We are all living in the past!

Scientists have discovered that there is a tiny 80 millisecond lag between the external reality and your brain processing the information. This time is slightly longer than a blink of an eye. Scientists compare this to the way live television is not really live but rather on a shot delay so there can be time to edit anything inappropriate (like wardrobe malfunctions)

If you want to read more information on how they tested and found this out go here

The first webcam was created to watch a coffee pot!

In 1991, a camera was installed to capture pictures of the coffee pot in the Trojan Room of the old computer lab at the University of Cambridge! The idea behind it was to allow people to see if there was still coffee without having to go from their respective departments/rooms to the pot!

The image was 128x128 feed of the famed coffee pot on the user’s desktop in grayscale. Years later, the ‘Trojan Room coffee pot’ was auctioned off on eBay for £3350 ($5268.55)!

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Awesome and Extraordinary chairs

FlexibleLove - the extraordinary expanding chair


At first glance, the design of the FlexibleLove chair seems quite simple, but once you see how quickly and easily it can be expanded and contracted, you really appreciate the complexity of its design. The unique qualities of its accordion and honeycomb structure allow it to be stretched and folded into a multitude of shapes and lengths - creating surprisingly strong seating. To change its length and shape, you simply pull each end – much like playing an accordion. For a chair that offers this much flexibility and adaptability, it’s hard to believe it is made almost entirely of recycled cardboard.




How does cardboard manage to hold the weight of up to 16 people? Their body weight is divided evenly between the hundreds of cells contained in the chair. And, although it is strong enough to support the weight of all those people, it won’t support unbalanced weights so don’t let the kids jump or walk on it and obviously don’t use it outside or near fire!

The FlexibleLove was designed by Chise Chiu, a young designer from Taiwan. He discovered a factory in suburban Taipei that made honeycomb-structured pieces of recycled paper. This gave him the idea that the qualities of rigid honeycomb-structured cardboard could be used to create flexible furniture. His name, ‘FlexibleLove', was derived from the concept of a ‘flexible love-seat’ – that is, seating that can hold up to sixteen people simply by altering its shape and length. Each of his pieces is constructed using the same honeycomb structure, to allow for quick and easy extension and collapse.

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You gotta know when to fold ‘em: the furtive Flux chair

For purity of design and construction, the Flux chair is hard to beat. Fashioned out of a single piece of completely recyclable polypropylene, the Flux turns itself into a flat, self-contained “envelope” for ease of transport or storage. But then, in ten seconds, it can be folded out to transform into a beautiful piece of designer furniture.

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Winner of the 2009 Phillips Innovation Award, the judges commended Flux as “simple, innovative and easy to use.” While furniture made of folded plastic isn’t that unusual, what makes Flux distinctive is the use of curved foldlines - which gives the chair its fluent form - and integrating the fasteners into the single sheet design. The designers were also careful to keep its true purpose carefully hidden when folded down – it looks more like an artist’s folio than a potential seat.

Weighing only five kilos, the Flux is light enough to carry and the polypropylene makes it suitable for either indoor or outdoor use. Available in black or white, it can be ordered online from Flux for €129.00 (USD$180) but is presently only shipping within Europe.

flux chair from flux on Vimeo.


Workout at the office with the GymyGym exercise chair

A relatively recent shift from manual labor to office-type work has resulted in a large chunk of today's workforce spending eight hours or more sitting at a desk or workstation. The general health and fitness of a significant proportion of such a workforce is bound to suffer as a result. Anyone wanting to fight against this decline can of course opt for gym membership, but Adam Ben-David thinks he has a better solution. The GymyGym ergonomic exercise chair places a full body workout at your disposal without ever having to leave your desk.

Media Chair offers iPod dock, speakers, projector – and comfort

Usually, when you envisage a media chair your mind conjures up thoughts of weird (read uncomfortable) pieces of furniture that would be more at home in a museum of modern art than your lounge room. But Martin Emila’s Media Chair is something else. Sure, it’s a bit “left field” but it’s a concept chair that would look pretty good at my, I reckon. It features embedded speakers, an iPod dock, a projector and, above all, looks pretty darn comfortable.

“As a multimedia source, a built-in iPod dock sits in the right armrest and three-way speakers are built into the headrest to offer a surround sound distribution,” Emila, from Renamed, says.

“On the outer left side is a compact projector for watching video.”

Energy generating Murakami rocking chair powers its own light source

Designer Rochus Jacob has harnessed all that wasted kinetic energy created by gently rocking in the chair and has used advanced nano-dynamo technology built into the skids of the chair to power a reading lamp above the user’s head. And the lamp shade itself is actually the light source – it’s created from OLEDs. Thankfully, the flat and bendable organic light emitting diodes don’t require much power to deliver enough light to make reading enjoyable.

