Algar the Bard is a musician straight out of the Fourteenth Century. He composes and performs adaptations of modern songs with medieval themes and instruments. Past performances include R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man".

For his latest video, Algar is bardrolling us with Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Nothing about his performance lets us down. Enjoy this chipper approach to the modern classic on the lute-guitar, whistles, and something called an Irish bouzouki. That latter instrument is a modern Irish alteration of a Greek instrument that can be traced back to Byzantine times.

-via Born in Space

Engineer and YouTuber The Q builds many novel and remarkably high-performing machines, most often with bicycles. Recently, we featured his bike tires made out of tennis balls. Those might work well in an off-road environment where punctures are likely.

So might these wheels, which are square. Or, more precisely, these are treads that rotate around a square frame. Inspired by the polyhedral tires in low-resolution video game graphics, he made this tread-bike that is surprisingly functional. I'm especially impressed with how The Q was able to transfer power from the bike pedals to the tread gears on the back wheel.

-via Laughing Squid

iPhones have a handy feature called "Find My iPhone." If you lose your device, you can ping the location from a computer or another phone so that you can track it down.

That's not working out for Scott Schuster of Richmond, Texas. There's a weird glitch in the app that is leading many people to his house, where Find My iPhone has told them that their phones are presently located. This has led to heated confrontations at all hours of the day and night with strangers who think that Schuster has stolen their phones.

Schuster has contacted Apple about the problem. But, so far, they haven't responded.

-via Dave Barry

If the answer is no, well, then, you should have let me know 5 seconds ago. That would have been useful information back in that more innocent bygone age.

Stu McKenzie is a professional snake remover in--you guessed it--Australia. He also dabbles in removing other reptiles, such as monitor lizards, but he mostly deals with snakes.

Last month, he discovered this strange scene. What happened to the frog? His best guess is that the frog ate a dead snake--an extremely venomous Eastern Brown Snake--and was digestively processing it at the time that this photo was taken.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers

The band Klangphonics sees no need to restrict itself to conventional instruments. A power washer is a perfectly acceptable if not ideal instrument if used properly and inventively. In this video, watch the group clean up the pavement while ruminating about feeling pressured by forces beyond our control. If you need to hire someone to pressure wash your driveway, consider these guys. They'll brighten up the pavement and offer a lively conert at the same time.

This inventive approach is nothing new for Klangphonics. It's also made dance-inspiring electronic music videos using wine glasses, cats, a rubber duck, a vacuum cleaner, and a photocopier.

-via Born in Space

Ok I can stop collecting now. pic.twitter.com/2rYtpw9KQc

— Go! Go! アンディロボ! (@GoGoAndyRobo) March 24, 2023

In 1997, James Cameron's film Titanic was a, well, titanic success at the box office and the launch of a major pop culture phenomenon. I distinctly remember there was a lot of general interest in the 1912 sinking, so it would make sense that toymakers would produce collectibles to take advantage of the craze.

This apparently included a Transformer-type toy that occasionally pops up on eBay. A more recent alternative version is also on the market.

I'm skeptical that Titanic-Bot would have been a popular combatant. Other transforming robots, knowing her track record, might hesitate to go into battle at her side, let alone travel on her.

-via Super Punch

YouTuber Everything Is Hacked is a computer programmer with interests in writing code under difficult circumstances and making working from home more practical. In the past, he created an interface for controlling a computer using facial movements and having Zoom put virtual pants on him for those times when he's forgotten to wear them.

Now he's radically departing from that sedentary lifestyle for energetic, full-body workouts. He's adapted flag semaphore into a computer interface that will let him type, program, and even control video games with body movements.

This video is a special treat and not just because Everything Is Hacked is smart and innovative technically. It's genuinely funny throughout as he tries to spell out the words for songs as he plays them.

-via Laughing Squid

John Venn (1834-1923) accomplished much during his life. He began as an Anglican priest, although his study of logic, mathematics, and philosophy eventually led him to shed the clerical collar. He taught at Cambridge and eventually became president of one of its constituent colleges. Venn also tinkered with machines and invented a cricket ball bowling machine that was better than top human bowlers.

But Venn is most famous for one of the diagrams that he developed to show partially overlapping sets of values. That design is the basis for a memorial window in his honor at Gonville and Caius College.

