going to work [Flickr]

Based on a remix contest by Radiohead for the song “Nude”, James Houston assembled an elderly choir of obsoletia that grinds, beeps, and chirps their way to something unexpectedly haunting.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX

I was scrambling for this week’s NdJ theme, not having been brung low by any songs lately, and was blessed by this today. I admit freely that I choked up. Not just for nostalgia, though the dot matrix is an old friend and the scanner knows me yet, but for the pathos of pastured machines.

It solidifies for me, this video, that the early consumer-computer era has really passed, can be patted into a packaged time, a turned page. Out of etymological playfulness, what would we call it? Pixelpunk?

Thanks to Fixer667, who I believe Ectotweeted this.

What happens when you put a cellphone in a microwave? To a Luddite like myself who retains a healthy distrust and aversion to mobile communication the results are unsurprising.

Cell Phone In Microwave [YouTube] : Cynical-C

Art Center College of Design student Jake Loniak designed this motorcycle concept, which he dubbed the Deus Ex Machina. His concept is an electric vertically parking motorcycle controlled by 36 pneumatic muscles with 2 linear actuators. It can reach 60mph in three seconds and has a top speed of 75mph. The exo-skeleton has seven artificial vertebrae and a pneumatically attached helmet. One thing is for certain, it’s a much more interesting “future of transportation” idea than the Segway.

Art Center College of Design shows Yamaha-branded wearable motorcycle concept [Hell For Leather] : engadget : Be Sportier

Just as the name suggests this clock, designed by Rhode Island School of Design student Alvin Aronson uses an analog mechanism to replicate the numbers on a digital clock’s LCD. The transition from minute to minute is subtle and elegant and would look great embedded into plain white wall, the numbers emerging from its unblemished surface.

D/A Clock Combines Analog and Digital Worlds [YouTube] : portfolio +/- (Artist’s Site) : Core77

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a contact lens that integrates a biologically safe circuit into its design. The circuit will allow for a myriad number of possibilities such as giving pilots or drivers info on their speed projected onto their windshield or to help the vision impaired.

Of course, the lenses can also be applied to entertainment and communications purposes. They would allow videogame designers to completely immerse the player in their virtual world. One would be able to browse the internet on a floating display that only the wearer could see. I can only pray that these appear soon; I look forward to posting “Your Daily WTF”, knowing that, somewhere, perhaps on a park bench, someone is staring, an expression of pained shock and horror on their face, as people walk past wondering if, perhaps, someone should get them some medical attention.

Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision [uwnews]

Amongst typical flotsam digg-bait posts, deputy dog has posted a list of five “unbelievably cool research facilities.” None of these research facilities are dedicated to slapping Hitler’s brain into a titanium juggernaut body, so that post title’s a bit of a cock tease. That said, I love this image of the z machine at the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. It is called the Z Machine despite clearly being the largest X-Ray machine on Earth. It has produced plasma hotter than the core of our sun. But none of that science matters to me: I just love to think that deep in the bowels of the Earth exists a throbbing, electrified hive-mind of interconnected X-Ray synapses.

5 Unbelievably Cool Research Facilities [Deputy Dog]

I’m not really sure who would win in a fight: Balloon Head or Penguin Bot? Balloon Head’s secret attack is both surprising and devastating, but Penguin Bot’s sharp beak might just thwart it with a loud “pop!” Either way, the fight itself would make us all winners.

Robot Wars [YouTube] : Drawn!

Ladies! Do you frequently suffer from the nervous vapors? Bouts of uncontrollable feminine hysteria? Well, then, Dr. John Robert’s Patented Electro-Massive Machine (a.k.a. The Electric Manipulator) For Curing Disease At Home is all you need to return yourself to a prim, proper maternal state. Simply apply the device to your unmentionables and thrill to the soothing electrical vibrations as they send you to the heights of curative ecstacy and gracefully (if privately) eliminate all manner of hysterical emotions!

For more information please consult the book The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, by Rachel Maines, or the film which it inspired, Passion & Power: The Technology of Orgasm. I’m sure ladies will be impressed by the depth of study that has gone into curing their hysteria (and filming it for “educational videos” in the San Fernando Valley of California, the capitol of electro-orgasmic research) and gentlemen will be intrigued by watching the emotional balm of orgasmic therapy applied to troubled young women who have just achieved the difficult age of eighteen. Remember, it’s all for the greater good of humanity!

Technology and Orgasm on Film [The World’s Fair] (Thanks, Stacey!)

This week’s Noise du Jour theme is: robots. Songs about robots, songs by robots.

There is no band more robotic than Kraftwerk, and no song by Kraftwerk can be more robotic than “The Robots.”

When I was a kid in the 1970s, Kraftwerk’s music literally sounded like The Future. I was certain that all music would sound like Kraftwerk (and/or Gary Numan) by the Year 2000. Well, the Year 2000 is history now, and technically, we’re now living in The Future. You can keep your disappointment over the lack of flying cars in the Year 2007, I’m disappointed that the radio isn’t full of angular German electronic music.

KRAFTWERK - The Robots (THE MIX Version)

I am constantly reminded of just how difficult a woman’s life is. I am well versed in the entire catalog of Harrowing Tales of Female Oppression. My other has so well indoctrinated in me the canon of Vaginal Unfairness that she no longer even has to keep my testicles in a jar. I am well trained and, therefore, can be trusted with them. With that in mind, I submit this article from a January, 1937 issue of Modern Mechanix entitled “Proving Women Also Have Ideas”.

“Queen of women inventors is Miss Beulah Louise Henry of New York, above. She has earned the title of ‘Lady Edison’ with 43 patents in the past decade for inventions ranging from dolls to sewing machines. One of her most unusual products is a snap-on parasol which permits a woman to have an umbrella to match each frock. She also has devised many things for the aid of office workers.”

Woe to you, the naysayers! Here, now, is irrefutable proof! Had you any doubts, the accomplishments of Miss Henry will surely have laid them to rest.

Proving Women Also Have Ideas [Modern Mechanix]