I am not a coffee drinker and don’t really want to be.  But this car makes me want to steal the coffee grinds from the coffee machine at the end of the day and start storing this black gold.  A team at the BBC1 science show Bang Goes The Theory  got their hands on an old classic… a 88 Volkswagen Scirocco and made it run off of coffee grounds.  That almost makes the Prius look bad for the environment.

Before you get excited and start converting your car to a coffee guzzler, consider this… it takes the equivalent of 56 espressos to travel 1 mile.  Not exactly efficient or cost effective at the moment… but give it time.  Gasoline’s days are numbered.

The nerdy dudes at Hack n Mod have figured out how to restore a scratched up iPhone, and de-brand it in the process.  Takes a bit of work but the finished product is stunning.  Read on for the “how to”  restore your iPhone.

Steps to Resurrection:

• Buy a scratched iPhone on eBay
• Gently dry sand external scratches
• Add some water and wet sand
• Polish with a 3M Headlight Lens Restoration Kit (~$15)

[Via]

If you are reading this, chances are you shop on the Internets, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the Internets is a series of tubes infested with ebil hackers who wants to jack your stuffs.  Enter the SmartSwipe, a tiny black plastic Personal Credit Card Reader and Secure Online Shopping Assistant complete with excessively bright blue LED lights.  But enough conjecture…

Immediately upon opening the box I found one extremely comforting thing – a single CD-sized piece of paper with a three step installation process.  Seriously, it’s Barney friendly – Step 1, go to their website and download the install software – reboot.  Step 2. Plug the USB cable into a USB port (duh!).  Step 3. Start shopping online and follow onscreen prompts – swipe card, etc… That’s it!

So what does this little plastic dongle really do for you that makes you safer from the ebil internet haxx0rs?  Well for starters since you never actually enter your credit card info, even if you’ve got some evil keystroke capturing cootie on your system, the ebil haxx0r behind it will never see your credit card info.  In addition to that, your data is encrypted and that’s pretty cool.

The first time you open the Internet Explorer, after installing the SmartSwipe software and hardware, you are greeted with a their popup that reminds of the three simple steps of using SmartSwipe:

1. Shop – shop online at all of your favorite websites.
2. Click – when a website asks for your credit card number click the SmartSwipe button on your toolbar (this is important).
3. Swipe your credit card and follow the on-screen prompts.

There is a “Don’t show this again” check box, and a couple of help links to help you ease into the process.  The whole process of having to enter your credit card info becomes less painful, you do it once and allow the SmartSwipe to remember it and it will fill in the credit card info for you – I tried it on Buy.com, Amazon.com, and Pricegrabber.com and it worked flawlessly.  Also, some of the information normally exposed on the screen, gets removed by SmartSwipe replaced with blanks and little lock pictures.

On a somewhat negative side, SmartSwipe only works with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, a browser which I use for about five percent of my web browsing – Mozilla support would have made this a much more functional device for me.  On the whole, SmartSwipe still makes a good gift for that naggy relative or friend who constantly gets cooties “somehow” and still shops online.

http://www.smartswipe.ca/

Another reason to be paranoid I guess… now that you know how to reverse a peephole so you can see inside the hotel room… now you can open the hotel door without a key.  Watch this scary video after the break… who knew it was so damn easy to open a hotel door without a key?

When I first heard about Berkey Water Purifiers I wondered how such a simple looking filtration system can actually work, and to be honest I still don’t quite “get it”.  The company that makes Berkey filters has been around for about 200 years.  The filters are pretty famous in most parts of the world and work in some pretty nasty environments.

I got my hands on a Berkey Light water filter system and have put it through the paces.  Read on for a review of the Berkey Light water filter system.

When I review a product one of the first things I like to do is build a list of questions… and then try to get the manufacturer on the phone.  Sounds easy… but it usually isn’t easy to get a human on the phone these days.  I can tell you this, Berkey doesn’t try and hide their phone number and when you call them they know their stuff. 

I am not a big fan of plastics made of harmful chemicals like BPA, and was concerned about the Berkey Light Water Filter’s container.  Long story short, the person at Berkey let me know that the shell of the Berkey Lite is 50-mil thick and is made of BPA-free copolyester.  Dig further and you can find this info about copolyester, “New Eastman Tritan™ Copolyester is Ideal for reusable food and beverage containers, this new generation copolyester contains no bisphenol-A (BPA) and provides improved dishwasher durability.”

The first thing I did after assembling the unit was to run some food colored water through the filter to see what would happen, Berkey claims the filter will even remove the small food coloring particles.  They were right… red water in the top compartment came out clear in the bottom compartment after filtering.  Pretty cool.

One of the items that I like is that the unit is very simple.  It doesn’t need electricity, short life filters, water pressure, or a PHD to operate… it just works.  The unit comes with two black Berkey filters, a top tank with cover, a bottom tank with spigot, and a base.  It takes about 5 minutes to set up completely.  The filter works off of good old fashioned gravity… you pour water in the top tank and wait for gravity to do its thing.

In terms of costs… the filters come in many different sizes and shapes and all are priced  fairly.  The other thing is the filters are so cheap to use.  The filter elements are cleanable and last for thousands of gallons.

I ran some nasty San Jose tap water through the filter and was skeptical that the strong chemical taste would be removed by a gravity water filter system.  I couldn’t believe it… the water came out smooth and great tasting.  I had to make sure that it wasn’t just my palate so I started torturing my friends.  Long story short, I made several friends do blind taste tests of normal tap water, Berkey water, and a famous bottled water brand (sounds like sparrow bed).  Not one person liked the tap water… it is pretty bad.  Almost everyone else favored the Berkey with few exceptions. 

I am sold… Berkey water filters work!

I nerdy crazy physics professor at the University of Oklahoma decided to make his point about not bringing laptops to class by… well watch the video after the break and see.

Mont Blanc pens are great pens… they feel great… write great…etc… But a Mont Blanc pen isn’t cheap and will tend to run you about $200-$300 for a standard Mont Blanc Pen.  The video below shows you how to make your Pilot G2 pen write like a Mont Blanc saving you about $200.

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Jem Stansfield attached pads to two vacuums and poof he is now a real life Spider Man… sorta… At least he can climb buildings.  Watch videos after the break to see Jem in action.

All of the little things we do for the environment, good or bad, add up and make a difference.  With that said… recycle, turn off lights you aren’t using, walk when you don’t have to drive, take shorter showers, etc…

For now, I am just going to focus on the showers since it is a peeve of mine.  My wonderful wife tends to take 20 minute showers and it drives me a tad crazy.  All of that water going down the drain… wasted.  I have tried nagging… the shower length does not change.  I think I may have a solution…

I think I am going to get a shower timer like the digital duck timer that suction cups to the shower wall and counts down a time set by the user.  I will start off with 10 minutes and subtract one minute every two months until I can get her down to a reasonable 5 minute shower.

Or you can opt for the less techy approach (which I think is pretty cool) that uses the old sand timer on a suction cup for the shower wall.

Not sure why someone would want to take crappy box wine and make it crappier by heating it… but it sure makes for a cool explosion.  Two camera angles make for great video of what happens when you put a full box of wine in the microwave.  Video after the break.