Check out this kid’s top 10 list of homemade inventions.
Errrm… it’s full of pens converted to guns using rubber bands and sticks. Either he’s going to end up in the spy business or he’s headed to TV as MacGyver’s replacement.
What happened on UCreateChange.com (22-28 Mar 2010)
Think soups: steaming, hearty and good for you. The best ones are purportedly homemade and made from the heart.
The same goes for inventions. The good ones are created by people who see a need and fix it, regardless of opposition. That’s why we heart these inventors and their inventions… after all they do (or might) change the world that we live in.
So we’re rating last week’s posts with 
This video of a knock-on domino effect of household items is an ode to ingenuity & a long rainy afternoon.
Methinks this one beats that Audi Commercial where they took apart a car and used the parts in a similar video. Thoughts?
“I don’t know. Just google it.”
Now look up “ornithopter” without using a search engine. Hard isn’t it? That’s why we’re thankful for search engines like Google, and Google’s thankful to its engineers.
Engineers like Andrew McGlinchey, product manager at Google, who:
“Causes Googley things to happen in Southeast Asia. I am the bridge between the software engineering teams and the users, as well as the other parts of Google (like marketing, business development, and marketing). I figure out what the products should be and work with the engineering team to make that happen.”
This is Andrew’s second appearance on our blog (read his five things to know about engineering). This time it’s all about him and his views on engineering.
Before we let him loose, if you’re “right now in a university dorm room, or a garage or somewhere, creating the next amazing innovation that we’ll all be using five years from now” drop Andrew a line ‘cause he would love to be in your shoes.
We were talking to Amberhaze last week and we both agree on one thing: we need our coffees in the morning. But what does it really do? And how does it keep us awake?
So we trawled YouTube and found this nifty video by Discovery Channel, which talks about how coffee might prevent cancer, and more importantly jolts us awake!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos.
What happened on UCreateChange.com (15-22 Mar 2010)
Things to do (don’t forget, E!):
Create 2010 winners guest blog about their travels to Munich.
This trip is generously sponsored by BMW.
Day four: Up a mountain, through Bayern Munich’s locker room, into the terminal, and thoughts.
We’re on the top of the world!
Create 2010 winners guest blog about their travels to Munich.
This trip is generously sponsored by BMW.
Day three: Mo’ museums, a culture of cars?, the palace, and the streets of Munich
Choo-choo train going nowhere. But we are headed to the…
Create 2010 winners guest blog about their travels to BMW headquarters in Munich.
This trip is generously sponsored by BMW.
Day two: The FIZ, car models, modern art, and loads of food.
![2010_03_18 - lead (credit wanderlust)[10]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4J0x2MksfuIEPlv__XrRa1LQ_HLO76er1mOvrqmKkeBDf42oQrV9rnpsiBO1KsqGMK9yKMJrZGTs-mri_Um1f5U0DBkXVEdRngPY0XyJkDSBqgUWwWuzaV6V2hhp8Lj14h4LhIN6xoYM/s1600-h/2010_03_18%20-%20lead%20%20(credit%20wanderlust)%5B10%5D%5B7%5D.jpg "2010_03_18 - lead (credit wanderlust)[10]")
What we really want too…
Create 2010 winners guest blog about their travels to BMW Welt in Munich.
This trip is generously sponsored by BMW.
Day one: Arrived in Munich; the daredevil in BMW Welt; and “robots working in symphony” to make cars.
Yup. There’s graffiti in Germany too…
It usually means time off to slack, watch TV, and head out to the movies. Bugger that… There’s plenty to do in sunny Singapore and in your void deck. So don’t waste your time vegging out infront of the goggle box. And besides your mind’s too good to waste on popcorn and Gummiberry juice (so sue me, I made that one up :P).
Here are our picks of things to do this March holidays…
What happened on UCreateChange.com (8-14 Mar 2010)
We, the general public of UCreateChange.com, sincerely request that the organisers overhaul the show. In fact, you’re missing out on so much cool stuff out there that we’re utterly shocked into silence.