His birthplace in Hull is also marked with an Alternative Heritage marker inspired by Venn's diagram.

-via Richard Coles | Photos: Schutz and Dithy, respectively

20/ pic.twitter.com/sFxrwpUOI3

— 0xDesigner (@0xDesigner) April 2, 2023

The subreddit /r/ProgrammerHumor shares the joys, frustrations, and irreverent jokes from the world of computer programming. In 2017, the members held an informal contest to develop the worst possible volume control from the perspective of user experience (UX). These include selections that are necessarily random, difficult to manipulate, or deceptively labeled.

Twitter user 0xDesigner rounded up the best in a thread. Many of them include uses of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", which should, of course, always be played on full blast. That's hard to do when the slider bounces around the higher you raise the volume.

While preparing for post-apocalyptic travel across the barren wastelands of what was once your hometown, you'll need a bike that won't become useless after the first flat tire. YouTuber user The Q has a solution: making functional tires out of tennis balls.

Note that there's a lot of prep work that you'll want to do before the downfall of the civilization and regular electrical power. The Q made small rings of PVC pipe and used them to mount the balls on the rim of the wheels. Attaching the rings required the construction of a custom jig that drove balls inside the rings without rupturing them.

The finished product looks like a rough ride, but functional--at least enough to keep you ahead of the cannibals that have been following you on foot for several days.

-via Hack A Day

This is Dr. Ronald Weiss of Ottawa. Over the course of his career, he's performed vasectomies on at least 58,789 men including, according to the Toronto Star, celebrities, politicians, and entire hockey teams. He's a pioneer of a no-scalpel method and has a famously low complication rate, which has drawn to him patients as far away as Los Angeles and Japan.

In a 2016 interview for Ottawa magazine, Dr. Weiss shares his origin story. He had been a family physician who did minor operations in his office suite in the early 90s. Word got around that he could snip men quickly and painlessly. Eventually, it became his specialty and he would perform 14 each working day. This is why his wife calls him "the vasectomy machine."

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Vasectomy.Ca

A few years ago, redditor /u/flashtone experienced a hailstorm that damaged his car. It appears that the plastic coating held even when the glass did not, thus keeping the ice from completely penetrating the barrier and damaging the interior.

Some redditors are making off-color jokes about other protective coatings preventing other types of fluids from leaking. Others are pointing out that the car now has, as a feature, a decorative chandelier or mirrored disco ball.

-via Massimo

Some people really enjoy conversations with their barbers. The rest of us would like to just get a haircut and move on to the next task of the day.

A chatty barber who doesn't pick up on social cues is annoying and Beyond the Pale Barbershop in San Francisco doesn't want to annoy its customers. The San Francisco Standard reports that this shop lets customers select "silent mode" from the beginning. The barber then knows not to even try to chat with the customer.

It's quite a shop. Owner Anthony Larrasquiti has designed his operation to be not just a business, but an experience for customers. You have a variety of haircut options, which might end up free. If you can hit a bullseye on the dartboard, your haircut is free and you get a beer.

It's popular: Larrasquiti says that he has about 350 regular customers who schedule appointments with him. That's especially impressive since Beyond the Pale has been open since only February.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Beyond the Pale Barbershop

When I try to start conversations with strangers, one of my go-to questions is "What's the most surprising thing you've ever encountered in a colonoscopy?"

It doesn't have to be the person's own colonoscopy--just one that the person has experienced.

This gentleman (that's a man in the photo) had ladybug in his colon. A 2019 article in the medical journal American College of Gastroenterology Reports briefly describes the surprising appearance of a harmonia axyridis, one of 6,000 ladybug species in the world. If I understand the article correctly, the doctors assume that the patient swallowed the bug. His consumption of a full gallon of polyethylene glycol as part of the colonoscopy preparation may have protected the ladybug from digestion.

-via Science Girl

The news service of Swedish national television brings us news of an innovative program to provide safety lighting for bicyclists at night. This system, which is being tested in the town of Skara, launches when the bicyclist requests the lights through a phone app. Drones with bright lights fly to positions along the path that the bicyclist is taking and hover.

This approach, the project managers have determined, will ultimately be cheaper than the cost of permanently illuminating a bike path with street lights. It will also be safer than having bicyclists rely entirely on lights mounted on their own vehicles.

-via Wrath of Gnon | Image: SVT