For those of you sitting around doing frak-all with your Saturday night (like me), I present an oldie but a goodie:

From RoboCentral:

AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. AquaJelly consists of a translucent hemisphere and eight tentacles used for propulsion. At the centre of the AquaJelly is a watertight, laser-sintered pressure vessel. This comprises a central, electric drive, two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, the charge control device and the servo motors for the swashplate.

Auf Deutch von Festo.com.

[via DesignNews]

It’s always hard to have one of your own down. The accident happens, the drama occurs, the people flurry to help, it’s what everyone’s talking about, and we all revel in the joy of community and grow closer in tragedy.

It’s one of the only good things that comes out of something like this, and it’s an important facet of living, but what we forget is that time keeps going, and that help and virtuousness of feeling and closeness dissipates into what-project-are-you-working-on, oh-man-my-car-broke-down, what-are we-doing-this-weekend, etc etc.

Sometimes people forget that even though the high drama has passed, the wounds are still there, insurance still needs to be supplemented, rehab is still going on, and Our Man still has a long way to go.

It’s singular to note, then, that even though it’s no longer the event of the moment, even though the casual observer has drifted off into the next huge thing, that there is a core of dedicated, loving people who make sure to remember their friend, and bloody well make sure that everyone else remembers him too. It’s the kind of community (jeez I hate that word) that anyone would be proud to be a part of.

Todd Blair was injured in an accident at RoboDock almost one year ago. He’s fighting the good fight for long, long time, and will still be fighting well into next year.

Behind the scenes, people like Nina Alter, Mark Pauline, Amy Critchett, and dozens upon dozens of others have made a huge effort to set up a brand spanking new Todd Website, and to orchestrate a completely awesome fundraiser at Rhythmix Cultural Works.

So join us for the unveiling of 1 Wall/25 Gears , the latest benefit for Todd Blair and his partner Alex Ismerio:

July 20th 2008, come celebrate!
The Wall of gears built by all our hard-working gear-makers will come to life at Rhythmix Cultural Works in Alameda.
3pm – 8pm
2513 Blanding Ave, Alameda CA 94501

$5 to $500 donation at the door
All donations are tax deductible
All Ages Welcome

1 Wall / 25 Gears is a 7′ x 8′ kinetic monument of aluminum gears being sponsored and built by 25 artists and artist organizations, in honor of and to financially support Todd Blair. This event is to celebrate Todd, the gear-maker’s efforts… and of course, to have plenty of fun doing all of the above and then some!

+ Witness The Wall built throughout the day
+ Food, Drinks, Raffle, DIY Shirts, Performance
+ DJs Matt Heckert, Kal Spellitch, Mori Pauline

· DIY Shirts with Amy Jenkins
· Laloos Goat Milk Icecream
· Flaming Lotus Girls Feathers
· Bissap Baobob Senegalese food
· Maze Diako drummers
· Dogs Steamed by Shannon O’Hares Steam car
· Kyrsten & her Amazing Bellydancers
· Joan Ryan reading
· Raffle of amazingness
+ MORE!

Even if you can’t make it, do try to send Alex and Todd a little bit of cash, they are struggling and even with all the lovin’, it ain’t easy. As my Uncle Christine says, “Chip in, hippie. Remember – next time it might be you.”

If nothing else, it’s going to be a screaming fun time, so if you are anywhere near the Bay Are on the 20th, do pop in.

Want. One. Sadly, they are sold out, O Tinyminds, make more? Please?

Tinyminds on Etsy had this adorable solar powered Elder God available for your soul-eating and cosmically horrifying pleasure.

From Tinyminds themself:

Cthulhu is a scary wee beasty. when i started making him he seemed quite cheerful but slowly his personality revealed itself and left me a little scared…

he is a solar powered bugbot, he has a small vibrating motor attached to a solar engine and solar cell. he soaks up light till he has enough stored up in his capacitor to run a short burst from the motor. when this happens he wobbles ominously on his many spindly legs.

