Steven Leckart

Deconstructed Moulton Folding Bicycle

Joel Johnson

Solar Gard car window film blocks sunlight, not Wi-Fi

According to a company selling the solution, traditional window film doesn't just block visible and UV rays from the sun, but also catches the 2.4GHz radio waves that carry data in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Solar Gard, a new window film from Bekaert, forgoes the typical metalized particles for a—ahem—"nanotech" formula that provides up to SPF 285 protection from the nasty spectrums, but lets your data pass through unmolested.

If you're interested (and want to get some real-world pricing), you can find an installer who uses Solar Gard at the product website.

Steven Leckart

Buy Me A Shuttle-Bike Kit, Please

I don't speak Italian, so I don't know what these folks are saying. But I'm not certain that really matters. These kits, which fit in backpack, can be used to create a pedal-powered boat out of a bicycle. It comes with a rudder and two inflatable floaties you pump up &mdash get this &mdash via pedaling. The Shuttle-Bike technology dates back to 1992 and has been available for purchase since at least 2003, and yet I've never seen one in person, even in San Francisco.

I want one.

Rob Beschizza

Mundane Gadget Spam of the Day: Turbines

From: Akua Barnard Date: 2009/6/26 Subject: Turbines for your meat jet

Action all night, action with no limits - this is what you and your girl can get.

Rob Beschizza

Japanese Taxi Meter

Yours for $33 at GS4U.

Lisa Katayama

Review: Big Agnes tarp for car camping

Car camping is great for old people, kids, and folks with a lot of gear that can't be carried into the backcountry. It's also ideal if you're lazy and just want to lounge at a camp site, drink beer, and smoke weed. Lounging, though, can be greatly compromised by forces of nature, like mosquitoes, scorching heat, dust, and rain. Big Agnes' Twin Butte Car Tarp solves these problems by creating a giant shady, bug-proof space next to your vehicle. Setup is similar to a tent, although the parts here are significantly heavier and more complex &mdash it took us about fifteen minutes to figure out what poles went where and to connect them together, kinda like building IKEA furniture without the funny diagrams. Once it went up, though, we were all like, whoa, that's pretty nice.

The tarp is supposedly completely waterproof and so are its seams &mdash it didn't rain while we were there, so we didn't really get to test this claim. We did, however, use its multiple loops and poles to hang our wet clothes and dog leashes after our excursion to the lake. The bug screen is sold separately, but definitely worth having if you're going to Yosemite in the summer or to Burning Man &mdash it staves off mosquitoes and dust really well. Also, since it's attached to the side of your car, you can go in and out of the car through the tarp, too. The tarp covers an 84 square foot space, which is big enough for about half a dozen adults to hang out under.

Product page [Big Agnes]

This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Camping.

Rob Beschizza

Homemade Prototype Electric Solar Car Vehicle

Pharaoh is pleased. [Dreamcar123 via RGS]

Joel Johnson

Video: Top Gear Series 13 is back on June 21st

Joel Johnson

We're going to need a bigger boat

How do you get a boat from Florida to the Mediterranean? Easy—just put it on another boat. The Yacht Express is a semi-submersible float-on/float-off yacht carrier, now carrying 18 yachts on its first trans-Atlantic voyage. At 209-meters long, it's the largest yacht transport in the world. (And the only that's purpose built just for yachts.)

Rob Beschizza

Rip Ride Rockit Rollercoaster

In Orlando, Universal Studios is building what it describes as the world's most high-tech rollercoaster, the Rip Ride Rockit. [Universal Studios]

It'll feature "first-ever manuevers" and a "guest interface panel," with which riders select music to tear along to, and can set up production-quality video recordings of their presumably terrified faces.

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: Miles O'Brien on Technology Questions in The Air France Disaster

(Download MP4)

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, space/aviation/tech reporter Miles O'Brien speaks with me about the role of technology in the recent Air France crash.

He answers a number of questions posed here on Boing Boing by commenters on our previous episodes: how "black boxes" work, why they're not built to float, whether they would be more effective if they streamed data constantly while in use, and whether better training in the "lower-tech" aspects of piloting could have helped.

Since we taped this two-way conversation on Friday, recovery teams off the coast of Brazil have recovered some 16 bodies, and wreckage from the crash.

Here's a snip from his latest blog post about the disaster, over at True Slant.

The Air France 447 mystery may never be solved beyond a shadow of doubt, but there are some telling, tragic clues to consider based on what we know about the airplane systems and the extreme weather and aerodynamic conditions it encountered before it went down a week ago.

