Working from home is not easy, but it’s easier when you have an office you can use just for work. If you have a shed or room to build one, it can become a home office away from the distractions of the house. Here are twenty such shed offices that have been customized to the max. I’ll take the Manhattan rooftop shed! Pictured is a greenhouse that was converted to an office. Link

Toyota and subsidiary Hino Motors are joining forces with Japan Rail Hokkaido to develop vehicles that can drive on roads and railways. The DMV (Dual Mode Vehicle) has rubber tires and steel wheels, and can convert in about 15 seconds. They began testing the vehicles 18 months ago.

Combing the versatility of a bus with the speed of a train has allowed Japan Rail to tailor routes and services to the communities it serves. Rather than scuttling service on under-utilized lines, Japan Rail has simply switched to smaller vehicles.

Dual-mode vehicles would be a great addition to America's mass transit infrastructure. It would make rail transit feasible in those areas that don't have the population density to support a lot of stations, and make mass transit a more viable option for exurbs. Riders could simply hop on at a bus stop in their neighborhood, then ride the rails to their destination.

The new vehicles also use a lot less diesel fuel than conventional busses. http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/half-bus-half-t.html

(image credit: NeiTech)

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If you are still not sure that cell phones are evil, this should convince you. Don’t ever try this! -via the Presurfer

On May 27th, 1937, the new Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco officially opened to pedestrian traffic. Vehicles weren’t allowed until the next day. Wired has a look at the bridge’s construction timeline stretching back to 1869, and some statistics.

The Golden Gate Bridge was an engineering marvel. The site alone -- buffeted by high winds and split by the swirling currents of the Golden Gate -- made construction treacherous. The sheer size of the bridge (the longest suspension bridge in the world until the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964) required several innovations in bridge-building technology, especially where it came to constructing the two colossal anchorages in -- and under -- turbulent water.

Of all the mind-boggling statistics surrounding the bridge's construction, and there are plenty, perhaps the most jaw-dropping involves the two main suspension cables. Each measures 7,659 feet in length and each used hundreds of pencil-thick wires bound together to make a cable just over three feet in diameter. In all, more than 80,000 miles of steel wire was needed, enough to circle the earth three times.

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(image credit: jeromeinsf)

There’s no information about here they are, but here are pictures of seven bus shelters I wouldn’t mind waiting in. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

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Math geeks go disco! -via I Am Bored

If you’re having a Memorial Day picnic today, you probably won’t see this in time, but the summer is long. Instructables has directions for cutting your watermelon in a way that makes it easy to remove most of the seeds. I think it may take a bit of practice, but that just means more watermelon! Link -via Lifehacker

Atractaspis are also called mole vipers, burrowing asps, burrowing adders, stiletto snakes, or side-stabbing snakes. They can bite without opening their mouths!

Burrowing asps have a highly reduced dentition, with just two particularly elongate maxillary fangs (up to a third of total skull length), two short, gently curved dentary teeth, and a couple of very small palatine teeth[...}. The maxillary fangs (there are two in each maxilla, one of which is a replacement tooth kept in reserve) are huge compared to the short, block-like maxilla: in fact virtually its entire length is occupied by the transversely arranged fang sockets. The maxilla articulates with the relatively immobile prefrontal by way of a saddle-shaped joint (this contrasts with the condition in viperids, where the articulatory surfaces between the maxilla and prefrontal are flat), allowing the maxilla to easily rotate posterodorsally and anteroventrally.

Rotating teeth? I didn’t need to hear that! These snakes burrow underground and live in Africa and the Middle East. Link

The New York Times posted a profile of the webcomic xkcd and its creator, Randall Munroe. They titled it “This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix”. I beg to differ, since I don’t know Unix and I find his comics hilarious almost all the time.

Mr. Munroe has become something of a cult hero. He counts himself as among the fewer than two dozen creators of comic strips on the Web who make a living at it.

At Google headquarters, a required stop on the geek-cult-hero speaking tour, he recently addressed hundreds of engineers, some of whom dutifully waited for him to sign their laptops. He said he had only wanted a tour of the place but had instead been invited to speak. The real thrill, he said, was that a hero of his, Donald Knuth, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford and a programming pioneer, was in the front row.

“It’s comparable to Bill Gates’s being in the front row,” he said. “I got to have lunch with him. He’s in his 70s, but people he is in touch with must have told him about it.”

Link -via reddit

The image here is part of the latest strip.

Check out this Homer Simpson made of balloons! It’s part of an extensive collection of balloon art at Toxel.com. Link -via Digg

This is the way to carry coffee, much easier and safer than a tray! Link -via Dump Trumpet

You have to wonder what they were thinking, but I suppose there are places in the world where you can get in more trouble for shooting pictures than for aiming a gun. Oobject has a collection of 14 cameras that look just like guns. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Frank Woodruff Buckles is the only living American-born veteran of World War I, as far as federal officials know. The 107-year-old veteran was honored at the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City yesterday during Memorial Day celebrations.

Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the "war to end all wars" in April 1917.

He was rejected by the Marines and the Navy, but eventually persuaded an Army captain he was 18 and enlisted, convincing him Missouri didn't keep public records of birth.

Buckles sailed for England in 1917 on the Carpathia, which is known for its rescue of Titanic survivors, and spent his tour of duty working mainly as a driver and a warehouse clerk in Germany and France. He rose to the rank of corporal and after Armistice Day he helped return prisoners of war to Germany.

Buckles later traveled the world working for the shipping company White Star Line and was in the Philippines in 1940 when the Japanese invaded. He became a prisoner of war for nearly three years.

Buckles is to attend a ceremony today in which he will be presented with the American flag from the memorial site. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNYrbhwwpK2QFrtBHpEaPH0DFhkAD90SVBG00

(image credit: AP/Charlie Riedel)

Fireflies is a pleasant little game where you aim for as many fireflies as you can. Ricochet shots count, too! http://kungfugaming.com/play.php?game=fireflies -via Dump Trumpet

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This is what to do when you find a raccoon in the dumpster. It happened several times at my former workplace, and we kept a plank nearby for such occasions. -via Arbroath