Hasta La Gadget!

If you find yourself in Japan sometime, you might want to check out the Seven Stars train. It will spoil you from other trains, bullet or otherwise, because this train is elegant style on the outside with a creamy luxury inside.

The train’s is a spacious 226-square meter room with a five-foot panoramic window that gives you a gorgeous view of Kyushu from the back of the train. The cabins all have intricate wood decorations and high paneled ceilings. It is basically the best train you could ever sleep on. For a four-day/three-night trip, this penthouse on wheels goes for an “introductory rate” of $5,750 per person per night, double occupancy. The price is expected to go up to $7,835 per person starting next July.

Photo: Japan Times

There is also a lounge car where passengers can unwind and socialize, while talking about how much money they spent. The train has been open since October 15th, and is so popular that it is booked through through June of next year. All aboard!

[via Dvice via OhGizmo!]

It’s easy to gain weight, but it’s exponentially harder to lose it. As you probably already know by now, crash diets won’t work. What does work is cleaning up your diet and adding more exercise into your lifestyle.

Then, of course, there’s Stink Yourself Slim.

I wouldn’t say it’s revolutionary, but I would say that it’s definitely unusual.

Stink Yourself Slim is basically a stink bomb in a bottle, but you’re not supposed to use it to prank others. Instead, you’re supposed to spritz some and smell it so you’ll lose your appetite. It’s logical: the less food you eat, the more weight you lose. It was created by Alex Fontaine and was inspired by a real-life event when a skunk crashed a buffet and ruined everyone’s appetite.

It’s being advertised as something that curbs emotional eating as it “works on brain areas that control motivation and behavior.” I’m not sure how stinking up the place affects a person’s motivation, but I will agree that it’ll make them want to eat less.

Stink Yourself Slim is available online for £29.99 (~$49 USD).

[via TAXI via FoodBeast via Incredible Things]

I know there are people out there who can solve a Rubik’s Cube in seconds, but I’m not one of them. I eventually could work my way through the puzzle, but it takes me 10 or 15 minutes on a good day. This puzzle, on the other hand, I’m NEVER solving.

What you’re looking at is a fully scrambled version of the Radio Cube 3, a torturous puzzle based on icosahedral geometry. It starts out innocently enough, looking like a Rubik’s Cube with a personality disorder:

But a few twists and turns later, and it’s a brain-scrambling disaster.

This evil puzzle was created by Shapeways contributor Eitan, and is a cubic transformation of a puzzle called Radiolarian 3 by Jason Smith. Radio Cube 3 looks infinitely more difficult to solve in my opinion, but I’m sure somebody out there will figure out a way to solve it quickly. You’ll notice how Eitan only shows how to scramble the cube in the video, and there’s no indication that he knows how to solve it.

If you’d like to bend your mind, you can grab the main parts needed for it for $150(USD) over on Shapeways. Then you’ll need to pick up 20 flat-head M3 screws at least 12mm long, and a set of stickers. And a sledgehammer. And a trash can.

Having grown up in the 80s and being a huge fan of the Transformers toys I can admit to wanting to punch Michael Bay in the face over the horrible Transformers films. Bay and his crew were on the set of the latest installment in the franchise and were filming in the streets of Hong Kong, when Bay and his crew were attacked by four “drugged up punks.”

Bay said of the attack, “The story… being passed around is not all true! Yes, some drugged up guys were being belligerent a—- to my crew for hours in the morning of our first shoot day in Hong Kong. One guy rolled metal carts into some of my actors trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars to not play his loud music or hit us with bricks.”

Apparently, the four assailants were demanding a payment of $12,900 for the “inconvenience” caused by Bay and his crew as they filmed Transformers: Age of Extinction on the streets of Hong Kong. Bay said when he and the crew refused to be extorted the assailants became violent and the police ultimately came in arrested the men.

Bay said, “Every vendor where we shot got paid a fair price for our inconvenience, but he wanted four times that amount. I personally told this man and his friends to forget it we were not going to let him extort us. He didn’t like that answer. So an hour later he came by my crew as we were shooting, carrying a long air conditioner unit. He walked right up to me and tried to smack my face, but I ducked (and) threw the air unit on the floor and pushed him away. That’s when the security jumped on him.”

What’s more interesting to me than a group of people wanting to smash Michael Bay in the face is that vendors in the area where they were shooting made somewhere in the area of $3000 for the inconvenience of the movie filming in the streets outside.

Bay continued, “It took seven big guys to subdue him… He actually bit into one of the guard’s Nike shoes – insane. Thank god it was an Air Max, the bubble (at the front of the shoe) popped, but the toe was saved.”

[via Toronto Sun]

One of the biggest challenges in rolling out a electric vehicle charging system in cities around the world is where to place the chargers and how to wire them into the electric grid. Some interesting wireless electric charging devices are expected to land in New York City in early 2014 from a company called Hevo Power. The coolest part about these wireless charging systems isn’t the fact that they don’t need wires, but rather that they hide in plain sight looking like manhole covers.

Hevo CEO and Founder Jeremy McCool says that the idea to hide his wireless EV charges as manhole covers came to him while walking down the streets of NYC. He said:

I was walking down the street, pondering how wireless charging could be deployed. I was standing at 116th and Broadway, and I was looking down and saw a manhole cover. And thought, that’s the ticket. There are no cords, no hazards. Everything can be underneath the manhole cover.

That realization is where the idea of the company’s wireless charging systems came from. Hevo plans to roll out the charging systems in Washington Square Park in early 2014. The initial wireless chargers will be usable by a pair of Smart ForTwo EVs operated by NYU. The wireless charging technology from Hevo uses resonance charging rather than inductive charging used by other EV charging systems.

Hevo Power says that inductive charging is inefficient, but it’s resonance system uses coils in the vehicle and the charging plate connected with capacitors that resonate a specific frequency. That resonance technology minimizes energy losses, and allows energy to transfer at a faster rate and across a wider gap. The Hevo wireless charging system has three components including the power station that can be bolted to the street or embedded in the pavement. The receiver has to be connected to the EV battery system and a smartphone app is used to help drivers line the vehicle up on the charger to start charging.

Hevo’s current system is classified as a Level 2 charging station providing 220 V and up to 10 kW of energy. The system can produce more than 10 kW of energy depending on the application. Hevo is talking with major companies that operate large vehicle fleets including Pepsi, Walgreens, and City Harvest to potentially use the system for larger fleets of electric vehicles.

[via Wired]