Gizmodo: farmers

Japanese Find Out How to Make Heart-Shaped Watermelons

Jason Chen — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:40:00 EDT

Having mastered the art of making square watermelons and even pyramid watermelons, Japanese farmers turned to making heart-shaped watermelons.

These 15,750 yen ($160) watermelons were grown by a couple and took three years to perfect down to the point where they were good enough to convince people to pay $160 for them. There's only 20 melons in this batch, but we're sure Mr. and Mrs. Hiroichi Kimura will grow more next season. [Asahi via Japan Probe via Inventor Spot via Boing Boing]

Japanese Farmers Get a Boost From Robot Exoskeleton Suit

Elaine Chow — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:30:00 EST

There's not much the Japanese love more than robots, so twas only a matter of time before exoskeleton suits found some useful purpose. This particular suit assists farmers on tough agricultural work.

The suit, designed by the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, contains eight motors fitted over the shoulders, elbows, back and knees to give farmers the boost they need to pull radishes, lift haystacks and other farm work.

Though the current model is a hefty 35 kg, researchers say they can halve the weight and put it on the market in two years time. Each suit will retail for between 500,000 and 1 million yen ($5,600 to $11,200). Only in Japan, folks. [Japan Probe]

Chinese Farmers Build Birds Nest Stadium Out of Bamboo

Elaine Chow — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:00:00 EDT

The Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed “The Bird's Nest,” has already become an icon in the country of 1.3 billion. But for some farmers close to Hangzhou (located in the southeast of China), the Herzog & de Meuron structure was just too darn far away... so in a fit of DIY ingenuity, they built their own replica out of bamboo. Steel's apparently kind of hard to get when you're living on a couple of dollars a day.

Altogether, it took ten bamboo sculptors roughly two weeks to put together the Bird's Nest (at a 1:20 scale of the Beijing original) out of 800 pieces of bamboo. The villagers say they plan to use the structure for local sports events. Hmmm... As cool as this DIY structure is, I'm not sure what kind of sport you'd be able to fit in it. Ping pong? [Shufa via Weird Asia News]

And just for comparison, the Beijing Stadium:

Slide-Rule Clock Will Match Your Mathcamp Trophy

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:00:43 EDT

This clock, made by Greg Blonder from a Lego Mindstorms set, is an homage to the slide rule. It's super simple to read; the upper rule tells the hours and the lower tells the minutes. They move independently, and the stationary window shows the time. This update to a retro gadget is kind of hypnotizing to watch, even if it takes up about a foot of shelf space. As much as we like this, we're wondering when Greg will come out with an abacus Lego clock.

[MAKE]