Hasta La Gadget!

Forget all those Marty-come-lately imitations and knock-offs: If you want McFly’s actual real sneakers, as worn during the filming of Back to the Future 2, then you will soon be able to bid for them at auction. You’ll probably need to engage in some Biff Tannen-style back-in-time betting to afford them, but these are the real deal, people, and they look tacky as hell.

You will remember Marty’s self-lacing Nike sneakers as one of the technical highlights of Robert Zemeckis’ amazing trilogy. The only thing more memorable is the Doc’s automatic dog-feeder, a clock-controlled can-opener which would sling Einstein’s disgusting slops into an overflowing bowl. Well, that and the Flux Capacitor, I guess.

In the year’s since 1985, we have seen imitations, from the McFly 2015 project to the recent flurry of home-made versions which really do lace themselves. Hell, even Nike got in on it and patented the design. From the sales description:

This particular shoe was specifically made for walking around. Original future Nike 2015 self-lacing shoes are extremely rare and one of the most sought-after props from one of the most iconic Sci-Fi movies ever made.

The sneakers won’t come cheap, though. The expected sale price at the Hollywood Memorabilia Auction 42 on November 6th is $12,000 to $15,000. That’s in 2010 dollars. Here’s another picture:

Marty McFly Year 2015 future Nike “Mag” self-lacing shoe worn in Back to the Future II [Profiles in History via OhGizmo!]

See Also:

• Nike Patents Marty McFly's Self-Lacing Sneaker
• Marty McFly's Self-Lacing Sneakers Coming to Stores
• Great Scott! The 2015 McFly Sneakers Are Now (Somewhat) Real …
• Gallery: Hands-On With Nike's Hyperdunk 2015s
• Back to the Future: Hacker Makes Self-Lacing Sneakers

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Ask anyone, and they’ll say the kids today think wristwatches are a thing of the past: smartphones are so much more “now.” WEWOOD’s wooden watches forego touchscreens and brushed aluminum to embrace old-school craftsmanship and style.

Each watch costs about $120, and is made from Ebony, Maple, Guaiaco, or Red Wing Celtis woods. The Italian watchmaker’s design philosophy is “eco-luxury”: no artificial or toxic materials, use of waste and reclaimed woods whenever possible, and every watch purchased pays to plant a new tree.

But mostly, WEWOOD says wearing a wooden watch from connects you not with the present but time itself: “WEWOOD lets us rediscover nature in its beauty, its simplicity and inspired design. It reminds us of a tree’s powerful way of life; rooted, yet reaching… It respects your skin as you respect nature by choosing it. Your WEWOOD Watch breathes the same air that you breathe and may awaken memories from another time and place.” I guess that justifies using an all-wooden band, which otherwise seems like it could be totally obnoxious.

These watches (particularly the ones with the digital faces) remind me of the Futurama episode “Obsoletely Fabulous,” where the robot Bender rebels against technology and replaces his metal body with a wooden one.

You couldn’t really call these watches retro, because even a century ago, we didn’t usually make watches using so much wood. Maybe you could borrow an analogy from grandfather clocks and call them “grandfather watches.” Or even (sigh) “steampunk watches.”

Image via WEWOOD.

WeWood: Watches crafted from reclaimed planks [Cool Hunting]

See Also:

• 'Steampunk' Designs That Actually Do Real Work
• Nerdcore Meets Steampunk in The John Henry Complex
• Why Wristwatches Are Still Worth Watching
• How to Turn the iPod Nano Into a Wristwatch
• MakerBot fabbed open-source wristwatch

There are just two things you need to know about Wired.com’s King of Reviews, Daniel Dumas. First is that his beautiful, floppy-fringed haircuts cost more than your car. Yes, Mr. Leno, even your car. The second is that he has a different Tokyo Flash watch for every day of the year, each as inscrutably unreadable as the next. Even Danny, though, would balk at this watch, which is not only impossible to read, but gives you a headache if you even look at it.

Remember those posters that you put on the back of the bathroom door and stare at for hours, trying to defocus your eyes enough to make them pop into 3D? Well, the new Optical Illusion watch from Tokyo Flash is a bit like that, only it will frazzle your retinas and turn your brain to mush in mere seconds. Here it is up close. Can you tell the time?

Of course not. Go and have a lie-down.

