Alex Tew created a website that encourages you to calm down and slow down. Just sit in front of your computer and do nothing for two minutes but listen to the sound of waves splashing. No, don't touch your mouse or keyboard or you'll have to start over. Tew writes:

I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i also read somewhere that there is evidence that our brains are being re-wired by the internet, because we get a little dopamine kick every time we check our e-mail or Twitter or Facebook and there’s a new update. So we’re all developing a bit of ADD. which is probably not great in terms of being productive.

It took me three tries.

Link via Geekosystem

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Pro surfer Mark Visser wore a LED-covered vest and surfboard while riding 30-40 foot waves off Hawaii. The visual effect was stunning, as well as difficult to capture on film [sic]:

Engineered LED lights were built into a bupuancy vest and modified into the surfboard. The lighting technologies were created especially for the project by Solus Corporation using ground breaking NASA submarine lighting to ensure the wave and board were lit in the right places, at the right time and illuminated the wave without hindering the vision of Visser, the jet ski drivers and the helicopter pilots.

Link via Super Punch

Craig Smith of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, made a snowplow that he can drive with a modified bicycle:

A lever pulls up or lets down the plow with a rope and pulley. Pulling the lever all the way back cantilevers the rope and pivot point so it locks in place. The plow blade is hinged with a bungee cord, so hitting a discrepancy in the road allows the blade to flop and give like a real plow. The bike can turn on a dime so raising the plow and returning up the adjacent path is quick and easy. I can do 'reverse' by pushing down on the front wheel with my foot to roll it backwards.Totally useless with larger snow falls, but the light ones make snow removal fun.

Link

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But really, who doesn't? Tom Rainford, an animation student at the Winchester School of Art, talks about what he likes and doesn't like about grocery shopping. He doesn't like fish counter workers who make dead fish kiss each other.

Artist's Website via Geekosystem

Are you getting bored waiting for the bus? If you live in San Francisco, you may get to play video games while you wait. Yahoo! has installed large touch screens in twenty bus shelters in that city:

As part of the promotion, transit passengers from 20 specified neighborhoods will get the chance to compete against each other in different video games — and the community that wins the two-month contest will host a block party featuring the rock band OK Go.

To compete, passengers need only to tap the screen and choose one of four games, which range from visual puzzles to sports trivia competitions. Once a rider has selected which neighborhood they want to represent, they can challenge any other waiting passenger to a live competition. Also, for anyone curious about duping the system, Yahoo has set up barriers to prevent any sort of automated competition.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/transportation/2010/11/games-added-bus-stops-bored-riders via OhGizmo! | Photo: PSFK

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These South African construction workers have mad skillz for throwing and catching piles of cement, shovel and all. They don't appear to drop any!

via The Presurfer

Josh Le of the University of Alberta did what is fairly normal among college students, but somehow found a way to get famous for it. He wore the same pair of jeans for 15 months without ever washing them. Le's excuse for not doing his laundry is that he wanted the raw denim to mold to the shape of his body. At the conclusion of the experiment, his jeans were tested for bacteria:

At the end of the 15 months, Le swabbed the jeans for bacteria. He then put the garb through a washing machine, after which he wore the jeans another two weeks before re-testing.

And the results surprised Le and his professor, Rachel McQueen.

"They were similar," McQueen said of the bacteria count of the freshly washed pair, compared to the prewashing levels. "I expected they would still be much lower than after 15 months."

In all, there were five kinds of skin bacteria in the jeans, and mostly in the crotch area, where between 8,500 and 10,000 bacterial units per square centimetre were found. However, McQueen said because Le was healthy, with no skin problems or cuts, there was no health concern.

Controlling odour was a different concern, Le said, admitting the jeans began to smell after a few months.

He solved that problem, however.

"I triple-bagged them and put them in the freezer," he said.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2011/01/20/consumer-jeans-study.html via Jeremy Barker | Photo: John Ulan/Canadian Press

Canstruction Vancouver is an annual art fair which invites people to make sculptures out of canned food. The materials are then donated to a food bank. At the link, you can view submissions from the 2009 exhibition. Pictured above is the classic Warner Bros. cartoon character Marvin the Martian.

