Madness. This. Is. MADNESS! Its creator calls this machine the Lego Great Ball Contraption. I don’t know what to call it. Gjhiqjmvcdzz. Askjgsprgnyasdkfnipjreg. Thqruwm—-I’ve no words to describe the awe that I’ve experienced watching this video. It surprised me at every step. I’ve never ever seen any contraption so glorious and crazy. More »
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Sometimes we wonder, what would we have ended up doing if we didn’t spend our time trawling the web for the week’s best alternative tech stories? We could have been paleontologists, novelists, engineers, or if we were really lucky, worked for Google. Instead, here we are bringing you some of the more colorful tech-tales from the last seven days, which we’re really not complaining about. That said though, at least on this occasion, we got to taste a bit of all the above. This is alt-week.
Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt
Alt-week 9.15.12: The ultimate wind machine, Egyptian Lego and the office of our dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Sep 2012 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you’re a computational engineer, there’s no question about what you do with the Raspberry Pi: you make a supercomputer cluster. Researchers at the University of Southampton have followed their instincts and built Iridis-Pi, a tiny 64-node cluster based on the Raspberry Pi’s usual Debian Wheezy distribution and linked through Ethernet. While no one would mistake any one Raspberry Pi for a powerhouse, the sheer number of networked devices gives the design both some computing grunt and 1TB worth of storage in SD cards. Going so small also leads to some truly uncommon rackmounting — team lead Simon Cox and his son James grouped the entire array in two towers of Lego, which likely makes it the most adorable compute cluster you’ll ever see. There’s instructions to help build your own Iridis-Pi at the source link, and the best part is that it won’t require a university-level budget to run. Crafting the exact system you see here costs under £2,500 ($4,026), or less than a grown-up supercomputer’s energy bill.
Filed under: Desktops
Supercomputer built from Raspberry Pi and Lego, managed by humans rather than Minifigs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Don’t you think that it is rather ironic that the Dark Side of the Force still needs some light? I am referring to the $18.99 LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Head Lamp here, where you are able to get light from the Dark Side as this clip-on Vader around your head will make sure that you will no longer stumble through the night, nor will your toe experience any more stubs against the corner of the table.
This must be the first time that Darth Vader brings forth light to those around him, never mind the fact that he is unable to project Force Lightning. The LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Head Lamp is capable of being clipped to different places such as your belt, backpack, or even your pocket protector. As its name suggests, you can also use the Dark Lord of the Sith as an actual head lamp for late night readings of Star Wars novels.
[ LEGO Star Wars Darth Vader Head Lamp copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
As we head towards the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, we’re closely watching both candidates to see what they’re doing for the environment. The Obama administration scored a major win for fuel-efficient cars this week by finalizing new standards that will increase the fuel economy of cars to the equivalent of 54.5 mpg by 2025. But what about the cars that are currently on the road? This week we test drove a 2013 Ford Focus Electric through the streets of San Francisco (we admit, we did get a bit of range anxiety). And in one of the most interesting automotive stories from the past week, the world’s first 3D-printed car — the Areion EV– reached a top speed of 141 kph.
Filed under: Misc, Transportation, Science
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: go-kart made of Lego bricks, TOTO toilet bike and the launch of ‘Willow Glass’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The wonderful world of LEGO, where these Danish-made bricks are able to fit perfectly with one another without missing a beat. Isn’t it a wonder that this can happen, and have you ever given thought to the amount of precision that has gone into the manufacturing process? Well, here we are with yet another LEGO creation that ended up as a Go-Kart, except that you will not find Mario sitting inside one of these puppies, but rather, it will be a human buttock that fits perfectly into the driver’s seat.
The brainchild of Eric Steenstra, this LEGO go-kart is not only lovely to look at, it is also able to run just like a regular go-kart, although I am not quite sure of the safety measures taken should this actually run into a brick wall or something. Right now, it is still a rough work in progress, as there is no steering capability at all, but I am quite sure that Eric is going to get whatever shortcomings fixed in his very own time.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Lego Submarine might not be yellow, but it submerges just fine, Lego Motorized Wheelchair ,
The first-ever full length theatrical Lego movie is still happening! Slated for a release in February 2014, the movie has just landed a star studded cast: Morgan Freeman, who will presumably play a God in Lego world (joke), Elizabeth Banks, Chris Pratt and Will Arnett, who will voice a Lego Batman (not a joke). More »
We’ve seen a few vehicles made out of LEGO before, but those were either tiny, non-functioning or had non-LEGO parts. Which is why Eric Steenstra’s go-kart trumps them all. It’s life-sized, it runs, it can carry a driver and most of all it’s made from nothing but LEGO products.
See for yourself:
It’s obviously a work in progress – note the lack of steering – but even if it never goes faster than that I still think Steenstra deserves all the slowclap.gifs on the Internet. Amazing.
[via Eric Steenstra via MAKE]
The Lego Lord of the Rings sets are pretty neat, but they can’t compete with this gigantic version of Rivendell, the Elven hidden outpost in Middle-earth, home of Elrond’s family. Watch the video and look at the gallery, because it’s awesome. And—more amazingly—it was made by a kid! More »
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