Apr 14 2009 A Grass Wheel For The Concrete Jungle

The Grass Wheel was created by David Gallaugher, Kevin James, and Jacob Jebailey of the Dalhousie School of Architecture, and provides a comfortable, shoe-free mode of eco-transportation in the concrete jungle (grass-sandals guys, just saying). And I think we can all agree, it makes a very powerful statement. One about renewable energy or something. No? Human hamster wheels? A-ha -- space technology and growing grass upside down! Yes, very thought provoking. How do they do that?

Grass Wheel [neatorama]

Thanks to Armando, who is all man and refuses to walk in anything but a broken-glass wheel. Nice, Armando, but I'll stick to my burning coals wheel.

Mar 10 2009 Hamster Jackets Harness Piezoelectricity

Finally. I say it's about damn time we fit our hamsters with little jackets that harness all the energy they're wasting when running incessantly in their little wheels. Also, we're harnessing the power of the wheel too, right?

To harness hamster power, the scientists sewed electricity-generating threads one-fiftieth the width of a human hair into a yellow jacket worn by the hamsters as they ran. A human-sized jacket, capable of powering an iPod, could be ready in as little as three years.

"This can totally be scaled up," said Zhong Lin 'ZL' Wang, who co-authored a paper describing the research in this month's issue of Nano Letters. "This is just the first step. The idea is that we would harvest energy from any body movement, from walking, breathing, from any kind of vibration."

Well shit, let's scale it up to dinosaurs then. I could design a hell of a piezo-electric jacket for a T-Rex. And, while I'm at it, maybe some intimates. I'm thinking something lacy with a few silk accents. Did somebody just say crotchless? I like the way you think!

Hamster jackets harness wheel-running power [msnbc]

Thanks to I Won't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking My Juice on the Geekologie, who can run in his wheel for hours.

Feb 2 2009 Hey, That's Not A Cube!: Rubik's Balls

Remember the guy that took 26 years to solve a Rubik's cube? Yeah, what a loser. Whenever I'm feeling down I pop in Cheers To You! and think of him. Then I get even more depressed and start binge drinking. Anyway, Professor Erno Rubik is dropping another toy bomb on the world -- the Rubik 360. It looks like it could be fun if it was a little bigger and I was hamster.

Basically, players must get a number of colored balls from a clear inner sphere into their matching slots on the outer sphere. You'll do this by shaking the balls through a middle sphere that has only two holes.

Said Professor Rubik himself on the new puzzle that bears his name: "I feel that the 360 is one of the most innovative and exciting puzzles we've developed since the Cube - adopting elements of my original design, challenging the solver to use skill, dexterity and logic."

I don't get it. Of course, I don't get a lot of things anymore. Like your affection. I thought we had something special :,(

Rubik 360 Will Probably Take That One Guy Another 26 Years to Solve [gizmodo]