[silence]
We respectfully submit our list of missing things to you for your perusal. And sincerely hope that you would consider revamping next year’s IT Show to fit our vision for the future.
Thank you for your time.
First up…
James Cameron’s big-budget films have plenty of special effects and fantastic settings – like Terminator, Titanic and more recently, Avatar. Nay-sayers might argue that it’s a substitute for good story. And that’s what we thought when we saw his films.
That’s until we found his TED talk.
In it Cameron speaks about how he grew up as a science geek with his nose buried in science fiction books. That made him imagine what might be and what if… things happened in his films. And he’s still curious about the world to wander through it (check out the 9:45 mark where he talks about going into the sunken Titanic with homemade bots). Somehow along the way, he managed to bring together his sci-fi passions with doing science.
The moral of the talk? Be curious and explore. Maybe you’ll find the next big thing out there…
What happened on UCreateChange.com (1-7 Mar 2010)
Kudos to Australian Ben Kersten who won the OCBC Cycling Challenge held over the weekend (6-7 Mar). In grueling endurance sports, it really boils down to your training regime. Andy Potts, the top triathlete in USA uses his heart rate to gauge how much he should train. The results were spectacular: in just five years, he went from overweight weekend swimmer to a top-class professional athlete.
Winning is everything. That’s why athletes look every little edge that could beat down the competition. Some of them turn to modified sports equipment, while others down sports drinks to keep on going like the Energizer Bunny.
Finally, this is a smart use of a sporting equipment: S0ocket is a soccer ball that generates energy for off-grid rural areas. So kids kick it around to charge an embedded battery and use it later at night to power their lights.
We hate them. We really do.
It costs a ton of cash to fly to Munich, doze in Hilton, and munch on Bratwursts, Schnitzels, and Pretzels. But these boys get it all for free!
The trio from Raffles Institution, collectively known as Great Ideas Association, won over our Create 2010 judges with the GDome – a “greenhouse that could transform coastal regions into arable land and efficate sustainable farming” (read it on Scribd). It came out from their motivation to “reduce world hunger and secure our food for the future.”
The project addresses very real problems. Hopefully it’ll get turned into reality some time soon. (Remember you heard it here first!) Until then, they’ll just have to make do with a trip to Munich.
Ahhh… Bygones. It’s water under the bridge.
But questions bugged us. How did they win Create 2010? And why did they even sign up in the first place? So we caught up with Great Ideas Association and jawed over coffee, rain and travel plans.
PS: Create 2011 is just round the corner. Check back for more details!
It got us thinking about sports and how it could be improved by science and technology. So we looked around on the web and discovered that the desire to jump higher, last longer, outdo your opponents has gotten athletes scrabbling around for the latest training techniques and break-world-records equipment. This created a fascinating field that has evolved from Bata shoes and mile long runs into carefully measured approaches that uses heartrate monitors and precise data crunching for maximal impact.
For the rest of this week, we’ll showcase sports technology and how it makes a difference in our Get Inspired posts. So check back frequently!
In the meantime, check out this video clip about the lengths that some people would go through for sports science.
Enjoy…
What happened on UCreateChange.com (22-28 Feb 2010)
Closer to home, did you know that Singaporeans invented many things that we use today?
The PC sound card that turns beeps and bleeps into voices and music comes courtesy of Creative Technologies Sim Wong Hoo (crica 1989). Or the ubiquitous Thumb Drive by Trek Technologies that everyone carries photos, articles and videos in. Now some of them have even become as collectible as Be@rBricks! More recently there are the X-mini capsule speakers that use vacuum to mimic sub-woofers. Odd, I thought sound couldn’t travel in a vacuum?
Can’t get enough of Asian inventions?
Here are 50 of the best Asian inventions that have made an impact throughout the centuries. Apparently Asians have domesticated animals, cultivated crops, and created the toothbrush way before anyone else!
I'm the editor of UCreateChange. And I started this blog with the intention of putting up my past weekly roundups 'cause it's a shame they're simply disappearing into people's inboxes. Anyways, if you've a question on engineering, drop me a line at creators.of.tomorrow@gmail.com!
