Jason Hibbs of Bourbon Moth Woodworking turned his riding mower into a miniature tank. He even included functional treads and put a working potato cannon into the barrel. It’s pretty much the best riding mower mod I’ve ever seen, and I’m not just saying that because it’s the only riding mower mod I’ve seen. The only complaint would be that it no longer actually mows grass. But c’mon, if the choice is between mowing your grass or breaking over your neighbors fence to shoot potatoes through their window there’s an obvious winner every time and it’s not the one that involves cutting little pieces of plant.

Keep going for the full video of the miniature tank in action.

Source: Geekologie – I want one: turning a riding mower into a miniature tank

On June 19, 2020 hang glider Owen Morse set a hang gliding world record by piloting 222.22 miles over California’s Owens Valley. He writes:

This flight was a dream come true for me. For six years I’ve been chasing the out-and-back world record, and this year, all the pieces of the puzzle finally came together beautifully.

My previous attempts had ended prematurely for a number of reasons – thunder storms on course line, a NOTAM due to a nearby forest fire, a harness pitch cord failure, and running out of daylight (another way of saying I had been flying too slowly). It takes a lot of things to go right to have success, and one significant thing going wrong can be the end of it all.

On June 19th, 2020 the winds were forecasted to be light and variable throughout the day at most elevations. Though there were not going to be any clouds along my planned course line, usable lift was expected to be just above 18,000 feet. Only two days before the summer solstice, I knew the number of daylight hours were on my side. The other thing I had going for me this year, was my new wing.

With the bearing tips, I’ve found that I don’t get pushed around anymore and I can put the wing exactly where I want it to be.

This guy was in the air for an insane 9:36 hours over his 222.22 mile journey. I can barely stay awake for that long, let alone do something like pilot a hang glider. If you’re wondering about bathroom breaks, he says he actually peed twice in the air. And since I have no idea if it’s possible to pee off a hang glider without also peeing your pants, I’m just going to assume you can’t because it’s funnier that way. So let’s completely ignore Owen’s incredible achievement and focus on the fact that he peed himself. Yay, now I don’t feel as bad because people who set world records also pee their pants.

Keep going for the video of his takeoff and landing. You can also watch a 3D replay of his flight path here.

Source: Geekologie – Owen Morse sets 222.22 mile hang gliding world record

Turkish YouTuber Hasan Kaval attached a sofa and television to a parachute so that he could maintain his couch potato lifestyle while parasailing. The video is absolutely insane, because I don’t see a harness of any kind. Like he’s literally just sitting on a sofa flying through the air eating potato chips and watching TV. Maybe there’s a secret seat belt somewhere, but if there is it’s extremely well hidden. It’s also possible people in Turkey just don’t care about falling to their death? It really looks like he just gets on a sofa, people push him off a cliff, and then he goes about his life like it’s perfectly normal to be in your pajamas chilling on a sofa while 800 feet off the ground.

Keep going for the full video which also includes them building the rig.

Source: Geekologie – Couch potato goes parasailing with his sofa and TV

Twitter user @TheoShantonas put his quarantine to use by riding on a treadmill at increasing speeds. These are the kinds of sacrifices that must be made in the name of science. It’s just too bad he stopped at 9mph, because I know most of them go up to 12mph and the super elite ones for athletes can go up to 25mph. Is this my roundabout way of saying I really wish I watched a man get launched through a wall at 25mph? Look, it’s for science. Anything is okay for science.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Guy tests out different treadmill speeds by riding them

Reddit user TheApropalypse modded a Nintendo Switch console to look like a Pip-Boy, the wrist computer your character wears in Fallout. It’s mostly a bunch of 3D printed parts painted and assembled, but the result looks pretty great. And who cares that it essentially triples the size of the Switch. As long as you can carry it it’s still technically portable. Plus if I spend a decade or so working out at the gym and drinking raw eggs I’ll probably eventually get my arm thick enough to actually wear this on my wrist. Right now I get sore if I wear my friendship bracelet for too long. Just kidding, I don’t have any friends.

