John Farrier's Blog Posts

Rocket Helicopter


(YouTube Link)


Swisscopter's Dragonfly is a small helicopter that has rocket engines on the ends of its rotors blades to propel them:

The copter makes use of tiny hydrogen-peroxide-powered rocket motors on the tips of the blades, which replaces the traditional engine-powered rotor. Large fuel tanks surrounding the pilot allow the Dragonfly to travel at up to 40 mph for 50 minutes.


via Popular Science | Company Website

Injured Dog Checks Himself into Hospital

An unaccompanied and injured dog limped into a hospital in Farmington, New Mexico:

When the automatic doors at San Juan Regional Medical Centre's emergency room slid open Saturday night, the pooch walked in, blood on his nose and paw, and a puncture hole in one leg, according to The Daily Times newspaper.

Animal control officer Robin Loev responded to a call from the hospital and suspects the puncture wound was from the bite of another dog.

Loev says the German shepherd mix appeared to be intelligent and calm - and knew enough to go to the right place.


Link | Photo: CDC

The Three Girls


(Video Link)


The Three Girls is a stop-motion animated movie by Laura Seymou, a six-year old girl, and Angela Sheehan, her adult sister. It's like Axe Cop, except that the child did all of the drawing. Sheehan writes:

This is a stop-motion collage I made, based on drawings by my little sister (six years old at the time). Back in 2005, I was studying animation and taking classes in childhood development/learning and wanted to combine the two. I decided to make a movie with her over Thanksgiving break. I gave her some paper and crayons and asked her to write me a story. I took some video of her drawing and showing her grandparents the story and describing it to them. It was fun to see how she told the story differently to each person and all the little details she included when asked about different parts of the drawings. Back at school, I scanned her drawings in and printed out copies that I then animated to her narration. My dorm room was a giant mess of paper and a camera for about a week. It was a blast. I showed her the finished product over my winter break and she loved it. I would've loved to involve her more in the actual animation process, but my school was too far away.


via Make

Paratrooper Dog

This dog, a Belgian Shepherd, is a member of Austria's special forces. He and other elite dogs join their human comrades during parachute drops:

Far from panicking at the experience of hurling themselves out of a plane at 10,000ft, the Austrians' Belgian Shepherd dogs appear to be perfectly calm both before and during the jump.

One handler explained: "They don't perceive height difference the same way humans do, so that doesn't worry them. They're more likely to be bothered by the roar of the engines, but once we're on the way down, that doesn't matter and they just enjoy the view."


Larger image at the link.

Link | Photo: Daily Telegraph

Facedown Photos



Taking photos of people lying facedown on the ground in public is an emerging Internet meme. Facedowns is a photoblog of such pictures. The goal of the bloggers behind it, Lynn and Michael Chealander and Amy Mihyang, is to get facedown photos of themselves in many different countries around the world. Above is one of Lynn Chealander's photos of a facedown from the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone.

Link via DudeCraft

Play Rock-Paper-Scissors With Yourself


(YouTube Link)


Steve Hoefer made an arduino-controlled glove that can play rock-paper-scissors. Sensors on the glove determine what move the user makes while the glove offers its own. It learns patterns in the way that the user plays and tries to anticipate the user's strategy.

Hoefer provides building instructions and schematics at the link.

Link via CrunchGear

Child-Sized Ferrari



It's the ultimate Power Wheels toy car. This custom-built Ferrari was built for the opening of the first Ferrari dealership in Moscow. It's powered by an 80 cc engine and sized to fit two children. The car is on sale in New York City for $25,000.

http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/ferrari/f40/1010970.html via DVICE | Photo: Hemmings

A Short Film Made from Cross Stitching


(Video Link)


Maggie and Mildred is a short film by Holly Klein about the make-believe adventures of two little girls. She cross stitched all of the characters and scenes, and then animated them. In an interview about the project, Klein wrote:

