Gizmodo: scotland

Insecure Emo Robot Musician Needs Our Attention

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:30:00 EDT

Cybraphon is an interactive, internet-connected musical art project that's sort of a riff on insecure emo bands—when more people online discuss it, it plays happier music, and when it's not getting enough attention, it gets melodramatic.

Created by Scottish musical collective Found, Cybraphon is basically a collection of mechanical instruments in a box, including some acoustic instruments and a whole lot of junk machinery. It constantly searches the internet and adjusts its "mood" between depressed and ecstatic by such vapid statistics as number of Myspace friends and Facebook invites. Its mood is then demonstrated by the tone of the music it plays, from dirgey melodrama to perky upbeat tones.

It's a really cheeky and fun project, and we're in a unique position here to overflow the Cybraphon's happiness sensors by bombarding its social networking pages with hits. Let's make the cabinet-sized whiner as cheerful as it can possibly be. [Cybraphon]

World's First Tidal Turbine Farms to Power 40,000 Scottish Homes (or Pubs)

John Herrman — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:30:00 EDT

Following the apparent success of SeaGen, a small deployment of tidal turbines of the coast of Northern Ireland, Scottish Power is seeking approval for plans to build two farms of 20 100-foot, err, watermills promising a steady power supply for up to 40,000 homes. As with the previous example of tidal power generation, the most obvious problems have been pretty much addressed: fish, seals, and cryptozoological specimens (probably) won't be harmed by the slow-spinning blades, and shipping routes won't be affected on account of the depth of the deployment. Scottish Power claims that the project should be completed in about three years. Click the above image for a explanatory video. [BBC via CleanTechnica]

Xbox Racing Games To Combat Real-Life Drunk Driving

Wilson Rothman — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:00:34 EST

The country that invented Scotch is paying to have virtual billboards implanted in Need for Speed: Carbon, Project Gotham Racing 4 and other titles, telling 15-to-24-year-olds not to drink and drive. At least not in real cars. It's probably okay for them to drink and drive virtual cars, because all they risk there is hitting those virtual "don't drink and drive" billboards. This comes on the heels of the British government putting intelligence-agency employment ads in games like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The Scottish transport minister says that if this $20,000 pilot project is a success, other road-safety messages may soon appear, too. Like "Don't Drive Like You're Playing Need For Speed." [Kotaku]

Scotland's Falkirk Wheel

Joel — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 12:07:54 EST

This isn't a gadget—and it's even a couple of years old—but we think you'll forgive this weekend foray into "Oh, wow!" engineering. This bit of concrete and steel is the Falkirk Wheel, a boat lift connecting two canals near Falkirk, Scotland.

Thanks to Archimedes' principle (floating objects displace their own weight), each water-filled caisson weighs the same amount. That allows the entire counter-balanced tip to bring boats—water and all—up or down to the next canal using just a 1.5 kilowatt-hours of energy—the same amount of energy it takes to boil eight kettles of water.

'Rotating lock' lifts boats, links waterways [DesignNews]
Falkirk Wheel [Wikipedia]