AAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Made my lunch.
(via dvice)
Tag Archive for 'dvice.com'
Just saw a tasty little tidbit on DVICE about the opening of “Agucadoura, the world’s first wave farm off (the) coast (of Portugal), consisting of three Wave Energy Converters generating a total of 2.25MW.
The elongated metal contraptions bob up and down with the waves, while internal pistons, attached to the sea floor, remain stationary and pump hydraulic fluid. This drives electric generators, whose power is brought ashore by underwater electrical cables. The wave farm is now tapping into enough constant, renewable energy to power 1500 homes.”
- Charlie White @ dvice
Got that? These little dandies wiggle about in the ocean and generate electricity.
More dandies wiggling = more homes powered.
Wave power is so cool. Scalable, carbon-free, and limitless waves make limitless power.
What a wonderful world.
Here’s an earlier SF post: Wave Power Round Up.
Okay, we’re being semi-clever with words, but in the news this week are two very cool inventions.
The first is the news that NTT Docomo, a Japanese tech company, has unveiled plans for a wearable shoe generator, cleverly using human motive power to make energy.
The concept is pretty simple: Strap on the shoes and as you walk, the water-filled soles push liquid past a mini-turbine, producing sweet, sweet robot-sugar. (Has electricity ever been referred to as “robot sugar” before? Can we call dibs on that?)
The current (ha!) Power Shoe produces 1.2 watts of power, or enough to juice up an mp3 player. Docomo wants the commercial version to produce 3 watts, which will be enough to power a cell phone. They hope to have these bad boys on shelves by 2010.
Next is the Play Coalition’s Plant Bot.
This sweet little bot marries a light sensor, a battery, and some motors and makes a robot that walks around your living room, keeping your houseplants in the sunlight, whilst you’re out generating power with your shoes.
It would be really funny to run the Power Shoes into the Plantbot! Then you could spend your days slowly following your plants around the room. Serene!
Actually, yeah. It does sound pretty zen to slowly follow a houseplant-carrying robot around your house while powering it with your footwear.
Ain’t tech grand?!
Such fun.
(saw the Power Shoes on dvice, and the Plantbot on notcot.)
Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
This is pretty extraordinary.
“Magnetic fields are all around us, but they’re usually invisible. Not when British filmmakers Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt get a hold of them. Their film group, called Semiconductor, created “Magnetic Movie,” where they’ve turned audio recordings of magnetic fields into arty animations. This innovative work won them honors as Best Film at Cutting Edge at the British Animation Awards 2008.”
-Charlie White @ dvice.
Saw this over at dvice.com, whose content is excellent. You really should visit.
And here’s Ruth and Joe’s site: semiconductor films
Awesome.
Morning All,
Just saw this at dvice.com
“Developed by the Hirose Fukushima Lab in Japan, the robot was designed to explore the movement mechanics of snakes and how they’re able to move easily with no appendages. Now that they’ve developed a robot that can clearly swim pretty easily in water, it’s not clear what they’ll use it for other than terrifying beachgoers, but I’m sure they’ll come up with something a bit more useful. I hope so at least.”
Hirose Fukushima makes some cool ‘bots.
Intrigued by these pics? We were too.
See more here: Rocket Helicopter@Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana
(Saw this wonderful post @ dvice.com)
Just saw this over @ dvice.com
“If you’re looking for the tallest tower of LEGO in the world, here’s a picture of it right here. This monster was built in the Legoland Windsor theme park in the U.K. of 500,000 LEGO bricks, and stands just shy of 100 feet high. That eclipses the old record of 96.1 feet from August of last year by more than three feet, and has been submitted to the Guinness Book of World Records for authentication.
Notice the stabilizing guy wires, holding the enormous tower of plastic steady as it reaches to the sky. Good thing they had a crane to place the half-millionth piece atop the huge stack. Why all this falderal? Well, if you can believe it, this is the 50th anniversary of LEGO, a half-century ago shoving aside Erector Sets, coonskin caps and Hula Hoops to become one of fave diversions of ersatz builders the world over.”
Like Legos, we humans can do such incredible things when we stick together. Ha!
Thanks to dvice.com for the intel.
Morning All!
Here we are on day two of Steve Leckart’s off the grid challenge.
We wrote him yesterday inquiring as to the progress of his off-grid survival and he replied with a nice note for all the readers of SuperForest!
Here it is:
“Spirits are high! Main panel’s got another hour or so before the sun disappears, and the generator’s kicking away at about 1/2-3/4 full.
So far so golden! I spent the morning rather timid to stay plugged in and online, fearing that the warm solar teat of my main generator wouldn’t have stamina. Man was I wrong. The panel’s offsetting the drainage like a champ. Above and beyond expectations. I’m living in a major city. And for the past 16 hours I haven’t touched the grid once.
Still, I will say that as optimistic and awesome as this is, my carbon footprint is significantly heftier than I’d care to imagine. The packages of gear that have been arriving at my home for the past week come from California but as far as Florida (actually, the UK, if I remember correctly). This is, well, pretty sucky. About as sucky as the fact that virtually every handheld solar charger comes with a bag of phone charger tips. It’s cool you can adapt a variety of different phones (it’d be cooler if cell phone companies agreed on a standard universal plug!). But here’s the thing: I use a Nokia. What am I gonna do with all those other tips!? It bums me out to look at the little baggie of sad, unused tips. Poor, Samsung. Cheer up, Motorolla.
Thus, a SF project occurred to me today!!!
CHALLENGE: acquire a Solio or HYMini charger and spend a lunch hour parked in a crowded outside area (be sure to bring all the tips); now offer to charge every phone you see for 15 minutes each.
Powering up someone else is totally empowering. I may just give this one a go myself.”
-Steve Leckart
Amazing, Steve! That’s a great idea.
It is a bit crazy to think that every cell company has a different charging tip.
(Oh how we wish we could just pull a string to charge our devices!)
Steve will be living off-grid for the remainder of the week, check his posts over at dvice.com.
Steve Off the Grid @ dvice
And thanks for the note!
Love and best wishes,
Team SuperForest
Afternoon All,
Steven Leckart is trying to live “off the grid” for 5 days while simultaneously maintaining his full-time job as an internet columnist.
“It’s early here in San Francisco, but the sun’s shining and there’s not a cloud in the sky. Comforting, since the bulk of power for my laptop will come from the slick 56-inch, 110-watt solar panel pictured above. Sunday, as it turned out, was not a day of rest either for myself or my dog Gus (dude loves lounging in the sun, so I figure I might as well put him to work rocking Solio’s Hybrid 1000 — that’s that thing dangling from his collar — which I’ll be using to juice up my cellphone in a few hours). Sometime yesterday, though, it finally hit me: this experiment is crazy…”
Sounds like a good time.
Steven’s writing regular posts over at dvice.com
Check in with him on the dilly to see how it’s going!
Just saw this over at dvice.com.
“Want to create a bike that runs on thin air? Talk to this guy, former sheepherder and current rocket scientist/inventor Jem Stansfield, who took a couple of air canisters normally used by firefighters for their breathing apparatuses, and lashed them onto a Puch moped. The result? An air-powered bike that spews out cleaner air than it takes in.
The two compressed air cylinders drive a pair of rotary air engines (similar to the one powering the Air Car) that propel the bike to a top speed of 18mph, but it’ll only go about 7 miles until more air is needed. Just a quick fill-up at his local dive shop, he’s ready to go again. Might not be a bad idea if you live close to work. Now it’s time for the oil companies to put a stop to these shenanigans.”
-Charlie White @ dvice.com
We want one. Here’s to hoping he puts the plans online.
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