Are you back? Good. It is actually possible to read the time. The background is just a bunch of diagonal lines, all running in the same direction. The digits are arranged in a 2×2 square, and are displayed with diagonal lines that run perpendicular to the background. Should you fail to read these digits, or should you just want to find out the time without giving yourself an epileptic episode, press a button on the side and the background is replaced with plain green.

The watch is currently on the Tokyo Flash blog, and the company is soliciting votes to decide whether to make it. If you care about the future of our world, about the lives of our children, then for all that is holy please visit and vote “no”. I beg you.

Optical Illusion LED Watch Design [Tokyo Flash via the Giz]

See Also:

• Tokyo Flash E-Ink Watch
• TokyoFlash “Infection” Watch Attracts/ Repels The Ladies
• Another Indecipherable Watch From Tokyo Flash
• The Offspring of a Vile Union Betwixt TokyoFlash and the Slap …

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Part of the problem with the steampunk aesthetic is that it’s a mish-mash of at least a half-dozen eras and styles, and as a result these pseudo-Victorian mods have little substance.

The real steam-engine Victorians were industrialists and colonialists. They were all about power. Gears, pulleys, and exposed wood-grain were all functional. These guys didn’t hide those things away behind a filagreed veneer because they liked the swagger. But most self-proclaimed steampunk designs are only swagger — and they’ve usually tacked on the filagree, too.

That’s why Keen Footwear’s Portland shoestore (called Keen Garage) is so refreshing. The retro-industrial look, which refits reclaimed materials, has a stylized look, but performs important functions as well. The annotated images below give you an overview of how their setup works:

The entire shop is only 900 square feet.

If the futurists profiled by our Charlie Sorrel are right, and interior design will be a driven by the need to maximize the utility of increasingly dwindling space, we would do well to learn some lessons from the past. After the jump, check out some more historical space-maximizing design technology.

First, though, another dig at contemporary steampunk-as-style.

Kate Beaton writes and draws a comic-historical cartoon called “Hark! A Vagrant”. My favorite strip is probably “Brunel Is Tired of These Time Traveling Assholes.” In it, the legendary inventor meets a guy straight out of faux-Victorian sci-fi who’s proud of his gear:

Time-Traveller: “Isambard Kingdom Brunel! Wow! Check out my awesome steampunk goggles.”
Brunel (bored): “What do they do?”
Time-Traveller (proudly pointing at his head): “Check it. Gears.”
Brunel (fists clenched): “Tell me they do SOMEthing.”
Time-Traveller (proudly pointing at his feet): “I put a shitload of cogs and watches on my boot.”

Here are some space-saving desks that that builder of railways and steamships would be proud of.

Keen Garage: Upcycled design mixes steampunk and outdoor footwear for a new Portland concept shop [Cool Hunting]

See Also:

• Steampunk culture: an introduction for Guardian readers
• Steam-Driven Dreams: The Wondrously Whimsical World of Steampunk
• Victorian Mod Gives iMac a Woody Look
• Even More Brazilian Steampunk
• Steampunk Robots: Beautiful Toy Nightmares
• NSFW: Make My Vibrator Vintage

The Swimsense from Finis is like a bike computer for swimmers, only instead of counting wheel-revolutions, it counts strokes. The new wrist-mounted computer is waterproof (of course) and contains a motion detector which detects “stroke types, records the number of laps swum, total distance, calories burned, lap time, pace and stroke count.” Phew.

The smart part is that motion-sensor, which uses accelerometers to detect what kind of stroke you are swimming based on your arm movements, differentiating between the stately breaststroke, the blind backstroke, the all-conquering freestyle and the flailing, rescue-me-please-I’m-drowning butterfly. Combining this info with settings for the pool-length and your weight, age and gender, the Swimsense then presents a breakdown of what you have done in an online workout viewer. All you do is upload the data via USB.

My swimming is pretty much limited to splashing from the li-lo to the pool-bar, but the more sporting mermaids and mermen out there can add this to their Christmas list: the Swimsense will be $200 when it launches for the 2010 holiday season.

New Product: Swimsense [Finis Blog. Thanks, Jennifer!]

Swimsense product page [Finis]

See Also:

• Waterproof MP3 Players Won't Make You Swim Like Phelps
• High-Tech Swimsuits Approved by Olympic Committee Promise to Even …

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.