It took me about nine months to stitch all of the elements. I stitched the house first, then made the characters with all of their parts and outfits seperately. I then scanned everything into the computer, cut them out, and animated them in the computer. The whole process took me just under two years.


via Make | Artist's Website | Interview with Klein about the Film

The World's Longest Place Names



Ben Goulding of Pig Jockey has a list of the world's longest place names, including Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateahaumaitawhitiurehaeaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. That's a hill in New Zealand. Because it's such a long name, most people just call it Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu for short.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Maggga.blogspot.com

Famous Movie Quotes Represented as Infographics



Statistician Nathan Yau of Flowing Data put together this infographic presenting famous movie quotes as data charts. You can view eight more at the link.

Link via Popped Culture

25 Years Ago Today, the First Dot.com URL Was Registered

Twenty-five years ago today, Symbolics Computers of Cambridge, Massachusetts, registered Symbolics.com as a URL. It was the first such claim in computing history:

That same year another five companies jumped on a very slow bandwagon.

It took until 1997, well into the internet boom, before the one millionth dotcom was registered.[...]

It is unlikely that the early dotcoms were thought of as businesses as the early internet was not seen as a place for commerce but rather as a platform for governmental and educational bodies to trade ideas.

Scholars generally agree that a turning point was the introduction of the Mosaic web browser by Netscape that brought mainstream consumers on to the web.


Link via Gizmodo | Image: FBI

The Fashionable Weapons of Peter Gronquist



We've previously featured artist Peter Gronquist's work, namely a pimped-out wheelchair and a Pac-Man grenade. Among his other products are rifles altered to reflect various fashion labels. These have been interpreted by art critics in sophisticated, intellectual ways. But in an interview, Gronquist dismissed these explanations:
I actually came up with a ton over the years that I’ve been developing, the original being: “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” The short list includes: our culture’s glamorization of violence, rampant consumerism, war profiteering and how people will put designer brands on literally anything and think that they are automatically awesome. I really just wanted to make something completely ridiculous. Then people gave me money for them. So I made a ton of them because I’m a whore. I find that it’s a parody of myself because I also like ridiculous things sometimes for no logical reason. I’m a victim of the rampant consumerism that I parody. It’s all very confusing.


Link via Secret Threads | Interview

Chandelier Made out of Tampons



This chandelier made out of tampons was made by artist Joana Vasconcelos in 2001. "The Bride" was displayed in 2005 at the Arsenale, a museum in Venice, as part the Venice Biennale, a major art exhibition that occurs every two years.

Link via GearFuse | Artist's Website | Photo: Fashion Indie


Genetically-Modified Super Trout Have 20% More Muscle, Telekenesis


(YouTube Link)


Okay, I made up the last bit. But these fish have been altered to grow far more muscular than normal trout:

The bodybuilder stature of the trout comes from turning off myostatin, a protein that normally slows muscle growth. Researchers had known of a natural myostatin mutation that allowed for 20 to 25 percent more muscle growth in Belgian blue cattle, but did not know if the same would apply to the different mechanism of muscle growth in fish.

Terry Bradley, a fisheries and aquaculture expert at the University of Rhode Island, worked with a group of grad students for 500 hours to inject 20,000 rainbow trout eggs with different DNA snippets designed to block myostatin.

About 300 eggs ended up carrying the gene for more muscle growth, and eventually produced fish that mostly have the six-pack ab appearance -- even though the fish don't have standard abdominal muscles. A big dorsal hump adds the appearance of muscular shoulders.


Photos at the link.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/transgenic-trout-six-pack-abs-could-arrive-your-dinner-plate via io9

Twenty 5-Second Films


(YouTube Link)


5 Second Films is an ongoing project by Brian Firenzi. Each film consists of two seconds of opening credits, five seconds of story, followed by one second of ending credits -- the perfect format for people with short attention spans. The video above contains the twenty films that Firenzi considers to be his best. Content warning: NSFW language.

via reddit | Official Website (self-starting audio)

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Profile for John Farrier

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