This does not look like the flying car I expected to see growing up as a kid but it does look like fun.

It’s basically a souped up quad with a para foil attached to the top. They plan on making an amazing 6 thousand mile journey both by land and air from London to Timbuktu to prove the cars worthiness. I would love to see the video from this journey. I wish them the best.

http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/worlds-first-flying-skycar-takes-off-from-london-to-timbuktu/weird-science

I have a video after the break.

via neatorama

Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger

As I sat watching the news late last night (i’m in Ireland) I just kept thinking “What a brilliant pilot”. The pilot of flight 1549 pulled off a miracle. He was able to land a airliner safely into the Hudson river only minutes after take-off because the plane hit a flock of birds.

After seeing Sully’s photo I have though he looked familiar. I don’t for sure if he was a pilot of a flight I was on or not but he does look very familiar. I will never forget his face now. He is a real hero in my eyes. I have added some more information about Sully after the jump.

Linked In Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/209/118

President & CEO
Safety Reliability Methods, Inc.

(Privately Held; Airlines/Aviation industry)

January 2007 — Present (2 years 1 month)

Providing technical expertise and strategic vision and direction to improve safety and reliability in a variety of high risk industries.
*
Captain
USAirways

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; LCC; Airlines/Aviation industry)

February 1980 — Present (29 years)

Captain for major U. S. passenger airline, serving North America, Europe, Latin America, Caribbean and Hawaii with large jet equipment. Responsible for all aspects of safety and security pertaining to flight, including planning, preparation and aircraft servicing. Leader of crew and responsible for passengers and aircraft. Involved in development and implementation of the first Crew Resource Management (CRM) training course used at the airline. As a Check Airman, was responsible for the training and supervision of other airline pilots transitioning to another aircraft type or upgrading to Captain. Served as an Air Line Pilots Association Local Air Safety Chairman and Accident Investigator and national technical committee member.

His website: http://safetyreliability.com/about_us

Sure the dictionary has a pronunciation key in it but we don’t always get it right and god forbid it’s in another language all together. We live in an age of excessive multimedia so why not listen to how the word is pronounced? Well, now we can but they need your help adding more words. It’s a great idea and I will be adding words all the time.

Since I am an American living in Ireland I end up correcting people all the time who pronounce American things wrong. You’d be surprised at how many people say the word Michigan wrong. They all say “Mitch-again”. My favorite here is a beer called Smithwick’s but they pronounce it so fast it sounds just like Smidick’s.

Add your words now and who knows, you may be leaving a audio mark in the history books.

http://forvo.com/

Now that was fast. The shoe barely hit the floor and someone already made a game out of it. I love how that stats afterward you play show that America is number one country for hitting Bush with a shoe. You just have to love freedom of speech. Now the Iraq people can hit Bush with shoes all day long and never get in trouble.

http://play.sockandawe.com/

I don’t normally write about mobile phones here unless they have some special quality I feel is worthy of writing about. There are so many sites dedicated to mobile phone news and I just don’t have the time or interest in each and every new phone.

The E1181 phone has caught my eye though. The phone has a mini digital camera built in that you can detach and use to take pictures. What I really like is the fact that the mini camera stays connected to the phone via a wireless connection of some kind. I can only assume it’s bluetooth because from what I can see it doesn’t actually say what kind of connection other than a wireless one that allows up to a 30 foot radius. A gadget with a gadget built in is always a good idea in my book.

I suppose the practical applications for such a product are minimal since you could easily just take photos with the phone itself quite easily. I suppose you could hide the mini camera somewhere and actually spy on people or even let someone else use the camera while you keep your phone on your person. You could also use the phone to talk to someone while you continue to take photos. Either way I think this is a pretty cool gadget and worthy of some space here at the iSpy site.

It looks as though we won’t see one of these state side or even here in Europe anytime soon since it’s only making it’s way around China at the moment.

For more information visit www.ubergizmo.com

These look like they would be a lot of fun. Basically it’s a massive human / hamster ball that allows the user to walk on water. They are produced in the UK and you must also buy a blower that fills the ball with air. I suppose you could always try and blow it up yourself but I don’t think it would work very well.

I would really like to see one of these things being used in some waves at the ocean. I bet that would be fun until the wind or a tide towed you out to sea where all the dolphins would try and play with the ball, knock you around a bit and pop the bugger and then it wouldn’t be fun anymore.

Pricing on these are as follows:

$710 USD per ball, $199 per Blower (Includes delivery)
£349 per ball, £69 per blower (Plus VAT and delivery £7.50 per item)
525 Euro per ball, 135 Euro per Blower (includes delivery)

I have a video after the jump as well if your into that sort of thing.

http://www.waterwalkerz.com/

Are you a man?

How can you tell if your macho enough to call yourself a MAN?

