Busted iPod Modded Into a Mouse; Could Be So Much More [Mods]

If your old iPod is suddenly about to become useless when you acquire an iPhone 3G, why not repurpose it as something else? One enterprising modder took an iPod that had been accidentally run over by a car (yeah, I hate it when that happens) and turned it into a fully-functioning mouse, with the buttons on the trackwheel all functioning as mouse buttons. Unfortunately, due to the car smashing the crap out of the screen, it just has a piece of paper that looks like an iPod screen in its place.

I’d love to see this taken to the next level, with the screen working as a secondary screen for the personal. Envision, being able to see your RSS feeds or new emails on your iPod mouse and saving screen space. It would be cool-looking and impressive and make you king of the nerds. Get to it, modders. I demand satisfaction. [Craftster via Technabob]

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Flying Priest Found Deceased in the Atlantic, God Positioning System Still Missing [Rip]

Father de Carli, the flying priest who got lost last April, has been found deceased in the middle of the Atlantic. In an effort to raise funds for a local charity organization, De Carli planned to stay for more than 19 hours up in the air using a thousand celebration balloons, taking a GPS with him to communicate his position in case emergency. Unfortunately for the generous man, the trip ended in disaster.

His body was found yesterday by the Anna Gabriela, a tug working for Brazilian oil company Petrobras, 683 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Father De Carli’s starting point. His trip started on April 20 after a mass, and his last contact was a desperate attempt to learn how to use his GPS and communicate his position as the wind took him deep into the Atlantic Ocean.

I need to contact someone who can teach me how to operate this GPS, so I have the ability to give the latitude and longitude coordinates, which is the only way that people on the ground can know where I am.

An Petrobras official spokesman stated that “his clothes and shoes indicate that it’s him.” And now I don’t know if I should say “Godspeed, Padre” or “this is another candidate for the Darwin Awards,” so I would just say rest in peace.

[Editor’s Note: I commend you for finding your way out of this world while trying to do some good for the rest of it. Rest in Peace, De Carli. -B.L.] [Bloomberg]

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One of the coolest things about the Batpod from the upcoming Dark Knight movie is the fact that it actually works. Previously seen being straddled by Meredith Viera on The Today Show, the decked out motorcycle burned rubber at the slightly more dignified British Formula One Grand Prix this weekend. Who else would give anything to be Jean-Pierre Goy, Christian Bale’s stuntman, right now? [Gizmag]

Via [gizmodo]

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Punk Rock Robots Rock Out to Punk Rock ONLY [Rage With The Machine]

Making robots even more hardcore, British roboticists have designed machines that’ll only dance to punk rock music. Standing 2 meters tall, padded in leather and decked in various punk scene insignias, the pogoing robots wait until they hear the familiar strains of anti-establishment rock before they start dancing. Is it just me, or do these things sound like they’d be a minor threat in the mosh pit?

The machines were designed by a collaboration of artists and scientists from Queen Mary University in London. They use neural networks, a collection of computer processors that function like a easy animal brain, to differentiate between Black Flag and say… Bob Marley. The result: robots that can dance to a genre of music even if they’ve never heard the song before. Check out the BBC link to see a video of the robots gleefully pogoing to The Fumadores. [BBC]

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