A Real Rocket Bike…
Nice bike – “What does a propulsion engineer do when he wants to experience the power of a rocket without going to space? He simply bolts one to a bike. How It Works – 1. A toggle switch on the battery pack arms the ignition system. 2. The left-thumb button sends power from the battery pack to an igniter on a model-rocket motor inside the rocket engine, vaporizing the roofing-tar fuel so it can burn. 3. The right-thumb button keeps the nitrous oxide flowing (and the rocket lit) as long as it’s pushed. 4. The left brake lever regulates the flow of nitrous and throttles the rocket.” Link.
Tim used our how to on using the Kodak Wi-Fi camera with Flickr and writes in “Thanks for your help. I followed the instruction on your post on the MAKE blog, but was having trouble getting the Automator application I created to work. When I tried it as a stand alone Automator application, it would not work. When I ran it from within Automator it worked. I noticed that software update was telling me about some new updates. I ran them and then restarted and now it works fine. Don’t know if it was the updates or just restarting, but now it works well. Thank you for your help with this.”
If your car’s air condition is broken, or if it just doesn’t have one – this summer you might consider building your own, like this person did. This DIY car air conditioner is a wall unit inserted in the back window of an automobile and it is powered by a gas generator. With this many wrongs, it’s just so right.
Interesting tactic, people were driving too fast in a neighborhood, so the neighborhood built “roadwitches” – “These type of “DIY traffic-calming happenings” are described by their creator as “roadwitches” and have included an 11-feet high rabbit, a big bed (for a sleeping policeman), a Casualty-style fake crash scene for Halloween and the setting up of a living room in the middle of the road.”
Speedometers, rearview mirrors, many will have LCDS (I can’t wait to mod one!)….“To say the new Mercedes S-Class dashboard is impressive is probably the understatement of the year. Basically, it’s a [LCD screen] embedded in the dash that displays all your data virtually. What’s cool is it mimics analog gauges like the original Carrera GT concept was sporting when we all first saw it for the first time. But the real mind blower, is when the night vision activates and everyting in front of you disappears and you see a video screen displaying what’s in front of you.” [
Pat sent in this holiday treat, how cars are made! “…a video of the making of a very important (and common) mode of transportation: cars. Thanks to the good people at Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Georgetown, Kentucky for supplying the 5-minute narrated video of the manufacturing process. It goes from stamping through painting and powertrain through the end of the assembly process. At the end, you see the car being driven off the line.”