Way back in January, Google teased us with video of a ball and maze game using Google Maps models on a cube. Though it looked fun, it apparently needed a few more months of tweaking and the in-browser game is only just now available. Despite being a tutorial for Google maps features our readers are no doubt aware of, it’s a surprisingly fun little time waster.

Blowing smoke rings is certainly a pretty cool skill, but that is nothing compared to what you can do with a vortex ring gun. According to Batelle, the device’s creator, their vortex ring guns could one day clear smoke-filled rooms for firefighters, deliver pesticides with remarkable precision at a distance, or even be used as a premiere non-lethal riot control device. And it’s all thanks to electrically-charged smoke rings.

When it comes to videos of Russians doing crazy things, I’m something of a connoisseur. With that experience under my belt, let me assure you that this is a fine wine. Posted by YouTuber GLKTZVVSM, the video is short, sweet, and to the point, featuring two would-be gymnists attempting a complex and impressive trick. Needless to say, things go swimmingly. How could they not?

This video, called “The King of Legoland” by Micaël Reynaud features what appears to be the contents of his 1980′s-era toychest. Each LEGO is carefully displayed, every Transformer transformed, the hood of every Hot Wheel lifted, and every bauble gently held by latex gloves. It’s fun, it’s catchy, and it’s a neat little look back at the toys that helped make us into the adults we are today.

Artist Kim Hyun has created these wonderful, colorful statues of human figures made entirely out of dice. While aspiring artists are often told to break figures down into component pieces, Hyun’s work takes it a step further using heaps of d6s, d20s, and everything between and beyond. Perhaps it’s a commentary on the random chance that rules existence, or just an impressive visual accomplishment.

See more after the break.

After 35 years and 100,000 toothpicks, Scott Weaver completed this amazing sculpture of San Francisco he calls “Rolling Through the Bay.” And while he doesn’t hold the record for the largest toothpick sculpture, his stands apart with numerous hidden ball-runs that snake around the sculpture. Amazingly, each run is a “tour” of a different part of the city.

Using only Elmer’s glue and working in his spare time, Weaver used amazing precision to create the work. But to build it, Weaver couldn’t rely on domestic toothpicks alone. From his website:

I have used different brands of toothpicks depending on what I am building. I also have many friends and family members that collect toothpicks in their travels for me. For example, some of the trees in Golden Gate Park are made from toothpicks from Kenya, Morocco, Spain, West Germany and Italy. The heart inside the Palace of Fine Arts is made out of toothpicks people threw at our wedding.

The wedding toothpicks and the model heart are just a few of the personal and local information encoded into the massive work. To see the sculpture in action, and get a guided tour of its labyrinthine pathways, read on below.

Citing a BBC documentary and an xkcd comic as inspiration a Hack a Day forumer called machinelou has begun work on a computer-controlled ball robot. The aim is for the 12-inch ball to eventually be steerable and perhaps even have bump detection. From Hack A Day:

He used a small drill to provide the power required to roll the ball, and an Arduino is used as the brains of the device. [...] In its current state, the ball is programmed to roll forward and backwards for a few seconds before going back to sleep.

It’s a fascinating look at a hobbyist at work, and gives some insight to anyone else thinking of following in the footsteps of this little robot’s creator.

Keep reading below to see the ball-bot take its first roll around.

In the 12th century, someone somewhere in Scandinavia carved the Lewis Chessmen, a collection of nearly 100 chess pieces of a particularly unique and expressive style. It wasn’t the first ornate chess set, but it’s certainly a strange and unique set with its shield-biting berzerkers and worried looking royalty. Since the Lewis chess set, the Western world has continued to make stranger and stranger chess sets. Perhaps this speaks to the power of the game, and it’s captivating metaphorical nature. More likely it speaks to the human desire to spend stupendous amounts of money.

Regardless, chess set making has come to the point where it’s no longer about the game but about whatever weird twist you can put on it. And trust us, they’ve come a long way from simple walrus ivory carvings. So whether your covet these gameboards, or laugh at those that do, please enjoy this humble collection of the least humble chess sets the Internet has to offer.

The eco-utopia of Masadar City in Abu-Dhabi has started up a driverless car system, designed to move passengers around the Masadar Institute of Technology. The Dutch-made, and admittedly quite cute, cars whiz along the ground using a network of fiber optic cables and magnets embedded in the ground to find their way. The cars are part of Masadar City’s stated intent to be a self-sufficient city powered on renewable resources with no waste and no carbon emissions.

The model for the system, called Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), which uses a network of small vehicles to move commuters quickly to their destinations. PRT is meant to sidestep a major issue in more traditional, scheduled forms of mass transit because it allows users to skip stops between their location and the desired destination. With a sufficient number of vehicles, users could arrive at their destinations faster than train travel and give the system greater flexibility overall.

The Masadar system, which began operation in November, is only the first step in such a system.

From Wikipedia:

The system has 10 passenger and 3 freight vehicles serving 2 passenger and 3 freight stations connected by 1.2 kilometers of one-way track. The system is in operation 18 hours a day, seven days a week serving the Masdar Institute of Technology. Trips take about 2 and a half minutes (i.e., an average speed of roughly 12 miles per hour) and are presently free of charge. Average wait times are expected to be about 30 seconds.

The major limitation of the system in its current few is the limited number of stops. With only two stations, the prime benefit of PRT is negated since there are no other stops to avoid and speed up commuter travel. At this stage, it’s certainly more of a technology demonstrator, and will have to be expanded upon to prove its worth.

While the driverless cars project certainly has its heart in the right place, experimenting with new ways to move people around with as little an ecological impact as possible. However, I wonder it wouldn’t be more beneficial to encourage Masadar’s denizens to make use of another eco-friendly transportation method: walking.

To see the cars in action, and the observe their disconcerted passengers, read on after the break.

The city of Bergen County, New Jersey, is slated to become the most delicious smelling city in America. Provided, of course, that you are a fan of deli pickles. In the wake of a rough, stormy winter season on the east coast, the affluent enclave has turned to pickle brine as a cheaper alternative rock salt to keep their roads clear and navigable.

From the Time Magazine newsfeed blog:

And the price can’t be beat: the briny mixture costs just 7 cents a gallon, compared to $63 a ton for salt. Quick math works the pickle juice out to roughly $16 per ton [...]

This is just one more use for pickle brine after it’s recent resurgence on the cocktail scene. If it can keep our roads clean and chase our shots, is there nothing that preserved foods can’t do? Next up: 101 uses for putrefied shark fin.

(via Time newsfeed, image via TeaWithBuzz)