First, a bit of aerodynamics: The doomed Airbus A-330-200 was flying ever so close to its maximum altitude - in a zone pilots call the "Coffin Corner". It refers to the edge of so-called "flight envelope" of an aircraft. At this altitude, the air is much thinner and that significantly narrows the swath of speed at which the airplane can safely operate.

If you're interested in this story -- or in aviation and space news in general -- you really should also follow Miles on Twitter to see his thought-stream unfold in real time.

Sponsor shout-out

Joel Johnson

"Super Repo Men" steal jets back from the insolvent rich

Marc Weingarten:

Nick Popovich is a repo man, but not the kind that spirits away Hyundais from suburban driveways. Popovich is a super repo man, one of a handful of specialists who get the call when a bank wants back its Gulfstream II jet from, say, a small army of neo-Nazi freaks.

For the past three decades, Popovich has been one of a secret tribe of big game hunters who specialize in stealing jets from the jungle hideouts of corrupt landowners in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil and swiping go-fast boats from Wall Street titans in Miami and East Hampton. Super repos have been known to hire swat teams, hijack supertankers and fly off with eastern bloc military helicopters. For a cut of the overall value, they'll repossess anything.

Xeni Jardin

Monkeylectric's "Full Color Persistence of Vision" Bike Wheel Video Display

Remember Star Simpson? We do (previous BB post here), and we think she's pretty great. Star emailed today and said,

I've been working at MonkeyLectric (the POV bike wheel makers, boingboing covered their very first stuff), and just finished this video of the latest wheel display at MonkeyLectric.

Joel Johnson

Video: The Killdozer of Granby, Colorado

Five years ago today, Marvin Heemeyer drove an armored bulldozer through the town of Granby, Colorado, causing $7 million worth of damage before shooting himself rather than giving up to the police.

"Happy birthday! I hope you're pushing clouds in heaven." said YouTube commenter Ditch2012.

Killdozer Rides Again! from Kevin Henry on Vimeo.

Kevin Henry, hometown boy from Granby, made this tribute video, which features then-and-now images of destroyed buildings, as well as an epic mini-Killdozer vs. Roomba battle.

Joel Johnson

What Reporters Write About Air Disasters When They Have No Idea

Choire Sicha:

Sometimes reporters write things that don't even make any sense! Here is Time, recounting an incident on Qantas Flight 72 last year:

The plane abruptly entered a smooth 650-ft. dive (which the crew sensed was not being caused by turbulence) [ED NOTE: HUH? THEY SENSED THAT?] that sent dozens of people smashing into the airplane's luggage bins and ceiling.... After seemingly an eternity -- in reality, the nosedive lasted 20 very long seconds -- the flight crew wrested control of the plane from its wayward computer....

Ha, WRESTED! I think that means they hit the OFF BUTTON, but nice job making the autopilot sound like the HAL-9000.

Joel Johnson

U.S. Air Force Vapor Cars

Joel Johnson

Video: RX-7 loses all four wheels

According to Jalopnik, this is a classic video, but I haven't seen it, just like I haven't seen a functional RX-7 in years. (And the RX-8 just reminds me how pretty the RX-7 was.)

Xeni Jardin

BB Video: "Tank Tour" - One of World's Largest Collections of Historic Military Technology

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube )

In today's edition of Boing Boing Video, guest-host Todd Lappin explores a massive collection of historical military vehicles tanks collected by an eccentric Silicon Valley multimillionaire. The recently-departed Jacques Littlefield amassed one of the world's largest and most significant collections of this type, and his collection is now overseen by the nonprofit Military Vehicle Technology Foundation. Snip from their description:

Our goal is to acquire, restore, and interpret the historical significance of 20th and 21st century military vehicles. Domestic and foreign combat vehicles such as tanks, armored cars, self-propelled artillery, and other technically interesting mobile platforms are the focus of the collection. We also maintain an extensive technical library that describes many vehicles down to the part level. Aside from the vehicles, there are towed artillery, antitank, and antiaircraft guns. Military support equipment, inert ordnance, and accessories round out the collection.

The "tank tour" BBV shot for this episode was organized by BB pal Karen Marcelo and Dorkbot SF. They put on interesting events like this every month! Karen says,

June, 2009 is the 7 year anniversary of dorkbotSF. We have two cool events coming up, hope the some of the Boing Boing readers will come out for them! First one is jun 3 - at Greg Leyh's lightning lab. A live demo of scaled-down model of greg's 12-story Tesla coils, debut of Marc Powell's new software, and cool light printer from Jonathan Foote.

