This is Tech

21st Century Monocycle by Ben Wilson: ”

Are traditional bikes a bit too pedestrian for you? Ben Wilson recently unveiled a sleek monocycle at this year’s XXIst Century Man Exhibition in Tokyo. Wilson’s pedal-powered prototype one-ups those tendentious ‘bi-cycles’ with a single center-seated wheel. The elegant nimbus may not provide for the smoothest ride, but it more than makes up for it via its pure awesome appeal.”

(Via Inhabitat.)

Wired.com is running an interesting set of articles on hacking your brain for maximum effect. One of the topics they cover is a list of potential brain enhancing drugs, some legal, some not. This topic has been getting some attention lately as the tech corollary to doping in sports. Check out an excerpt from the grid below, or the full grid at link # 5 below.

Here is a quick list of the twelve articles and links. Enjoy:

1) Max Your Mind’s Performance by Distracting Yourself;

2) Caffeinate With Care: Small Shots Do a Brain Better Than Big Blasts;

3) Feed Your Mind With Impressive Information;

4) Think Positive, and You Will Get Smarter;

5) Give Your Intellect a Boost - Just Say Yes to Doing the Right Drugs!;

6) How to Juice Your IQ Score;

7 ) Thalamus, Cortex, Amygdala … Pick Apart the Brain;

8 ) Don’t Panic. It Makes You Stupid;

9) Embracing Chaos Could Bring Order to Your Money;

10) Take on Any Map by Getting Visual;

11) Up Your Intelligence by Choosing Your Exercise Wisely;

12) Comprehension Climbs When You Sloooow Dooown.

Disclaimer: I don’t recommend faking an illness to get drugs.

From my extensive research (by way of random conversations at parties), there is a huge untapped market for cold pillows. Maybe I have an unusually hot head, but there is something comforting about cold material against my face that makes me relax and drift to sleep.

The problem with some pillows is that they warm up after a time, and loose that soothing effect. The low tech and unacceptable solution is to flip your pillow throughout the night.

I have probably lost most of you, but those that are still reading know what I am talking about.
As someone who is fanatical about technology, it puzzles me that there is no good commercially available solution to this problem. So, in the interest of furthering the art in this area of science, I present my best ideas for cracking this nut: (more…)

If you negotiate lots of contracts I am sure you are familiar with the guy who thinks it is a great idea to lock the contract down so that it can’t be edited. It is incredibly frustrating when you go to markup and agreement only to find that it has been “Protected.” Fortunatly there is an easy hack that will get you around this frustration and will save you or your assistant from having to retype the agreement. Dependeing on the governing law in your jurisdiction, this may be a violation of the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions, so be sure to only use it on your own documents that you have accidentally locked yourself out of

To unprotect a Word document that has been locked, read on:

(more…)

This guy has rigged up a Mac Mini to the touch screen on his Toyota Prius. Check out his site for a step by step account of the mod with lots of pictures. Video Here

This 3D LED Cube from Seekway products in China is mesmerizing. There have been some similar DIY projects posted on Make and here, but this one make the concept shine. The number of LEDs (16×16) makes a big difference in the effect.

(Via ifolio.)

Purdue University is host to the annual Rube Goldberg Competition:

What is the competition?

Inspired by cartoonist Rube Goldberg, college students nationwide compete to design a machine that uses the most complex process to complete a simple task - put a stamp on an envelope, screw in a light bulb, make a cup of coffee - in 20 or more steps.

This year’s objective: complete a hamburger in no less than 20 steps. Purdue University’s Society of Professional Engineers walked away with the prize, constructing a device that required 156 steps to complete the burger.

(Via Slashdot.)

Check out Wired’s How-To Wiki for instructions on how to load CHDK (the Canon Hackers Developer’s Kit). Turn your cheap digital camera into a super shooter. Example of high speed shutter hack below:

Photo by: Leopard Gecko

(more…)

There are a number of ways to try to circumvent sites that require you to register in order to view content. BugMeNot used to be a good option, but lately it seems that most sites have gotten wise. BeTheBot is a site that makes sites think you are a search engine crawler, which is basically like an all-access pass. They have a succinct description on their website:

Have you ever been googleing something, and you see exactly what you need in the preview, but when you click the link it doesnt show you what you want to see?
This is because the owners of the site are trying to trick you into buying something, or registering. It’s a common tactic on the internet. When Google visits the site, it gives something called a “Header”. This header tells the site who the visitor is. Google’s header is “Googlebot”. The programmers of the site check to see if the header says “Googlebot”, and if it does, it opens up all of its content for only googles eyes.
Now, all we have to do is trick the site’s headers, into thinking that we ARE google. That’s what this site does. See the How to use box to the right for instructions on usage

Last month I posted an article about the best way to store coffee beans for maximum freshness. One of the commenters on that story suggested that storing the unroasted beans and then roasting as needed was in fact the best way to ensure fresh beans for brewing. Yesterday I saw an article on Lifehacker describing how to roast your own coffee on the cheap using an old popcorn popper. Excerpt below:

Roll Your Own Coffee Roaster On-the-Cheap [Clever Uses]: ”

Love the taste of fresh-roasted coffee but don’t feel like shelling out $100+ for your own home roaster? The Cool Tools weblog details how to use an old popcorn popper (the author bought his for $3 at a thrift store) to roast your coffee beans. His method, which works virtually the same way as popping popcorn with the gadget, is simple, and the results look promising. If you’re a coffee connoisseur you may eventually want to go all out and purchase a more expensive roaster, but if you just want to try it out, the popcorn-popper-as-roaster looks effective.

Popcorn Popper as Coffee Roaster [Cool Tools]

(Via Lifehacker.)