Offbeat posts

No, this isn’t a terrorist threat. Atomic Tom, a New York based band was looking for a little exposure, and a train carriage full of commuters is the perfect captive audience. After having their instruments stolen, the boys turned to technology for an impromptu mobile gig. Using their iPhones as instruments, the band rocked out to a small crowd of bewildered travelers. “I saw Atomic Tom perform on the B train today… at first i thought they were going to bomb the train, but then they started playing and i was like ‘i love new york!’ liked them so much, i asked a stranger for the band name.” said Brittany…

While their story is one of bravery and heroism and all that good stuff (I promise I’m being sincere), everyone and their dog is trying to get a piece of the trapped Chilean miners pie, even Big Steve, who has donated to each of the miners ‘a latest iPod [sic]‘, as reported by Reuters. By ‘a latest’, I’m gonna assume a 32-gig Touch, which is pretty rad, just for sitting in a cave for 69 days. Then again, the miners have also been gifted $10000 each, trips around the world, movie deals, and tickets to sporting events, among other things. Steve’s offering seems more like a quick shot to stay in the public consciousness…

Six Slovenian volunteers have been undergoing a bizarre test: being punched in the arm over, and over, and over, and over again by a robot. A researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Borut PovÅ¡e, has somehow coerced six of his colleagues to agree to let an industrial robot repeatedly sock them in the arm, in an effort to discover the threshold of robot power. Honestly, had I known this is the kind of stuff I could be doing with my life, I’d have paid more attention in science class. “Even robots designed to Asimov’s laws can collide with people. We are trying to make sure that when they do, the collision…

Now ‘ears one for the books – a large padded earpiece that attaches directly to your iPhone. You’ll look ear-ily trendy with one of these on your phone, and your delicate ear holes will be saved from wear and tear. Designer Robert Potter created his Earos concept in response to the minimalist approach to headsets by modern phone manufacturers. While this seems a bulky addition to the iPhone, it i true that Apple didn’t give much thought to comfort in their design process. Thanks Robert, this will be a ‘noise’ addition to my mobile experience!…

All I can say is that I definitely paid too much for my Mac Pro. One of the fellas at One Block Off the Grid was having trouble running AfterEffects on his Mac. It was time for a new machine. So, after purchasing 800 bucks worth of parts on Amazon, he decided to assemble them not in a PC case, but in the very box they came in. The result is a laugh-worthy (and ugly as hell (and totally awesome)) assemblage that needs to be basically hotwired just to turn on. I don’t think there’s ever been a machine more worthy of the ‘Hackintosh’ name. High five, guys….

This will be the dumbest thing you’ll read all day: Seems that Brits are using their iPhones to cheat hedge mazes. No, really. Consider the maze at Longleat Safari Park, which is apparently the world’s biggest, boasting two miles of paths and constructed of 16000 seven-foot-high yew trees. On average, a visitor takes about 90 minutes to wander their way out, mumbling frustrated, NSFW epithets under their breath all the while. But apparently, that’s no longer the case. Upon taking a stroll through the maze (I wonder if he does that a lot… I wonder if he gets bored), manager Tim Bentley has noticed…

Coming down the pipe from XKCD is this utterly brilliant map of the state of social networking today. Click the link for the giant one. “Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health,” explains the map. A talking map. “This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there.” Honestly, there’s nothing to say that the map can’t say for itself. “[the map] involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random…

Good afternoon. Have you got boobs? If you’ve answered ‘yes’, you might be a woman, and if you’re reading Techi, you might be a woman interested in technology. There’s every chance I’m wrong on both counts, but for the purposes of this article I’m writing, we’ll assume I’m not. So, being female, ‘The Man’ is not going to stand for the flippant display of your assets (though a man might). You’ve got to hide your nipples somewhere, lest you incur the wrath of your local Indecent Exposure law. But bras suck, right? Yeah, I hear that (said the large, scruffy man with the beard)….

This is bizarrely charming and cute and funny, yet at the same time practical and innovative. Everyone know the inherent danger of electronics and liquids. Cell phones, laptops and hundreds of other expensive devices entrenched in our daily lives are susceptible to fewer and fewer dangers, but liquid is one substance guaranteed to shorten the life of your favorite gadget. There’s much work to be done in the area of making our technology more robust, particularly in this area, but in the meantime, here’s a quirky, relatively low-tech solution. Floppy Legs is a system for raising a device roughly…

Yeah, we landed on the moon forty years ago. Yes, Bruce Willis and his daredevil team of drillers placed a nuclear missile at the center of an asteroid headed towards earth. But space still holds some mystery and romance for us, particularly the geeks. Space is still a long way from being a casual destination, with only 518 people having visited space in all of mankind’s history. So it’s remarkable and exciting to this day when a regular guy is able to reach out and touch space, almost literally. Luke Geissbuhler attached an HD video to a weather balloon and sent it into the air with the hopes that it would…