some hackers at cmu decided to make the better pogo stick. instead of a coil spring, it stores energy in a fiber composite bow.
the bow spring stores 2-5 times as much energy per unit mass, and precludes the sliding friction that results when long coil springs buckle sideways.
there’s a page with photos and movies of people flying on these things. thank deep blue shift for the link.
sure you can do it with linux on a powerbook, with an xp machine, or with a little mini-itx setup, but i figured an ancient 7mhz machine wouldn’t be nearly fast enough to be suitable for an auto mp3 player.
i figured wrong.
here’s a nice retro hack that brings together an amiga 600 and an opel astra. for extra style points, there is a video of the project’s creator playing lotus 3 while driving down the street. those amiga fans can do just about anything.
using debian on a powerbook g3 233mhz (lombard), a kensington auto/ac/air adapter and crystalfontz lcd screen with usb->serial adapter you can a pretty slick (and inexpensive) in car mp3 play for your car. add a wifi card and manage all the music when you pull in to the driveway.
in berlin there are rental bikes that you can a bit of money for, get a code and use the bike to go about your way. of course, something like this is an interesting challenge for people who like to figure stuff out. the hack a bike project replaced the software on the locks allowing a backdoor code so anyone, who knows the code can get some free bike action.
over on tech tv today they had the cast tooling around on a hoverboard made out of a leaf blower, plastic skirt and some plywood. the design is so simple, it’s something that i think we’ll see a lot of iterations of with a lot more tech added and it used in more places.
speaking of…the weblogsinc network has a pretty cool new blog about traveling, today they had geocaching and some other techy travel stuff, check them out too if you plan to travel and want to think of things to hack around with when you get there. i might send some ideas over for messing with stuff in hotels, hehe.
looking for a cheap and hardcore way to cool off that upclocked computer? try a 1979 corolla radiator. man, if this trend picks up, we’ll have a perfect mix of old school car hackers from the 50’s and all the computer modders out there. perhaps mtv might do a “pimp my box” show soon…
here’s another car hack project which has helped me figuring some stuff as far software and hardware goes, pretty slick stuff and doesn’t cost as much as many of the after-market systems out there. and on a side note, this is way way cooler (and better) than the “ipod your bmw” things apple is pimping.
