unique and interesting: 2010

Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year

I want to thank all Presurfer readers for making it another amazing year. I also like to thank those of you who help me out every now and then by sending links. You know who you are.May the New Year bring you love, happiness, serenity, success, and good...

If you don't know what resolution to make on New Year's Day, the New Year's Resolution Generator can help. Just click on 'Gimme More', pick a resolution and stick to it.The New Year's Resolution Generator was made by graphic designer Monina Velar...

Black Devil - Moscow Ride On Yamaha R1

A motorcyclist high-speed 25-mile ride through Moscow traffic. There are a lot of these videos to be found on YouTube. And it seems that some people find this exciting and amazing. I find it unbelievably dangerous and stupid.YouTube link(thanks Christi...

Sharing widget AddThis, which is installed on more than 7 million domains and reaches more than one billion users per month, released an infographic with some interesting statistics about about our sharing habits.(via Mashab...

21 Cool Cutlery, Flatware and Silverware Desig...

image creditFor thousands of years traders on the Silk Road have used the Crescent Lake oasis as a last stop off before they face the hardships of the Gobi Desert. Six kilometers from the city of Dunhuang, the oasis has persevered throughout the millennia....

Shoes That Clean The Floor

The FOKI is a floor cleaning shoe. It has two rotary cleaners underneath each shoe to sweep up dust and kill bacteria. They're cordless but there's a LED display on the side to indicate battery levels.(via Everlasting Blo...

No matter what the species, it seems we all have this innate feature built in us to just adore cute, cuddly, and sweet looking creatures. Perhaps it's a nurturing factor, an aesthetic factor, or just the fact that cute animals look so innocent and lovable...

image creditThe seemingly bizarre tintype shown above is an example of a nineteenth-century image created using the 'hidden mother' technique Most infants during that time were photographed with their mothers holding them.The intended picture was ultimately...

The Atlantic Ocean can be an unforgiving place at the best of times. During the Second World War, combatants on both sides were at peril both from the ocean and the enemy. On 12 September 1942, the British ship RMS Laconia, which was armed, was torpedoed...

St. Luke's Bottle Band At Letterman

YouTube link(thanks Co...

image creditIn the late 1560s Diego de Landa wrote of how Maya books, or codices, of 'ancient matters and sciences' had been burned because they contained 'superstition.' Just four codices survived, only one of which, the Grolier Codex, has remained...

Deep beneath the ice of Antarctica, the world's strangest observatory has finally reached completion. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a gigantic telescope at the South Pole that is designed to detect elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos that...

The Bionic Body Shop

Want to improve your body? Go to the Bionic Body Shop where you can buy a bionic eye ($30,000) to partially cure blindness, a cochlear implant ($95,000) to partially cure, a powered exoskeleton ($15,000), or a ventricular assist device($150,000).Of course,...

image creditIt's already been established that a woman's diet can affect a baby's health, but it now appears that mothers aren't the only ones: what a father eats can have an impact on his children's heatlh as well. A new study details how paternal diet...

This mouse hat is hand knitted with extra soft wool. Plenty of stretch.(via Everlasting Blo...

Ten Things Web Users Should Fear In 2011

As in the real world, cyberspace has bad neighborhoods. But unlike the real world, risks in cyberspace are not easy to spot - and the location of those digital bad neighborhoods can change all the time. When security experts look back at 2010, they will see a major turning point in the world of cyberscares....

Hawaiian Caterpillar With 'Claw Of Death'

Eupithecia is a large, worldwide genus of inchworms (moths in the family Geometridae). The Eupithecia in Hawaii are unique because of the particular ecological niche they fill - they are predators, while nearly all other known caterpillars are plant feeders only.YouTube linkvia NeatoH...

Department stores such as Sears and K-Mart began using the boom box in their marketing as early as 1983. Merriam-Webster pins it at 1981, and defines the boom box as 'a large portable radio and often tape player with two attached speakers.'As the masses...

A team at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab are building a 3D food printer which they hope one day will be as commonplace as the microwave oven or blender. Just pop the raw food 'inks' in the top, load the recipe - or 'FabApp' - and the...

