Who says you need to have a fancy carnival-worthy setup to make cotton candy? In China, they make cotton candy using a simple bike. There’s propane underneath the apparatus, heating up the sugar, but then it’s all spun around and stretched out by simple pedal power. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like they figured out a way to make fried dough or sausage with onions and peppers using only a bike, so you might still need to go to a fair to get those. [Make]
Neatorama has put together a good list of 10 basic questions on the Large Hadron Collider. It doesn’t answer questions like “Why the heck can’t Michael Zeller quote Star Trek correctly?” but it solves others, from why is it called Large Hadron Collider to why is it underground. My favourite, however, is Why is the LHC like a Werewolf?
At the Let’s Rock event this week, Apple pushed the new iPod touch hard (and iPhone too, obviously) as a viable gaming platform. Steve even went so far as to call it the best portable gaming platform out there. Strong words for DS and PSP fans, but the crop of games popping up in the App Store continues to build steam. This week we’ll take a look at games both current and upcoming, as well as some other standout favourites as always. Shall we?
I’m sure all of the iPhone owners out there were chomping at the bit to download the 2.1 update when it hit today. After all, it does claim to fix major problems like call drops, crashes, slow syncing and bad battery life. I’ve been busy, so I haven’t had a chance to install it myself—so help me out with this. How are the individual bug fixes working out for you?
No doubt about it, this is one bad-ass-looking desk. But the 3Fold from Formtank is more than just a striking visual design—it is also impressive because it was cut and folded from a single sheet of steel using CAD/CAM technology. Formtank bills it as an excellent CEO desk, which is why it takes CEO money to buy one. Constructing your own version starts at around US$7,000. [Formtank via Core77 via Boing Boing] galleryPost('3folddesk', 3, '');
It’s Friday…finally. Have big plans for the weekend? A big party to go to perhaps? You know, you don’t have to wait for the weekend to have fun—you could be partying every day. Not only that, you wouldn’t have to waste time planning and getting things set up. Using the following 10 gadgets, you could have a party on demand. That’s right—anytime, anywhere. Now all you need is some friends.
All Evangelion nerds (like me) should know exactly what this Entry Plug is supposed to be: the ride Shinji and Rei have that plugs them (in more ways than one) into a gigantic robot. This USB storage version does NOT allow you to destroy Tokyo while protecting it, but it does keep your files safe while you’re commuting to and from work. The only caveat is that these are only 2GB, whereas any self-respecting anime fan would have gone up to 64GB sticks by now. What’s all the rest of the space in this drive taken up by? Whininess. [Akiba.Keizai via Dvice]
If the X-Games aren’t quite your speed, Actiga is offering the next best thing (look, we all know that what I said isn’t true, but let’s roll with it, see where it goes.) Their US$20 Mini-Motion games offer radical finger sports like skateboarding, RC cars, baseball, and futuristic racing games. Each game is embedded in the wicked-awesome controller and compatible with Mac and PC. But even more gnarly, they don’t even require a helmet! Totally sweet, dudes! [Actiga via CrunchGear]
We’ve already seen Mixview, Zune 3.0′s more visual take on a Genius-like auto-generating playlist, as well as some videos showing the new Wi-Fi features like Buy From FM on the device itself. Today some more interface shots of what Microsoft will help turn the Zune guy back have surfaced for you perusal. Like iTunes 8, once you get past the auto-playlisting, it doesn’t look like there’s too many more drastic changes or revelations over version 2.5. Other than that the Zune team really digs the Hold Steady and TI. Hey, me too!
One of our readers recently subscribed to Chrysler’s Autonet service, essentially a Wi-Fi router for your car that connects to the internet through 3G. And after some use, he’s found that it works (he wrote us using the service), but it’s still working out some important kinks, like maintaining its EVDO connection and protecting its precious 1GB download cap:
