Any Questions?

Most people think of attics as a place to stash boxes of Christmas ornaments and dusty boxes of mementos. Follow the example of today's featured workspace, and the attic becomes a place for 8-core workstations and Rock Band sessions.

If we had to guess how Lifehacker reader edgefactor627 came about the idea of having such a pile of goodies in his attic, we'd have to go with him having a strong desire to serve as a beacon of fun for the whole neighborhood, drawn to the signal of condensed awesomeness in the highest room in his house.

No matter what the motivation, the end result is a workspace that has plenty of personality—tartan carpet anyone?—and lots of space for work and play. On one end of the room is a MacPro 2009 with 8 cores, hooked up to dual 24" displays and a Wacom Intuos tablet. On the other end of the room is a couch, 1080 HDTV with surround sound, and a Rock Band station complete with drum set. Check out the pictures below for a closer view and the link to his Flickr set for additional photo notes.

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.

The Attic Playground [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]

View Original Article

Is it an alien desert crop circle made from cars and campers? Some kind of ancient civilization uncovered by freak dust storm? Truth be told it's neither, actually:

It's Burning Man 2005!

Giz reader Dean sent in a slew of aerial photos from the event four years ago after reading our post on the retro rocket being erected in Nevada this year.

These pics are cool because, as many of you know, we dig airplanes here at Gizmodo. And Burning Man, it just so happens, has had its own fully functional airport since 1999.

That's a good thing, believe you me, because it gives us some nice bird's eye shots of this immense event:

View Original Article

I never would've thought of all the teams in the league that MY Philadelphia Eagles would sign Michael Vick. The press conference is about to start soon. Hopefully they clear the air about the reason for the signing and see what they have plans for him. Regardless, I'm all about the team. GO BIRDS!

Every once in a while nature pulls a mean little trick on a selected member of a species.  For whatever reason, that particular specimen has been chosen for alteration.  Perhaps they wind up with an extra leg.  In some case they are shaped differently.

The bottom line is that these guys look a little different from the rest of the pack.  Some may call them “special.”  And some may call them what they’re more commonly known to be:  freaks of nature.

Here is a look at 10 such freaks.

(more…)

View Original Article

Laird Hamilton is as tech savvy as surfers get. Here he discusses his part in pioneering the latest surfing techniques, such as jet-ski tow-in surfing, hydrofoil boards and kite boarding:

I've been involved in the conception of a few different activities or disciplines of surfing, however you want to describe them: Foil boarding, kite-surfing, stand-up paddling most recently, and then of course tow-in surfing, which kind of allows us to ride some of the biggest waves in the world.

Stand-Up Paddling

I don't describe them as inventions, but really as a combination of a couple things that together created a new thing, a form of invention I guess, but we're never going to take credit for something that existed in some form before, that somebody else may have done.

Tow-In Surfing
I just think we were the first people to realize that you needed a motorized vessel to give you the speed in order to catch waves that are beyond 50 to 60 foot faces. They move at 30 or 40 miles an hour and manually you're just unable to match the speed and the timing it takes to ride one. That's really where tow-in surfing came from—a necessity.

We were able to catch these giant waves with a wind surfer and ride them unlike when we were surfing. Then we had foot straps. We already had a relationship with riding these outer-reef breaks in real rugged conditions that you just couldn't get to by laying on your stomach, paddling around.

And once we realized it, we were able to do it. And we started with a Zodiac boat and an outboard. That was obviously a little fragile and dangerous, so then, eventually, came the jet-skis. I think the first Yamaha sit down jet skis came out—the Wave Runner helped us evolve. Driving a Zodiac around in 30 foot surf is a lot trickier than getting on a Wave Runner. If the Zodiac gets tipped by a wave, you're over, whereas the jet-ski doesn't do well but it can survive.

I describe it like the four-minute mile. Once the guy broke the four-minute mile, then 30 guys broke the four-minute mile, but before that it was this invisible barrier. That's a little bit like what's happened with tow surfing.