Dream boat : designed by Schöpfer Yachts

Luxury boat designer Schöpfer Yachts has launched its second stunning design – the Infinitas – and while at this stage it only appears on paper, we would really love to see this one on the water. Aside from the glass floored "sky-bridge", on-board elevator and front helipad, the standout design element is the carved out stern and mid section, which gives the 300ft (91.5m) yacht its radical dinosaur-skull-like profile.

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Designed by E. Kevin Schöpfer with Sparkman Stephens, Naval Architects the design’s inspiration comes from the symbol for infinity, which can be seen the yacht’s elevation.

The loop design is held together by a central “spine” that allows the "yacht’s superstructure to seamlessly flow within itself" according to the designers.

The unique design has also enabled a rethink of the layout. The main deck living room and dining room are detached with the dining room moved forward and separated from the living room by a massive pool deck.

The main level also contains the living room, kitchen, storage, and bow deck (with helicopter pad).

To ensure no break with comfort, the main salon has “generous” 12-foot ceilings and fully glazed walls that give the impression of an island within the yacht.

The next level up houses a series of guest suites and secondary bow deck. The owner’s suite occupies the third level with “sky bridge,” pilot house, and upper deck.





There are not one, not two but three methods to get to that all-important pool deck – an obvious hub of activity on such a craft. First is via a direct outside bridge/walkway that bisects the pool. It has underwater openings in its support system, allowing swimmers to dive from one side to another. The pool can also be covered for larger venue needs (or if you don’t want the hassle of removing empty Dom Perignon bottles and half eaten cans of beluga caviar from the bottom of the pool the next day).

The second method of crossing the pool deck is an overhead "sky bridge" that connects to the main stairs and elevator – yes elevator. The sky bridge has a clear glass floor and ceiling, allowing natural light to filter down to the pool below and help you work on that all-important tan, even while swimming under cover.

Finally the most mundane option is to simply walk via a lower level lounge that incorporates glass portals that let you see into the pool.

All told, the Infinitas can accommodate 16 guests and crew - and if you owned one of these, you’d easily have that many friends.Infinitas design specifications:

• Length: 300ft (91.5m)
• Beam: 56ft (17m)
• Draft: 14ft (4.2m)
• Fuel tanks: 65,000 gallons
• Water tanks: 28,600 gallons
• Propulsion: diesel electric
• Max speed: 20+ knots
• Cruising speed: 15 knots
• Accommodation: one owner suited and six guest suites (16 guests)

This record player reads tree rings instead of vinyls

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Artists often say they can find music in everything, particularly nature. The question they often face is how to get the general public to hear the same tune that they do. One German artist, Bartholomäus Traubeck, seems to have hit on one straightforward method to accomplish this with some clever technology. Using a digital camera and some software, the artist has built a unique record player that spins cross-sections of trees instead of vinyl and translates the rings into piano music.

The record player, which Traubeck titled "Years," has a fairly simple setup. A turntable was modified so the tonearm would hold a digital camera and light in place of the usual needle. The turntable rotates slices of wood as if they were LPs, while the camera scans the rings for their thickness, growth rate, texture, and overall color tone. A computer using some custom software maps that data to a musical scale, which is then played using piano notes. Traubeck claims the music follows some clear rules due to the programming, but that each tree still gives a very different sound.

The result is a haunting tune that could be mistaken for the work of an human composer; albeit a somewhat off-beat one. Check out the video below to see the"Years" player in action and hear what sort of music a tree can produce:

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

Fujitsu's new Laptop concept (Lifebook)

What if it were possible to link all those devices together into one convenient package that uses all that computing power at once? That's the idea behind one designer's concept for a Fujitsu Lifebook, which would come with slots for a smartphone, digital camera, and tablet, for them all to all work together as one super device.

The unique concept, dubbed "Lifebook 2013," comes from designer Prashant Chandra, who submitted the design to a competition held by Fujitsu. The laptop would feature fitted slots for various smart devices, but those aren't for your standard connectivity. Attaching a gadget to the Lifebook would bring all it's functions to the computer, including using its own processor to run some of the laptop's functions.

A woman jumped off of the Eiffel Tower and landed on a car. She later married the car’s owner

Suicide in the Eiffel Tower is apparently quite common. France has one of the highest suicide rates at 17.5 suicides per 1000 people! Killing yourself with the 1,063 foot “Iron Lady” is the third most popular French suicide method behind poisoning and hanging.

A few times, people have attempted to kill themselves but failed to do so. It's reported that one man was blown onto a rafter by the wind and he was spared. The most curious case is one of a woman who jumped, landed on the roof of a car and later married the man who owned it!

In an effort to reduce the number of suicides off of the Tower, six foot tall barriers were built around the tower. It has worked very well as the suicide rates have gone down exponentially. However, 4-5 cases of suicides a year in the famous city still happen.