The 'Stringbike' totally rethinks the traditional drivetrain of a bicycle. According to the Stringbike creators, the placement of the chain and gears on one side of the frame on a traditional bike causes a subtle, although not unnoticeable, asymmetrical...

The Many Moods Of Batman

(via BuzzFe...

Imagine this. In 1985 you buried a time capsule containing coins, news clippings and a bottle of New Coke. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of your village, you want to dig it up. There's one problem. You don't know where it is.That's exactly what...

image creditIt's the size of a barn door, weighs more than an elephant, and is one of the most famous and coveted paintings in the world. It's the Ghent Altarpiece - also called Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (in Dutch: Het Lam Gods), after a central panel...

Browse the distribution of racial and ethnic groups from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, based on samples from 2005 to 2009. Because these figures are based on samples, they are subject to a margin of error, particularly in places with...

Robert LeRoy Ripley was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur and amateur anthropologist, who created the world famous 'Ripley's Believe It or Not!' newspaper panel series, radio show, and television show which feature odd 'facts' from around the world.Robert...

image creditCrayons have been a favorite of children for over a hundred years. Ever since the first Crayola crayons were introduced back in 1903, children around the globe have been making the world around them come alive through their pictures and drawings.The...

For decades, the World Database of Happiness has tracked how happy people are.There are 4 categories: not at all happy, not very happy, quite happy, and very happy. As it turns out, most of us are mostly happy, even when things aren't going so well.Here's...

When you are a Dark Lord of the Sith sometimes you have to take time out - after all, ruthlessly controlling a galaxy far far away is a tiring and thankless task.Occasionally you need to remember what (or who) you once were. What better way to do so...

Unique Game For Party Amusement

From Modern Mechanix, January 1933: A unique game for party amusement.'Spike the Potato' is a highly entertaining game for any party. All that is needed is a single large potato, a number of paper cones and some needles. When you roll the paper cones...

image creditSome really cool and unusual mailbox designs - all of them made with recycled and repurposed items.(via Dark Roasted Blend)related posts:9 Wacky Mailboxes From Around The Wo...

How To Suck At Facebo...

290+ Social Media Resources From 2010

Mashable has a list of nearly 300 in-depth features, galleries and how-tos from the past year to help you navigate the social media world. You'll find everything from how to enhance your Facebook profile, find videos and music, contribute to a charity and just about any other topic you can think ...

Beers Filling Up Through The Bottom Of The Cup

GrinOn Industries has designed and fabricated the Bottoms Up Draft Beer Dispensing System, the fastest dispensing system in the world which fills at a rate of up to nine times that of traditional beer taps. How it's done? With refrigerator magnets. As you can see here.YouTube link(thanks Co...

Unusual Locomotion is a site about unusual off-road vehicles. Often, these vehicles will remain at the prototype stage because they are too eccentric, too expensive compared to the improvements, or too far ahead of their time.Unusual Locomotion aims...

Why The Kids Don't Blog And Grandma's On Facebook

Teenagers are abandoning blogs, while members of the 'G.I. Generation' are flocking to Facebook. These are two of the findings in a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.The central finding of this year's report is highly intuitive: Across the board, people are using the Internet...

Nanotechnologists at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, have produced the 'world's smallest Christmas card.' It can apparently fit onto the surface of a postage stamp 8,276 times, or onto a real holiday card some half a million tim...

Merry Christmas

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For decades, militaries have weaponized Christmas songs, symbols, and sentimentality for psychological warfare and propaganda purposes. Here are some bizarre tales about ersatz Christmas cards during World War II, controversial Christmas trees, and decking...

image creditImagine being looked in the face by a mighty prehistoric-looking beast – the words largest venomous living reptile on earth. A meat eating monster, growing up to impressive lengths of 10 feet long is the renowned giant - the Komodo drag...

Jelly Wobbler

A machine for wobbling jelly, operated by a foot-pedal accelerator.YouTube l...

Think you know yourself like the back of your hand?Here are 28 strange facts about the human body that may surprise y...

Shoes With Faces

American designer Gwen Murphy makes shoe sculptures. She's a brilliant artist who collects pairs of old shoes and transforms them into wonderful works of art. By using acrylic paint and clay each pair of shoes gets a personality of its o...