Keep going for the process video of the build.

Source: Geekologie – ‘Fallout’ themed Nintendo Switch Pip-Boy case

LEGO artist Jason Allemann has built this continuous loop LEGO marble run. It expands on one of his previous designs to include an elevator so that it can run continuously as well as an alternator module, which splits incoming balls in alternating directions. It’s a neat design and very interesting and all that, but I can’t get over his LEGO storage room. That’s the stuff dreams are made of. Six year old me would’ve planned a Mission Impossible style heist just to get in there and steal it. In unrelated news, I need to run to the store to buy a ski mask, a harness, and some rope.

Keep going for the full video, along with his original LEGO marble run design.

Source: Geekologie – LEGO continuous loop marble run

This is a commercial for the Murphy Ladder and it’s perfect. I don’t even care that it’s advertising a product, because it’s so amazingly well done I actually watched the entire thing. That’s three and a half minutes of my life I chose to spend watching a commercial for a ladder. A ladder. And I have zero regrets. I don’t even need a ladder, but I know if I was going to buy one it would be the Murphy Ladder. If it’s even half as good as the commercial it’ll be the best purchase I’ve ever made. Who needs health insurance when I can just spend all my money on ladders?

Keep going for the full video and no, this isn’t a sponsored post. Although I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that sweet Murphy Ladder money. Ya know, so I can buy some more ladders.

Source: Geekologie – Weirdly perfect commercial for the Murphy Ladder

As restrictions begin lifting and people start staying at hotels again, Inside Edition ran an undercover investigation to see just how serious hotels are taking cleanliness in the age of COVID-19. They checked into several New York City hotel rooms and used a harmless, washable spray to apply a logo only visible under UV light to the pillows, bed sheets and bath towels and then re-checked into the room under a different name to see if the rooms had been properly cleaned.

The fact there’s even anything to report should already tell you that the results were horrifying. Spoiler alert: apparently hotels don’t change bed sheets or pillow cases?! Even if we weren’t living with COVID-19 that’s super disgusting. I know what I do in hotel rooms and for them to not sanitize the room afterwards must violate the Geneva Convention. And before you ask what I’m doing in hotel rooms, let’s just say it involves some yogurt and a bag of hot dogs and that’s already saying too much.

Keep going for the full video that should probably make you rethink any travel plans you have for the next, oh, I dunno, forever.

Source: Geekologie – ‘Inside Edition’ discovers sheets weren’t changed at some hotels during COVD-19

Julien’s Auctions has an original “nearly complete spacesuit” from 2001: A Space Odyssey up for auction. The starting bid is $50,000 and they expect it to go up to as high as $300,000. From the auction listing:

The spacesuit is an amalgamation of components worn by different actors and in many scenes throughout the film. This is highlighted by a helmet featuring four distinct layers of paint (a base of color of white, then green, then yellow, and lastly in its present color of white), indicating that it was used in different scenes by multiple actors and representing a number of characters . This nearly complete costume is of the lunar type in its present state (silver body suit, blue back pack, white helmet). This suit appears to be original in silver (never repainted). However, due to the layering of paint, the helmet appears to have been employed as a lunar type, then two of the four Discovery types (green and then yellow; the other colors/types being red and blue), then as a lunar type again. This helmet has a textured strip of tape inside with “HELMET A” written across in red.

Most notably, the base green layer of paint seen in chips, cracks, and green overspray throughout the helmet surface suggest that it may have been the very helmet worn by Keir Dullea, who portrayed Dr. Dave Bowman (the lead astronaut on the film’s Discovery mission to Jupiter) in the sequence in which he reenters antechamber of the Discovery surrounded by banks of circuit breakers leading to the “brain room” and logic center to “kill” HAL in one of the most famous science fiction scenes of all time (“Stop Dave. Stop Dave. I am afraid. I am afraid Dave.”).

