Case in point.

In our research for ever more interesting facts and factoids to keep techRivet's vast readership entertained we dug up this little gem.

»»»

Pretty cool huh.  Apparently the graphic is from Esquire magazine from a few years ago.

This is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons.

1. I've done something similar to this as a child.  My friends and I used to catch bumble bees and tie them to a string and go around with them flying on a leash.  It's pretty cool.
   
2. At one point we had a pet spider.  Not one of the fancy dancy store bought models but one like this: Well she lived for more than two years in a little terrerium and we fed her spiders that we had at first frozen and then dropped inside her cage where they woke up and were eaten.  It was gruesome and my daughter, the bug collector, thought it was awesome.
   
3. Oh I've also taught my nephews how to catch and "fly" your own bees.

So I wanted to see if there was a more definitive site out there regarding how to freeze and fly your own flies or bees.

Low and behold there is:
Flypower - These guys want to sell you a kit.

...

I have some extra space down here...

...

How ya doin?  <whistle>

Ok...good to see you to...um...talk to you later.

I've been lethargically trying to purchase a Wii for months now, without success. Apparently you have to be quite serious about hunting one down because they're sell out everywhere that they crop up. Amazon.com reported that when they had them in stock, they were selling 17 of them a second! If the technology in this clip starts to make it mainstream, we're going to continue to be constrained on these puppies. The clarity of the description of the technology, as well as the demonstration itself, is first rate.

Make sure to check out Johnny Lee's other Wiimote projects.

You know it.

So I previously pointed to this: [The Best Rube Goldberg Machine] as the best Rube Goldberg machine.  That may be...for amateurs, but this commercial by Guiness is awesome.

Too bad it is not a TRUE Rube Goldberg machine.  There were many sequences spliced together.

The advert took a week to film, with some of the sequences having to be reshot up to 15 times.

New Guiness Advert: Giant domino village

Still it's a fun commercial.

When?  I don't know but it is remarkable how far the scientists and researchers and engineers have come in just a few short years.

DARPA held the first Grand Challenge in 2004.  An off-road course to challenge a fully autonomous robotic car.  Not one car finished.  Most failed within the first few miles.

DARPA ran the same challenge a year later.  5 cars finished and most of the rest of the field improved on previous results.

This year DARPA ran a new challenge, the Urban challenge.  Designed to replicate an Urban experience.  It was won by the team from Carnegie Mellon University.

Tether said Tartan's vehicle averaged about 14 miles per hour throughout the course, which covered about 55 miles. Stanford averaged about 13 miles per hour, and Virginia Tech averaged a bit less than that. In response to a question from the press, Tether said that MIT came in fourth place.

Remarkable. Carnegie Takes First in DARPA's Urban Challenge.

I had read about efforts to automate car driving years ago.  Typically it involved very expensive retrofits to our existing roads to provide the guidance to the cars.  That was before the computational power we have now was available and before GPS was so widespread.

The computing power now takes up the entire back of a Passat station wagon.  The sensors are ungainly attachments bolted on the roof.  This will change, this will shrink.  It will become ubiquitous and invisible and accepted and expected.

You will be able to get in your car, type in your location to Google Maps.  turn your seat around and surf the web or perhaps chat with a co-passenger.  Because there won't be a driver anymore.  Why would you want to drive a car?  That's so 2007?

I've got a soft-spot for Lego contraptions.  This one is the best I've seen. 

Apparently the internet story is that this was done by some German high school students.  There appears to be a geek gap between us and the Germans.  Can we get a congressional committee to study the impact of this gap?

Some people really need to get a life.

So there are a tonne of Rube Goldberg machine videos out on the web, some quite good some mediocre.  The most famous one is the Honda commercial where every part of the car becomes part of the contraption. 

This one is exemplary.  It may not be the best...but it is dang close.

From here: [Ontario Science Center]

Ok so it's only for three people, but Bigelow Aerospace is committed to having their Sundancer module launched before 2010.

This is private enterprise at its best.  Let's review.

Paul Allen is involved with Space Ship One / Scaled composites.
Richard Branson also.
...and Northrop Grumman buys the company.

Elon Musk is working hard with SpaceX on the Falcon project.  Successfully launching a Falcon earlier this year.  Impressive in most accounts.  He has revenue coming in from scheduled launches of satellites (whether that covers his costs is unlikely).

And now we have the ambitious plan of Bigelow Aerospace.  This is an unprecedented influx of private industry into the space exploration realm.

The design of the Bigelow modules are very innovative...they inflate once in space.  As long as the interior is sufficiently safe, this is a very cool evolution.  Space stations cubic interior space would no longer be limited by the carrying volume of the launch spacecraft. 

If it is scalable, it would make vastly bigger constructs possible in space.

More info: [cosmic blog ]

You tell me...This is WAY cooler than suicide doors, butterfly doors, canvas doors and any other car door I've seen.  But don't you take one look at it and think: Man there's a lot of things that could break with that.

Then I start thinking about safety.

Then about the side window, I bet you'd break a few of those.

But it is dang cool.

This?  The French record setting TGV

or this...When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts.

A typewriter keyboard mod?  How many of you kiddies know what a typewriter is?  I guess with this mod you wouldn't have to worry about the key arms getting tangled.

Some guy named Jake creates really neat things that are inspired by the concept of steampunk. Allright with me, keep at it Jake, this is pretty flippin' cool.

Anyways head over to the steampunk workshop and check it out.  It was certainly a labor of love.

I wonder what it's like to type on it?