The Dalu Robot restaurant, which opened this month in Jinan in northern Shandong province, is touted as China's first robot hotpot eatery where robots resembling Star Wars droids circle the room carrying trays of food in a conveyor belt-like system.More...

image creditYou meet them sometimes: people who just seem to have been born out of their time, somehow not quite at home or comfortable in the time period in which they find themselves.As far as his art is concerned, this is certainly the case with Giuseppe...

BMW Bike Vs BMW Bob

World Stunt Champion Chris Pfeiffer from Germany is a maniac! Check out his BMW G450X chicken run with Christoph Langen (four-times Olympic medal winner) in a BMW designed Olympic Bobsleigh at the Innsbruck Olympic Run.YouTube link(thanks Co...

A look at a few stylish custom scooters straight from the streets of Jap...

The Curious Evolution Of Holiday Lights

In 1882, the look of the holiday season changed forever. Instead of decorating a Christmas tree with candles, Edward Johnson, inventor and vice president of Thomas Edison's electric company, strung 80 red, white and blue light bulbs on his scrawny evergreen....

My Blackberry Is Not Working

British comedians Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfield in a hilarious sketch. Ronnie Corbett returns to the shop to complain his Blackberry isn't working.YouTube link(thanks Co...

I've told you before and I'm telling you again: the Internet is about cats. And now that it's Christmas time, so here are some cats in Christmas tre...

10 Fascinating And Unexpected Origins Of Words

Language is a fascinating thing. The words we use today are drawn from, and have evolved for, today's usage from a wide variety of sources. One source is someone's name. An eponym is a word that has its origin in a person's name.Here's a list that contains 10 eponyms and their fascinating origins.(via...

Dog Judo: I'm Crying This Christmas

YouTube link(via Everlasting Blo...

Scientists say an entirely separate type of human identified from bones in Siberia co-existed and interbred with our own species. The ancient humans have been dubbed 'Denisovans' after the caves in Siberia where their remains were found. A study in Nature...

14 Cool Computer Keyboard Mods And Designs.(via NeatoH...

A low-cost solution to keep on biking. One of the cyclists at Dutch Bike Co. was caught without studded tires when it started snowing in Seattle. But there's nothing that a box of zip ties can't fix! This MacGyver trick isn't new, but now that winter...

Scientists Breed A Mouse That Sings

Japanese scientists have produced a mouse that tweets like a bird in a genetically engineered 'evolution' which they hope will shed light on the origins of human language. A team of researchers at the University of Osaka created the animal in their 'Evolved...

image creditLake Bled in Slovenia has had visitors for thousands of years. Little wonder when you consider its mild climate and beautiful surroundings. The lake has an island, tear-shaped and the only real island in the virtually land-locked country.When...

A fanny pack, sometimes called a belt pack, belly bag, Buffalo pouch, hip sack, bum bag, or moon bag, is a small fabric pouch secured with a zipper and worn at the waist by a strap around the hips or waist.Fanny packs reached the peak of their popularity...

image creditThe Encyclopedia Astronautica is a reference web site on space travel maintained by space enthusiast and author Mark Wade.A comprehensive catalog of vehicles, technology, astronauts, and flights, it includes information from most countries...

But Is It Art?

Performance by Danish artist Christian Falsnaes. He says: I make my body available for the creative output of the audience (I am the brush, the audience is the painter). Then we leave the gallery and take the street to dance. Everybody sings 'Lose yourself' by Eminem.YouTube l...

When you're baking cookies for Christmas, it isn't quite enough to do one batch of cookies. After all, if you're going to bake only one day out of the year, it's probably for Christmas and you may as well go all out.A great cookie plate should have a...

image creditWhat could be more annoying than picking up a manuscript that is written in a language you cannot translate? Even in the age of the internet, where instant translations are available on demand, there remain examples of written language that...

image creditIt's kind of morbid but one of the last vehicles on which you would expect to see a vanity license plate is the trusty old hearse - a form of transportation originally built with one purpose in mind: to carefully, and without smirk more often...

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Friday, December 31, 2010

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