Then Jon Sarriugarte is hosting a big bash on the 20th! snail car, muffin cars, tesla roadster makers, fireworks, omega recoil's tesla coils, blacksmithing, etc. and he said more surprises he doesnt want to mention in advance!

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to shooter-producer extraordinaire Eddie Codel and to our host Todd Lappin)

Rob Beschizza

QWERTY bike grips

When I was a small child, I really liked BMX Bandits. Later, I liked computers. If only I'd had these to segue my interests as a nipper. [Product Page via Wired and Art of Trackstand]

Joel Johnson

Ural-T, entry-level Russian sidecar motorcycle

Ural has a new model on North American shores, the "Ural-T" (Model IMZ-8.1037), with the air-cooled four-stroke flat twin cylinder engine making 40HP you've come to know and tolerate. But of course it retains Ural's trademark feature, those wonderful sidecars. It's $10k to start, but you'll probably want to add a few things like a sidecar windscreen and a spare tire.

It'll be in dealerships this June. I will almost certainly be taking one for a ride. Basem Wasef already did, and found it "arguably one of the most entertaining ways to haul a passenger along the open road."

Joel Johnson

The Safety Seat

Tom Scocca:

Safety is about making tradeoffs. Not dying on the road is a very good thing to trade for--so good, nobody feels any need to make improvements to the improvements. It's churlish to complain about it. Your car is a little metal death box, and whatever joy you may find on the road is strictly a function of your insane denial of that truth. The safety gear gives you another layer of denial to work with: I am doing all this in the most prudent, least reckless way that automotive engineers have yet discovered. Got it, Death?

Lisa Katayama

The longest arch bridge in the world will be in Dubai

Fxfowle, the NY architecture firm that built the NY Times Building and the Conde Nast Building, is now working on what will be the longest arch bridge in the world in Dubai. When &mdash and if &mdash completed in 2012, it will be a mile long, 670 feet tall, and have 12 lanes of traffic with train tracks dividing them in the middle. [via io9]

Joel Johnson

The Bridge-Building Centipede Truck

Alistair writes:

i have no more information on this truck other than it looks awesome. I'm going to go ahead and assume this will build bridges at the rate of about 1 mile an hour in a Sim City style.

Joel Johnson

Why is in-car Bluetooth and iPod/audio support still a "premium"?

In his review of the Hyundai Genesis Coupe, Bill Howard makes a good point about in-car Bluetooth and iPod hookups:

Even if you don't buy one, raise a glass to toast Hyundai for forcing all the automakers to understand Bluetooth and a music adapter should be on every car. (Once an automaker turns it into an option, the connector costs more than your iPod or cellphone.) I had no problem hooking a couple phones to the car via Bluetooth, and connections were equally idiot-proof for an iPod, a music key, and a hard drive holding music. Unlike Ford's Sync, which uses the stupid term "user device," when you hook up an iPod, the display says "iPod." Hyundai makes it easier to see your music options because every car gets an in-dash LCD, even if it's monochrome on cars without navigation systems. That said, other automakers do a better job presenting the information on an LCD display.

Joel Johnson

Mechaphilia: Whatever revs your engine

Edward Smith is a mechaphiliac who claims to have had sex with 1,000 cars. He's currently dating a VW Bug named "Vanilla". [Telegraph via Jalopnik]

Joel Johnson

Video: Toy 2002 roundie bests evil Mercedes

This ad for Turkish die-cast retailer Dekalo is cute on its own, but especially so when they reveal how it was made. [via Jalopnik]

Joel Johnson

Google Street View Tricycle

Rob Beschizza

Clarkson: Honda Hybrid is "Biblically terrible"

Jeremy Clarkson takes Honda's Insight Hybrid for a spin around the block, and finds himself wishing it was a spin into a tree:

It's terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It's the first car I've ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn't have to drive it any more. ... since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota's Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief. There's more.

All for 60 mpg, and 60mpg for all!

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid [Times]

Steven Leckart

Space is the place

Joel Johnson

Why Ford's side airbags can't be set off by an errant shopping cart

Ben Wojdyla:

Ford decided to start using pressure wave detection. In this method, the sensor is placed inside the door on the outer skin of the car, it monitors the ambient air pressure in the door cavity and sends a signal to the crash computer. The crash computer interprets the data every few miliseconds, confirming it with what the other sensors scattered around the car tell it. What's the advantage? Fidelity. The signal coming from the pressure sensor has a much higher resolution than an accelerometer, which means it can tell the difference between a car hitting your door and say a shopping cart loaded with 110 lbs, hitting the door at 10 MPH. But before it can do that, engineers have to calibrate it to be able to tell the difference. This is where the shopping cart test comes in.