Link via Super Punch | Official Website

National Geographic has a large interactive map of surnames in the United States. The most common surname for a given area is listed in each location. The relative size represents the commonality of the name, and the color represents the geographic origin of the name. Pictured above is a screenshot of Hawaii as it is depicted on the map. Where's the most common name where you live?

Link via Flavorwire

Designer R.D. Silver made this record player that has been stripped down to its most essential components, but still functions:

It’s called “Turnstyle” and it’s made up of the motor, the needle, the speakers, and the controls. What more do you need? It’s a skeleton of its former self, and not former as in it was stripped, former as in there’s no reason to ever go back to more!

This project is designed by RD Silver, a designer who has the guts to take away everything but the guts. The requirements for function set upon this project were the following: spin record, on/off, volume, speaker, and needle. As far as design requirements: no corners, no hard edges, no 90 degree angles.

Link via DVICE

Joao Vieira wanted to propose to his girlfriend, Portuguese flight attendant Vera Silva, in a memorable way. So he booked a flight on which she was working. He worked with the pilot and flight crew so that he could get on the plane's public address system and propose marriage to her. After a moment, she turned on a microphone from the opposite side of the plane and said yes. You can watch a video of the proposal at the link.

Link

English Russia, a blog that presents readers with the oddities and wonders of Russia, has a collection of graphic work safety posters from the Soviet Union. They get rather blunt, but it would be hard to top the German masterpiece Forklift Driver Klaus.

Link via The Agitator

I don't know the origin of this picture or the set of which it is a part, but it appears to show a man making a candle with bacon grease. Do you think that it would work?

Link via The Presurfer

The Ames-Dryden (AD)-1 was an experimental aircraft developed by NASA during the 1970s. Its wing could pivot up to 60° to present the most efficient angle for a given flight objective:

The oblique wing was the brainchild of NASA aeronautical engineer Robert T. Jones, whose analytical and wind tunnel studies at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, California, indicated that an oblique wing, supersonic transport might achieve twice the fuel economy of an aircraft sporting more conventional wings.[...]

The oblique wing on the AD-1 pivoted about the fuselage, remaining perpendicular to it during slow flight and swinging to angles of up to 60 degrees as aircraft speed increased.

The swing wing concept was first evaluated by a small, propeller-driven, remotely-piloted research vehicle (RPRV) flown at Dryden in 1976. These early techniques for gathering data about the oblique wing aircraft were applied to the twin turbojet, piloted AD-1, which was flown from 1979 to 1982.

Link via DVICE | Photo: NASA

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Knifefish have a long doral fin that flutters back and forth to move the fish. Here's a video showing one in motion. Scientists at Northwestern University thought that it could serve as a useful basis for an underwater robot, and so studied its movement:

Planning for the robot -- called GhostBot -- began when graduate student Oscar Curet, a co-author of the paper, observed a knifefish suddenly moving vertically in a tank in MacIver's lab.

"We had only tracked it horizontally before," said MacIver, a recent recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. "We thought, 'How could it be doing this?'"

Further observations revealed that while the fish only uses one traveling wave along the fin during horizontal motion (forward or backward depending on the direction on the wave), while moving vertically it uses two waves. One of these moves from head to tail, and the other moves tail to head. The two waves collide and stop at the center of the fin.

The researchers then created a computer simulation of the fish and designed a robot to duplicate its movements:

The group took the robot to Harvard University to test it in a flow tunnel in the lab of George V. Lauder, professor of ichthyology and co-author of the paper. The team measured the flow around the robotic fish by placing reflective particles in the water, then shining a laser sheet into the water. That allowed them to track the flow of the water by watching the particles, and the test showed the water flowing around the biomimetic robot just as computer simulations predicted it would.

"It worked perfectly the first time," MacIver said. "We high-fived. We had the robot in the real world being pushed by real forces."

Link via Fast Company