Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. โค๏ธ

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

๐Ÿ”  ๐Ÿ’€  ๐Ÿ“ธ  ๐Ÿ˜ญ  ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ  ๐Ÿค   ๐ŸŽฌ  ๐Ÿฅ”

kottke.org posts about I-Wei Huang

Adorably frightening hamster-powered walking contraption

I-Wei Huang got a Strandbeest, an articulated contraption that you can walk across a tabletop with your hand or attach a sail and watch it move under windpower, and he was wondering what might be another fun way to power it. His first thought was steam but that wouldn’t work great with the plastic Strandbeest. He might have tried it anyways but, as he puts it, “thankfully, I had another even sillier idea.”

The hamster powered? that’s just stupid, which is the exact reason why I did it. It’s different, hasn’t been done before, yet it’s in so many what’s-under-the-hood jokes. It also had a high likelyhood of working, so I had to attempt it. Only problem: I don’t have a hamster, I don’t want a hamster for a pet, and I don’t know what sort of power and weight a little critter like that has. All I know is that I’ve seen them go ballistic on the hamster wheel, and so they must have great weight to power ratio.

The top-heavy animal-ified mechanical transporter makes it feel like a mini, cuter version of a Star Wars AT-AT.