world mileage is invalid, the article claims.

Algae: The Key To Energy Independence?: Now, this is interesting. I have read before that algae is a crazy-good way to make biodiesel. Well, it seems a lab in Minnesota has done it.

“We started with a clear liquid mixture on this side, we pumped it across this reactor filled with zirconia and we got a yellow liquid on the other end,” Krohn explained.

“So we knew we’d done something,” McNeff said. “We didn’t know what it was, but we had the instrumentation to take a look at it and compare it to biodiesel. And it matched perfectly.”

[…] There’s no electricity, the process is perfectly clean and there’s no waste. Anything that doesn’t get turned into oil is reused through the process.

Another pipe-dream, you say? Apparently not. They’ll be generating fuel before the end of the year.

A new plant is being built in Isanti, Minn. Using the Mcgyan process, it will be up and running by October, producing 3 million gallons of diesel per year.