We thought highlighting a “green motorcycle” would be a great way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Watch the video below to see an interesting project (the music is a little over the top, you might turn down the volume if that sort of thing bothers you.)

This is a great project and a great way to recycle old vehicles. We love to see activities like these as it provides some hope that people will actually find ways to help innovate out of our present crisis, dependency on foreign energy. Think of a local transport like this charged in a distributed manner…that could be very high impact. Now, if an individual can do this for less than $3,000, why can’t a vehicle manufacturer pull it off?

• D&D SepEx Motor (about 45 ft-pd torque at 2000rpm)
• 400 Amp Alltrax Controller with PC link
• Four 12 volt deep cycle marine batteries (Wal-Mart)
• Four on-board battery chargers
• 6:1 gear ratio

The bike has a top speed of 45mph and a range of about 30 miles. Operating cost appears to be in the range of $0.02/mile.

I just love it when geeks have too much time on their hands. Really, I do. This sort of thing could spawn a whole new coffee subculture of latte art. How long before we see this in Starbucks? Check out how to build your own at Oleksiy Pikalo Invents.

HT: Hacked Gadgets

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Graph Credit: NOAA

It’s early in the season yet, but there have been more than 2 times more tornados this year than in the prior peak year of 2006. Check the graph out above. Even college basketball isn’t immune as the SEC tournament site was hit in Atlanta last night. Who knew?

In local news last night, we had a huge intense hail storm. Haven’t seen too much of that on the coast – no damage seems to be resulting from it.

This is what you call “making the news”. Apparently, two local news stations sent mobile crews to cover illegal drag racing. Obviously, the news vans would have to participate in the activity! Guess they forgot that we’re now in an age of citizen news and that the footage would appear on YouTube before their story made it to the six o’clock news…Luckily, no one was hurt.

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Image Credit: NY Times
If you played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) or were exposed to people who played D&D, read the chart above from the NY Times, it will explain a lot. It certainly hit home for me. Enjoy! (Make sure to click the image to enlarge it, the snap above is just a small subset.)