Self Cleaning Fishtank That Grows Food

Here's an interesting project currently on Kickstarter.com. It is a small aquarium where the fish waste products are used as fertilizer by the plants above. With farmland disappearing, an approach such as this could make a real difference in the availability of quality food.

If you want to invest in this, you have to hurry: there's only two weeks left to go and it's already fully funded. Here's video of the project.

Singapore's Super Solar Trees

In Singapore, a forest of mechanical solar-powered tree structures, Supertree Grove, stands 82 to 164 feet above the city, part of a redevelopment project called 'Gardens by the Bay'.

The video below shows the light and sound show presented every evening featuring the trees.

Travel Photo of the Week

Kusma-Gyadi Bridge, Nepal

Vending Machine For Books

I heard about this on NPR. The Monkey's Paw, a eccentric Toronto bookstore, had hundreds of unwanted, unloved books and decided that people needed to broaden their reading to include books they'd never buy under normal circumstances. That's when Craig Small, creative director at Toronto post-production, design and animation studio flew into action and designed and built the Biblio-Mat, a book vending machine.

Pop in two bucks and after some grinding and whirring, an old telephone bell rings and out comes a book. Here's a video of the machine in action.

Twitter Shows Language Evolves In Cities

I've always been fascinated with the evolution of language. Now comes a new study that points to cities as a hotbed of language creation and it seems that Twitter is being used as a measurement. From the article in New Scientist.....

"Jacob Eisenstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and colleagues examined 30 million tweets sent from US locations between December 2009 and May 2011. Several new terms spread during this period, including "bruh", an alternative spelling of "bro" or "brother", which first arose in a few south-east cities before eventually hopping to parts of California."

The article goes on to give other examples and states that African Americans account for a great deal of the word creation. Again, from the article.....

"Researchers have tracked the diffusion of words like "cool" and "uptight" from black communities to mainstream use in the past. "We have thousands of examples," says Eisenstein. Their data cannot shed light on why the flow is in this direction, but he notes that language is just one cultural area in which traditions have spread outwards from African American communities."

Hovering Moon Base

From New Scientist comes word that President Obama is set to back a hovering spaceport for the dark side of the moon. It would "hover" at the Lagrange Point about 37,000 from the moon's surface and would be essential for missions to Mars or the asteroid belt.

When asked about this new plan, agency spokesperson Rachel Kraft said in an email to New Scientist, "NASA is executing the President's ambitious space exploration plan that includes missions around the moon, to an asteroid and eventually to Mars. There are a variety of routes and options being discussed to help build the knowledge and capabilities to get there, and other options may be considered as we look for ways to buy down risk."

Fun Time! Wooden Muppet Character Toys!

This is from Laughing Squid. Click here to see them all.

Star Trek's Universal Translator Is Here

The tech inspired by Star Trek just keeps on coming! This is from Time magazine's tech page. Microsoft has developed a working universal translator. I won't bore you with details, but I will include a video. Go to about 6:20 to see it in action.

More Star Trek Tech: A Tricorder!

There is an X-prize for building the first Star Trek inspired "tricorder" and many corporations are vying to win it, but it looks like a group of college and high school students have gotten there first.

The students developed their project during a summer internship program at the Wright Brothers Institute and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

From the Scientific American article:

"The device itself looks like a clear brick filled with computer parts and batteries. It is built around an open-source computing platform called an Arduino microcontroller and transmits data via Bluetooth. An environmental sensing pod connects to the controller and collects measurements on variables like temperature, wind speed and radiation levels. Users can view data collection in real time via Google maps or an interactive graph and monitor changes and search for patterns."

I'm still waiting for my transporter.

Travel Photo of the Week

Grand Canyon

Harry Potter Tech! Invisibility Cloak!

This in from ExtremeTech.com. Scientists at Duke University have created the first real, functioning invisibility cloak. Now come the caveats: 1. It only works with microwave radiation 2. It only provides invisibilty from one direction.

Now that might not seen very functional to you, but what this really means is that eventually this research will yield the "real deal," a cloak that works for visible light and from all directions.

I don't think we'll get flying brooms any time soon, but then again, in this age of wonders, who knows?

A Brain For Rhythm

Exploring the brain on rhythm with University of California neuroscientist, Adam Gazzale and The Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart.

Freshwater Fish Are Dying At Alarming Rates

This comes from Scientific American. 57 species and subspecies of freshwater fish have gone extinct in the last hundred years. That number could go up to 86 by 2050.

Many of these fish were from the Great Lakes region and between pollution, overfishing and the introduction of non-native species, the extinct species' populations collapsed. Freshwater fish are especially vulnerable as they depend upon smaller bodies of water.

Isn't it really time to start thinking about how we affect our living space?

Fun Time! Athelete Driven Rube Goldberg Machine!

Think You’re Being Followed? How To Tell and Get Away.

And since we're on a roll about being paranoid, here's another tip from Lifehacker.com. Being followed? Want to be sure? Want to shake the tail?

Here is everything you need to do it. Staying aware of your surroundings. Looking for vehicles in your neighborhood that you've never seen before. Changing your behavior and any patterns regularly.

Here's a short video about being followed. Aren't you glad you're not a spy?

How To Commit Internet Suicide And Disappear From The Web

Have you ever wanted to go to ground and get out of the digital age? Well, from Lifehacker.com, here's the way to erase yourself from the internet.

In five not-so-easy steps, you can make yourself, at least your digital self, go away forever. Careful though, it's just so easy to get picked back up by the internet radar. Guess you'll have to stop using computers all together.

