Warning: watching these videos may result in hunger and the song Powerhouse by Raymond Scott playing over and over in your head (especially the second part). [Eat Me Daily]

The completed machine assembled a breakfast of an omelet, toast with jam, coffee and orange juice that was served all day to visitors of the Platform21 show in Amsterdam. But allow us to be the first jerks to say, wait, no bacon? [Platform21 via designboom via gearfuse]

Apparently, the machine will utilize recycled Platform21 projects to complete tasks like "frying eggs, juicing oranges, brewing coffee, making toast, and serving it all on a plate with jam, meat and cheese." With each passing day, the machine will evolve and take on new tasks—adding dishes to the breakfast menu. Sounds delicious, but will it be able to compete with Pee Wee's technology?

[Platform21 via Designboom]

The film Nearness explores interacting without touching. With RFID it's proximity that matters, and actual contact isn't necessary. Much of Timo's work in the Touch project addresses the fictions and speculations in the technology. Here we play with the problems of invisibility and the magic of being close.

Nearness is interesting and everything, but it needs some personality. I mean, where are all the rolling balls and drinking birds? [Nearness via Boing Boing via Neatorama]

Follow this Rube Goldberg contraption's humble bowling ball origins as it moves from folding chairs, to flaming ladders, then to a boot rigged to a pipe, where it finally falls into the crotch of our rotund, adolescent, fully-suspecting subject.

Look, none of us here are noobs when it comes to watching testicle-smashing follies, so you know what to do—sit back, crack open a fresh Brawndo and laugh. [Break via Boing Boing]

Even Jon Kaplan, the IDEO veteran behind the effort, had moments of doubt. But more than that, he had moments of disbelief: How could someone actually come up with that!? How could someone actually engineer a pole-dancing doll to spin around in silver garland, knock down a Phillippe Starck juicer, trigger a Gaussian gun, and topple a Tickle-Me Elmo, plastic eyes first, onto a computer mouse that then prints a document in Shanghai? All told, there were about ten other machine-based vignettes that lasted almost 20 minutes and spanned day and night, thanks to the fifteen-hour time difference between offices.

[IDEO Labs]

So in celebration, here are the top 10 Rube Goldberg machines in movies, listed in handy clips for your viewing pleasure. Warning: the best Rube Goldberg machines are not always found in the best movies.

10. Robots
Not bad, though CGI sort of equals cheating.
9. Edward Scissorhands
Tiny puppet robots FTW!
8. The Money Pit
A sort of revision on the Rube Golberg machine.
7. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty vs. Kit, which wins?
6. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
This sequence was amazing, and done in claymation.
5. Goonies
I always identified with the fat kid.
4. Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Pee Wee had it great before that "incident."
3. Back to the Future
Great mechanical sequence, great film opening.
2. Ernest Goes to Jail
Never in my life did I think I'd post seriously about an Ernest movie.
1. The Way Thing Go
There's a reason this is the number one clip.

List compiled by Richard Blakeley & Nick McGlynn.

So, consider if you will, my preeeties, the current options I have open to me.
• A canister of pure oxygen. Well, shoot, I didn't make it to our local oxygen shop before I crawled into bed this morning.
• A gadget that "staves off" wine headaches. That's a bit disingenuous, because it doesn't cure your hangover, it just reads the chemicals in the wine inside your glass and tells you if you shouldn't drink it.
• A chilled hangover mask that's so cold I think my eyes need a de-icer.

Some people might have popped a bunch of RU21 pills before they went out. The drug was developed by the KGB so that their spies could drink all they could and stay sober while they loosened up their contacts with a vodka or seven. It sounds a bit creepy—and as for the name. "Are you 21?" Nope, that's why I get hangovers. So no storebought gear, no creepy Soviet pharmaceuticals. I think I'm gonna have to invent a hangover buster of my own.

If I were good with my hands, I'd pull an A-Team on you all and build a flotation tank complete with butler 'bot using a saucepan, plastic guttering, the drum from the washing machine and a lawnmower. But I'm not—and I HAVE A HANGOVER. So I'm just going to have to imagine my way out of it. As a nipper, my point of reference was illustrator W. Heath Robinson, the British equivalent to Rube Goldberg. So, let me channel my inner Rube.

Balanced on top of the sofa at the end of our bed is a cushion. I reach out a toe and push it onto the seat, which dislodges a tennis ball. The ball rolls down a ramp, bounces once on a mini trampoline, ricochets against the bedroom door and boings its way down the corridor. It hits a plank of wood which has been propping up the strut on a home-made trebuchet. With a flick of the knicker elastic I used to secure it, the spoon of the trebuchet catapults a dart with a homing device on it. The dart buzzes into the kitchen, veering towards the electric kettle, and lands smack in the center of the kettle's On button (where I will have placed a homing beacon). As the kettle boils, shaking violently with the hot, hot heat bubbling away (I hacked it, okay?) a one-directional pulley yanks farther and farther, until a rope tied to the kettle's handle tips it towards a Velcro-covered mug containing a squeeze of lime juice. You still with me?

The mug, now three-quarters full of hot water and lime juice, is sitting on a USB beverage heater (why, thank you, Thanko) modified with wheels, and a rocket firework. The firework's fuse is fired up with my prototype RC piezoelectric lighter, controlled via a handheld unit dangling conveniently above my bed. The firework fizzes away and shoots the USB heater (mug and all) towards the edge of the counter, where it scoots onto a wire cradle, suspended from the ceiling on wires that slope gently downwards—think "ski lift," only small and in my apartment. The cradle trundles slowly downward, turning the corner back into the corridor, until it comes to rest just outside the bedroom door.

So how does it get from the bedroom door into my clammy palms? Well, this is the bit that I'm having trouble figuring out. At the moment, I've got a monkey, dressed in Evel Knievel leathers with Velcro stripes down the arms and a helmet, riding a tricycle down the corridor at full tilt. Monkey draws level with the mug—which you'll recall is covered with Velcro. Velcro meets Velcro, it's love at first feel, and the mug hitches a ride on the leather sleeve. The monkey trundles up the ramp that the tennis ball rolled down not five minutes earlier, stands on the sofa, takes off his helmet, smiles and passes me the mug. But here's where the system breaks down: the sodding monkey drinks the brew down in one, burps, tosses the mug behind him and then just jumps up and down, pointing and laughing at me.

Anyone know how to hack a monkey?

The whole idea is to create a machine that combines creative thinking with complexity in design, and, most importantly, inefficiency— much in the vein of Goldberg's cartoons.

The winning team, the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers, have had plenty of practice at this— they've won two of the previous three contests. Their machine won them a regional prize earlier in the year, and for the Nationals they added another 55 steps. With somewhere around 5,000 man-hours of work in it, the victory seems well deserved, particularly when the rules stipulate that the task must be achieved in more than 20 steps.

Awesome, pointless, engineering fun. We love it. [MAKE and CNN]

The instruction manual teaches you how to use the parts, but leaves the course design up to you. The whole thing is in Japanese anyway, so don't expect to do a whole lot of reading unless you can speak the language. Real geeks don't need any stinking instructions anyway. Available for $69.99.[Think Geek]