Hydrofoil Surfing
As for the hydrofoil surfing, what we've found is that the foil board is probably the single most efficient wave riding instrument that we know of today. The reason why we say that—and the reason why we know that—is because you can ride waves that don't break.

Now we have a thing that we can use on a day when we wouldn't be able to ride the waves on anything except maybe a jet ski or some sort of power boat. We get on them by being towed, and we ride these waves for miles and miles at a time. By eliminating surface texture and tension, resulting in less friction, we created the ability to ride waves that don't break—to surf waves that were really unsurfable. Now we can ride a ground swell in the middle of the ocean.

We've also done it with the kite, but then you're obviously not going to let go of the kite—as you would a tow line—so then you're kiting-foiling instead of just foil surfing.

Kite Boarding
We were involved with the conception of kite boarding as well. Not the first people to ever kite obviously, since they've been around for thousands of years, but we were first guys really to start, because we had these big wave boards with foot straps—the perfect setup for being towed by a kite. We had these kites that you get launched, but if your kite crashed you were done. If you were a mile out in the ocean and your kite crashed, you now had yourself a giant bed sheet and a small little board.

Inflatable kites really created kite boarding. We were able to get those from a French guy who had invented a blow-up kite and a blow-up little catamaran—you could have a backpack and go hike and launch your blowup catamaran and your blowup kite and go and sail around with it. We got a hold of one of those little blowup kites and then one thing happened after another, then kite surfing or kite boarding was really born. Since then, it's been just a matter of evolution.

Laird Hamilton has been a surfing hero since the 1980s, solidifying his reputation as the king of big wave surfing when he conquered Tahiti's Teahupo'o Reef at its most perilous in August 2000. As an innovator, he pioneered many new activities including kitesurfing, tow-in surfing and hydrofoil boarding. He's on the board of directors at H2O Audio, makers of pro-level waterproof iPhone and iPod cases, and has his own signature line of Surge waterproof earphones, proceeds of which are donated to the Beautiful Son foundation for autism education.

View Original Article

When you're a bartender, every night feels like the initial, frantic phases of an awkward orgy:  It's really loud and messy, and you've got a lot to do, but you have to deal with disgusting, sweaty, drunk a-holes all night.  A good bar patron can be a breath of fresh air to a hard-working bartender, but if you're going to get noticed in that sea of sweaty drunk faces that the bartender's looking into all night, you'll have to know the proper procedure:

 

Step 1: Have Some Boobs

 

 

Whether you're a guy who likes them or a girl who has them, boobs are great for many reasons.  One of the things that they're really good for is getting attention, and the great thing is that they don't even have to be your boobs.  As long as you're near a set of boobs, you're greatly increasing your chances of getting some drinks before the karaoke DJ starts hitting on your date again.  It doesn't matter what kind of boobs they are, either, but keep in mind that your wait time at the bar is directly proportional to the size of the boobs you're standing near.  Dolly Parton probably doesn't even know that people wait at bars, and guess what: neither does her husband.  Always stand next to the biggest boobs that you can find.  That's just good advice for life in general, but it will definitely help you get your drinks faster.

 

Step 2: Make Eye Contact, But Don't Be Creepy About It

 

 

Your goal here is fairly simple: you want the bartender to acknowledge that you're there, and that you're waiting to place an order, but you don't want to hold the gaze so long that his butthole starts to worry about you waiting for him later in the parking lot.  Just establish quick eye contact, and then look away.  Some people like to throw in a bit of a head nod, and that's probably okay if you can pull it off without looking like a biker bar extra from Wild Hogs, which most people can't do.  You definitely shouldn't smile unnaturally at the bartender, and don't even think of mouthing any words to him, unless you want him to think that you're either hitting on him, or that you're a deaf-mute, and  nobody wants to be mistaken for a deaf-mute.

 

Step 3: Hold Some Cash In Your Hand

 

 

read more

View Original Article