Travel Photo of the Week

Aurora Over Budir, Snaefellsnes, Iceland - Wim Denijs

School Of The Future That Time Forgot

At the Mountain School, in Vershire, Vermont, high school juniors, many from elite New England private schools, spend a semester immersed in nature. Until lately, the school has existed without the so-called benefits of modern information technology. There is no high speed internet in the town. Satellite reception is spotty and weather dependent. Even cell phones have little reception.

With fiber optic cable being introduced this fall, that is about to change and the school is facing the challenge: "how to regulate the use of smartphones and other devices that serve as a constant distraction for 21st-century teenagers, who are here to engage with the rural setting and with one another."

The schools director has been asked to ban these intrusive technologies by many of the students, alumni and faculty. The school has decided to leave the decision to the student body and alumni.

This is the kind of careful and thoughtful way all things should weighed when it comes to our children's education and especially the children themselves should be involved in the process. We want our kids to grow up and be able to make good choices. Perhaps they should be involved from the first day of school.

For more on this, here's the link to the source in the New York Times and a link to the Mountain School itself.

Singapore Builds First Vertical Farm

As more and more people inhabit the Earth, there is less and less arable land for agriculture. For Singapore, a small, crowded country that imports most of its food, increasing the amount of produce grown yearly would be beneficial, so they have developed vertical farming.

Vegetables are grown in multiple troughs, in twenty-seven foot tall, aluminum towers. Although more expensive now, the prices are expected to drop as the farm increases production.

Here's a link to the story on channelnewsasia.com. Here's a video on the farming methods.

A Future Without Potatoes

One of the things we don't talk much about when it comes to our climate changing is the changes our biome will make at the same time. Animals are migrating further north as things warm up. Another thing that we should think about is the changes that will come to agriculture. Many foods that are grown depend on particular environmental conditions to flourish.

Recently the United Nations committee on world food security issued a report on the effects of global warming. The group analyzed the effects of climate change on 22 of the world’s key agricultural staples, as well as three important natural resources in the developing world. While much is still conjecture, the experts agree on one thing: crops may not be able to grow where they had been grown for many generations.

One of the suggestions was that we would perhaps have to give up potatoes and replace them with bananas.

Here is a link to the Time and the BBC articles and the on this.

Fun Time! William Robertson Miniature Tool Chest.

For those really tiny jobs.

Buddhist Monk Rated Happiest Man In The World

Yep, he looks pretty happy to me.

It's one thing to be happy and it's another one entirely to be designated the "happiest man in the world," but it appears that the University of Wisconsin has done the research, developed a means of measuring it and given the title to Tibetan Buddhist monk and molecular geneticist Matthieu Ricard.

Ricard is working to show how meditation can alter the brain and improve one's outlook on life.

"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are."

Here's a link to the NYDaily News article describing the U of W experiment.

Tiny Modern Leaf House

Lloyd's Blog clued me into this beautiful small home and its Canadian builders. It's 20-foot long, with a sofa bed, full kitchen, full bathroom, a dining area and a feeling of luxury in 215 square feet . This baby is also insulated to take the Canadian winter. Cost? About $44,000.

Here's a link to the builders, Leaf House.

Travel Photo of the Week

Chomolungma (Mt. Everest

The Post-Apocalypse Survival Machine Nerd Farm

Awhile back, I featured Marcin Jacubowski and his work to create an open source civilization reboot kit. In case of Apocalypse just open up the kit and build any machine you need from it's modular parts.

In September I did an update on his open source brick press. Well, Bloomberg Businessweek has caught on to his work and has updated us on the progress of his project.

Jacubowski plans to have his entire project completed by 2015 and he publishes progress reports on the Open Source Ecology website.

How To Make A Brick Rocket Stove For $6.08

Here's a great tutorial on making a rocket stove with bricks.

How To Choose A Carribean Vacation

Maracas, Trinidad

With Winter on the way, it's time to think about a vacation and when the cold comes, what better place to vacate than a warm place. My favorite? The Caribbean.

Here's an article from Lonely planet on how to choose the best Caribbean destination. It includes a list of the various islands and their attractions, based on whether they are easy to get to (non-stop flights) or a little more out of the way.

Fun Time! The World’s Strongest Beer? Armageddon!

The Scottish company that brews Armageddon beer describes it as having "lots of flavour. It’s slightly sweet, hoppy, malty and retains much of the yeast present during fermentation."

Ingredients include crystal malt, wheat, flaked oats and of course 100% Scottish spring water. Then they freeze ferment the beer to bring up the alcohol content.

They recommend 35ml doses. It's 65% alcohol.

You can order it here.

Bookalokal - Eat with Locals Worldwide

Lately there have been a bunch of startups that have centered around the idea of leveraging local resources for travelers. Airbnb was one of the early entries into this field.

Bookalokal is all about food. Home-cooked and prepared by folks just like you and I who happen to live all over the world. Currently there are offerings of traditional foods in Zimbabwe and Turkey, an "ever changing global brunch" in Brussels, a classic Parisian lunch (in, of all places, Paris) and even farm-to-table pizza and salad in good old Washington, D.C., plus lots, lots more.

Prices vary, but seem very reasonable to me, especially since you also have a local host to enhance the experience. The best part? You could never get a waiter or waitress to sit at your table all night and give you tidbits about the town your in. Your host can.

You book through the website.

Four Foot Wide House

Now this is what I call a small house. It is three feet wide at its narrowest and five feet wide at its most spacious. Its plans were featured in the Tiny Life blog last year and now it is finished.

The Keret House in Poland is probably one of the most interesting and narrow, adaptations to the problems of limited urban space, but the question remains.....

Could you live here?

Here's some video to help you make up your mind.