$300,000 seems like a lot to be spending on a Halloween costume, but I’m all about authenticity. And yeah, maybe I went into crippling debt to get my Mr. Rogers costume just right last year, but I had the last laugh when my sweater was the perfect shade of red even though people just assumed I hadn’t dressed up at all.

Keep going for one of the iconic scenes of the spacesuit in action.

Source: Geekologie – An original spacesuit from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is up for auction

An entrepreneurial YouTuber has designed an off-road “wheelchair” with his partner that he’s calling Not-a-Wheelchair. It’s fully electric and can reach 12mph with a range of about 10-20 miles and starts at $4,750.

Cambry and I decided to put our heads together, and build our own off road wheelchair. Something that’s quick and light with a super long range.

It looks capable enough to handle a hiking trail, but it’s not something I would trust beyond that. And if anybody is wondering why they’re branding it as “Not-a-Wheelchair” it’s because wheelchairs have to be regulated by the FDA and I’m assuming that’s something they want to avoid. The thing looks super fun and they probably don’t want to be sued when I eventually try to take it up Everest and die.

Keep going for a video of the thing in action.

Source: Geekologie – Wheee: The multi-terrain off-road ‘Not-a-Wheelchair’

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory put together this time-lapse of the Sun using 425 million high-resolution images (over 20 million gigabytes of data) which it gathered from over a decade of observation from its orbit in space.

With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions. The custom music, titled “Solar Observer,” was composed by musician Lars Leonhard (https://www.lars-leonhard.de/).

Kudos to anybody who watches the entire video, because it’s over an hour long and it’s just the sun spinning and glowing and spinning and glowing. There are a few notable moments like large flares or sunspots, but the most interesting is probably at 12:24 when you see Venus transit across the Sun. It’s not exactly John Wick, but it’s still pretty neat.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – 10-year time lapse of the Sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory

V1 Analytics put together this visualization of Blockbuster Video store locations in the United States between 1986 and 2019. At its peak there were 9000 Blockbuster stores globally, and now there’s only one left in Bend, Oregon. It’s kind of a strange thought, but there are people out there who have never even heard of Blockbuster Video. To them this might as well be a visualization of smallpox infections. Just some old-timey thing that came and went and now old people talk about to annoy them while they’re on TikTok.

Keep going for the full video. Some key years are 1997 when Netflix started their mail-in DVD service, 2002 when RedBox started their rental kiosks, and 2007 when Netflix started their streaming service.

Source: Geekologie – The rise and fall of Blockbuster Video stores from 1986 to 2019

Calculator musician @atarimae_400 noticed that Japanese railway stations sound similar to certain calculator tones and started playing some of the melodies on his own calculators.

I received comments that the sound that can be played from a calculator is similar to a station melody, so I tried to play it on a calculator!

“For those who live or have lived in the Kanto area, one is a collection of railway station melodies that I have never heard of.”

※ The number of calculators depends on the song.

Apparently there are more calculator musicians out there than you’d think, because if you’re anything like me you thought there were zero. My favorite remains this cover of the Game of Thrones theme being played on four calculators. I used to think the most impressive thing you could do with a calculator was use it to fail math and then spell out 80085. Actually, I’m pretty sure spelling out 80085 is still the most impressive thing you can do.

Keep going for the full video, along with @atarimae_400’s cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You.”

