Transportation

Riverboat zombie survival compound

Riverboat zombie survival compound

I’m a little late to the party, on this one; wish I’d heard about the 2010 Zombie Safe House Competition before the deadline back in August. There were only four entries, overall, but I think the winning SS Huckleberry, shown above, would’ve been hard to beat regardless. Looks like they’re planning another contest for 2011. [Thanks, Mel!]

Top 10:  Steam power!

Top 10: Steam power!

With a very few notable exceptions, there was really nothing punk about The Fad Which Shall Not be Named. Steampop might really have been a better word. Fortunately, the steam in these posts is not, generally, even aspiring to punk status, although the word itself may, regrettably, appear a couple times in the copy on the linked pages. Please accept our apologies–we were excited–and enjoy this hot steamy content entirely on its own merits.

How-To: Remove a rear-view mirror button

How-To: Remove a rear-view mirror button

Awhile back, I wrote about co-opting the awesome glue used to mount rear-view mirrors for hobby projects. An interested reader e-mailed me a couple weeks later asking if I knew how to remove a rear-view mirror button from a windshield, which I didn’t. Several people have reported that trying to forcibly remove the metal button from the glass can actually break a divot of glass out of the windshield. I was therefore not optimistic, but we talked a little about the idea of using an organic solvent combined with sharp lateral pressure parallel to the glass. She experimented a bit, and, what do you know, eventually succeeded! Here’s her report:

Mechanical gate opener comes full circle

Mechanical gate opener comes full circle

EdenTXlocation.jpgBack in 2008, I wrote a series of posts about Alvin E. Gandy’s 1965 patent “Gandy Slide-A-Way” mechanical gate opener, which uses the weight of an approaching vehicle to automatically open and close a remote vehicle gate without electrical power. The story has apparently gotten back around to Mr. Gandy’s surviving family. His niece Annie just commented:

Fairbairn cranes on Flickr

Fairbairn cranes on Flickr

A reader who saw last night’s post about human-powered cranes and lifting machines e-mailed me to point out that many of the Fairbairn hand-cranked cranes featured in that post’s title image are still around, and that there is in fact a Flickr group that collects photos from enthusiasts. At least one of the cranes has […]