Breakfast Links: Earthday After

Art for the day after Earthday.

So it’s the day after Earthday and you wonder, “What can I do to help?” Well, you’re in luck! Here’s some new fly modes of transport that you can wow your friends with and do good for ol’ mother earth at the same time! Oh frabjous day!

First out check out these crazy freeline skates. They’re skate boards and inline skates - you ride them like a board, but the wheels are inline and it’s actually two boards - one for each foot. It seems even harder than skate boarding but sure looks cool in that video! I’ve long thought that we’re trending towards fewer wheels and more flexibillity and this is the next step in that evolution - I’m just waiting for the things that’ll have one wheel for each foot, with maybe a little support wheel in front or back that you mostly don’t ride on. That’ll be the stuff. Someone I know ought to get this and let me see how it works in real life.

Next we have neato bikez from biomega that are shaft driven. Check out the Copenhagen or the Amsterdam underneath bikes on their site. Sorry the site’s got flash nav and is particularly atrocious. But the shaft drive is super cool - no chains, no grease, it’s all internal gearing. Wikipedia knows about it. Apparently there might be some minor efficiency concerns, but for the non-professional (as well as the wealthy), this may be the way to go. That Copenhagen is sweeeet. There’s other shaft driven bike’s, too, but the biomega’s are the bomb.

Now we’ve talked a little bit about biking and a little bit about inline skates… two great tastes that go great together? Uhh… no? Check out the difference between the video by the freeline guys and the video by the booster-blade guys. Well first check out the difference in the naming of their products, then check out the video. The booster blades seems like it might be an ok idea combining sort of pedaling and skating, but I think you kinda look like a tool bouncing up and down like that… And apparently this was the British Invention of the Year (well the bronze medal winner, at least) in 2005! Poor brits. Ah well, who knows, maybe we’ll all be bouncing around town in a few years, be better for the environment if not your rep.

Bonus quiz. I remember, somewhere around a decade ago there was some kinda attachment that you would wear on your legs that was really tall, kinda like fancy stilts, that would let you bounce and jump around all cool and stuff. I think, if I remember correctly, Busta Rhymes even had some folks on stage with him at like some MTV awards. I used to be able to find it on the internets whenever I’d think it was time to see that in action again, but in the past few years I couldn’t, but maybe you remember it and you can bust out some google-fu. You’ll get special points if you can.

Apr 23rd, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: art · breakfast links