Cthulhu is what appears to be a very large version of an ordinary average wee small BEAM bot. BEAM Bots are cool, and you should follow Tinyminds’ example and build some of your own.

[via BoingBoing, BotJunkie, etc etc]

A bunch of those kooky kids down at the Trossen Robotics Community have been kicking around resurrection of a neato robot competition. Mechwars is like mecha-godzilla writ very, very tiny.

Imagine buildings crushed, panic in the streets, carnage as two huge warrior mechs fight to the death for glory and honor and the cool stuff. Now imagine this about 1/100 life scale and we’re almost there. See? it’s like Robot Jox, only good, and feasible.

Here’s the main site where rules, etc are stated. The Trossen Community is where the rules are dissected, debated, and technology rears it’s cute little servo-laden head. It’s also a good jumping off point if you’ve never built a thing and are all like “WTF Mate?”.

A bunch of old school Robot Wars vets are apparently drooling over this too, so it should be a tremendous amount of fun. No, you should not be intimidated, you should just have fun.

If you start now, conduct yourself with diligence, and eat ALL of your veggies, you will have a respectable mechwarrior by the time RoboGames 2009 rolls around. We’re rolling out all the Lexan and carpet for this one, so if nothing else, you have an event to work towards.

This enigmatic creature came to our attention this afternoon, because we are sucker for things that whinny and breathe fire and frighten small children. Here he is at the Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin in 2007:

Here’s look at him from this year’s Glastonbury Festival:

The critter is apparently called Paco’s Mechanical Horse, but I haven’t found any more info about him on the interwebs anywhere. Anyone at Glastonbury this year who can give us some background?

I am a lying whore. About seventeen seconds of research led me to the Boardwalk, inside Shangri-La, one of many hidden and gemlike substage type areas in the giant entertainment behemoth that is The Glastonbury Festival (Glastonbury – It’s like Burning Man, only damp!).

There are two (yes! TWO!) of these horses, and they are brought about through the sideshow talent of Paka The Uncredible, “a surreal, Beckettian, pyro–junk buffoon” according to his agency website. Paka is available for weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, strawberry socials, meantime entertainments and Official unofficial nonsense.

If you are in the UK, book him so he can make enough money to come to RoboGames next year, okay?

[via FreshCreation]

For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Long Now Foundation presents Mechanicrawl this Saturday!

San Francisco has a plethora of automatic treasures that hardly anybody knows about. Mechanicrawl is an effort to help people discover these mechanical marvels and help these institutions survive. Highlights of the tour include the giant 3 story steam engine inside the Liberty Ship Jeremiah O’Brien, the Musee Mechanique, The USS Pampanito, a diesel electric submarine, and The Long Now Museum and Store itself.

These are the sorts of things that are dying out due to lack of budget and interest, so go check them out and see a bit of moving history in action. There will be at least three things on this tour that will either make you drool uncontrollably or inspire reminiscence of stuff you broke when you were a kid.

An now, an ode to Technology:

These sheep were made by Jean-Luc Cornec and displayed at the Frankfurt Museum of Communication.

And yes, it is a slow news day.

[Thanks Book of Joe!]

Beautiful organic spooky robotic art. THIS is what we’re talking about!

See videos here. Yum.

[Thanks Engadget!]

Seriously, it is. All’s you need is a couple of these remote control cars an a few off the shelf parts, and a nice long stretch of summer afternoon.

Robot Wall Racers: Your home is a racing track! from Frits Lyneborg on Vimeo.

Frits details how he built these little beauties on Let’s Make Robots.com. This is a project any number of people could take and run with. I can think of about seventeen ways to modify this to, say, annoy one’s neighbor’s bloodthirsty hellbeast of a cat, say. The possibilities are tantalizing.

Thanks to Frits Lyneborg for being bored that day.

Instructables has extended their Robot Contest for another few days, so get building campers!