Source: Geekologie – Guy plays railway station melodies on his calculators

It’s pretty ridiculous that this is even an issue, but people have been refusing to wear masks because they think it’ll lead to suffocation or carbon dioxide poisoning. And since common sense isn’t effective and these people think dentists and surgeons are dropping dead every day, a registered nurse from Oakland felt compelled to make this demonstration using a pulse oximetry sensor to show that wearing masks is completely safe. Even with three surgical masks covering his nose and mouth, his oxygen and carbon dioxide transfer remained normal, with no effects to his oxygen saturation levels or any buildup of carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately, this guy is trying to use science to persuade people who clearly don’t care about science. This is where I’d usually make a joke, but people politicizing a pandemic and refusing to do something as simple as wearing a mask to save lives just isn’t funny. A virus doesn’t care about your freedoms or political beliefs, and killing somebody because you’re too selfish to wear a piece of cloth over your face makes you a pathetic human being. Masks aren’t worn to protect you, they’re worn to protect other people. Surgeons don’t wear a mask because they don’t want to catch your cooties. They wear a mask so they don’t cough or sneeze into your open wound and kill you. Refusing to wear a mask is the same as a surgeon refusing to wash their hands before operating because of “their freedoms.” You’re not a hero or freedom fighter, you’re a joke and the entire world is laughing at you. Wear a mask.

Keep going for the full science-filled video.

Source: Geekologie – Nurse demonstrates that wearing a mask doesn’t affect oxygen levels or cause carbon dioxide poisoning

Twitter user @phi6 used fridge magnets to make this Super Mario stop motion animation with their 4-year-old son over the weekend. The result is pretty impressive for something thrown together over a weekend. It makes me wish I did fun projects like this with my own dad, but instead we just played a dumb game where I would wait in the living room while he went to the corner store to get cigarettes and then never come home ever again.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Stop motion ‘Super Mario’ level made using fridge magnets

YouTuber Matt Denton used a 3D printer to create this life-sized LEGO go-kart. It would’ve been more impressive if he had used actual LEGO pieces instead of 3D printing giant versions, but it’s still an incredibly fun project and the result looks great. Plus it actually works. Now we just have to wait until somebody takes the idea to the next level and 3D prints a life-sized functional LEGO Death Star.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – 3D printing a functional life-sized LEGO go-kart

Researchers from the University of Chicago’s Human Computer Integration Lab have developed a way of simulating temperature in VR by using smells.

We explore a temperature illusion that uses low-powered electronics and enables the miniaturization of simple warm and cool sensations. Our illusion relies on the properties of certain scents, such as the coolness of mint or hotness of peppers. These odors trigger not only the olfactory bulb, but also the nose’s trigeminal nerve, which has receptors that respond to both temperature and chemicals. To exploit this, we engineered a wearable device based on micropumps and an atomizer that emits up to three custom-made “thermal” scents directly to the user’s nose. Breathing in these scents causes the user to feel warmer or cooler. We demonstrate how our device renders warmth and cooling sensations in virtual experiences. Participants rated VR experiences with our trigeminal stimulants as significantly warmer or cooler than the baseline conditions. Lastly, we believe this offers an alternative to thermal feedback devices, which unfortunately rely on power-hungry heat-lamps or Peltier-elements.

So basically they blast pepper into your nose to make you feel hot and mint into your nose to make you feel cold. It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard, but I can’t imagine breathing in pepper for hours at a time can be good for you. “But what about that time you shoved sliced jalapenos into your nose on a dare?” That was to earn the respect of my peers, and it failed miserably when I ended up lying on the floor crying.

Keep going for a video of the VR device in action.

Source: Geekologie – Creating temperature illusions using smells in virtual reality

According to the West Yorkshire Police, a $250,000 Lamborghini was wrecked just 20 minutes after purchase. The driver had stopped in the outside lane due to a mechanical failure and was hit from behind by a van.

So technically the Lamborghini owner didn’t crash it the way we all hoped they had and it’s actually the van’s fault for hitting them. Although I guess you could make the argument it’s the Lamborghini’s fault for breaking down immediately after purchase. Personally, that’s the reason I don’t own a Lamborghini myself. It’s not that they cost more than my house, it’s the, uh, poor reliability. Yup.

Keep going for one more shot and the original Tweet from the police departrment.

Source: Geekologie – Lamborghini wrecked 20 minutes after purchase