What defines us as men? (aside from the obvious biological reasons for course)

I found this interesting take on 20 things that make you a man interesting and a little funny to say the least. I have listed them all below for you to read. You can click on the more link or even visit the main link as well.

http://ptickle.com/28/20-things-that-make-you-a-man/

1. Opening jars. – nnng… she’s struggling. You take it from her hands, open it effortlessly and pretend she loosened it for you. She didn’t. Jars are men’s work.
2. Referring to someone as ’son’ – Especially policeman but even saying it to kids makes you the man.
3. Playing strong D with your hips and shoulders – and calling out “Fair bump, play on” as your boy hits the deck.
4. Drinking up – Specifically, rising from the table, slinging your coat on and downing two thirds of a mug in one fluid movement. Then nodding towards the door, saying, “Let’s go” and striding out while everyone else struggles to catch up with you. God, you’re hard.
5. Having a scar – Ideally it’ll be a facial knife wound, but even an iron burn on the wrist is good. “Ooh, did it hurt?”. “Nah… I’m used to it”. I got one. You don’t.
6. Having a hangover and thick stubble. – When girls have been partying they just whinge. You, on the other hand have physical evidence of your hardness, sprouting from your face. “Big night?” Grrr… what does it look like? I can’t grow the stubble so I choose to walk around naked.
7. Nodding at the police – A moments eye contact is all it takes for you to share the unspoken bond. “We’ve not seen eye to eye in the past”, it says, “but someone’s got to keep the little bastards in line”.
8. Using powertools – slightly more powerful than you need or can safely handle. Wearing a shirt is not an option and you drill because wood was made for beating and drilling.
9. Arriving at the bar late – and everyone cheers you. It doesn’t mean you’re popular, it just means your boys are assholes. However, the rest of the pub doesn’t know that.
10. Not watching your weight – fat is a feminist issue. Brilliant. Now pass the 20oz porterhouse.
11. Carving the turkey – and asking “Are you a leg or breast man?” to the fellas and “Do you want stuffing?” to the women. Congratulations, you are now your dad.
12. Winking – turns women to putty. Doesn’t it?
13. Taking out $500 from the ATM – Do you need it? Who fucking cares. What you do need though is to feel gangsta. The only thing better is peeling notes off the roll later.
14. Phone calls that last less than a minute – unlike women, men get straight to the point. “Yo. Sup. Drink? Yep. Usual place? Yep. Seven? Yep. Peace.”
15. Parallel parking – straight in, first time. Can Schumacher do that? No, because his cars got no reverse gear which, technically, makes you a better driver.
16. Having earned that drink – Since the dawn of time, men have toiled in the fields in blistering heat. Why? So, when it’s over we can stand there in silence, surveying our work with one hand resting on the beer gut while the other nurses a foaming jug of ale. Aaaah.
17. Having something really wrong with you – especially if you didn’t make a fuss. “Why was I off, nothing much, just a brain tumor”.
18. Knowing which screwdriver is which – “A Phillips? For that? Do you even know what the fuck you’re doing!?”
19. Taking a newspaper to the toilet – a visual cue that says “That’s right, I’m going in there to take a huge, long man-sized dump”.
20. Calling your boy a cunt – and punching him on the shoulder. Just a man’s way of saying “You’re a good man. I missed you while you were going through your gay phase”.

My daughter is six years old and she will be seven very soon and for some reason she wants a pair of pajamas that zip up and have feet or a onesie. We seen some at a local store but after trying them on we decided they would not fit her. Of course the tag said ages 3-4 and she’s going to be 7 so that’s to be expected. Then, by chance, I seen Jumpin Jimmer Jams at a site I read daily. It turns out they sell one piece pajamas for adults and kids. I guess we are not the only ones who are looking for these things in larger than normal sizes. These look promising and I sure hope they arrive before Christmas. I have even considered getting a pair for myself. I do love a good pair of warm jammies.

Jumpin Jimmer Jams

Oh yeah this is officially the creepiest thing I have seen all week and I went to Italy this week so I seen some pretty creepy people. No offense to any Italian people but when your not familiar with a country and it’s people they can all look so different to you. I must admit most of them were very beautiful people but in the heart of Milan (or any big city) your bound to see some weird one. Nothing I seen this week prepared me for what I just made at the Manscaping site developed by Schick.

If you ever wanted to know what you or anyone else you know would look like with facial hair, here is your chance. They also have a “3D” version that makes your eyes look all creepy and then they follow the mouse around the page. The process is simple and the output is interesting to say the least. You are required to register for free in order to save what you see or share it but you can have a go for yourself.

http://www.schickfreeyourskin.com.au

thanks to neatorama.com for the link

We all love stickers right? Well I know I do. Even if my kids decide to place them all over my keyboard, monitor, doors, television and more. Something about a sticker just fascinates me and I don’t know why. Perhaps I should seek therapy.

If you love stickers too you should seriously check out the website www.stickertotheman.com. Basically, you give them your address. They send you a bunch of stickers for free. You then take a photo of one sticker showing where you put said sticker and they place the photos online. Sounds like a fun project.

We’d like to get photos from as many different cities around the world as we possibly can. It is perhaps our way of vicariously getting to see places around the world. Depending on the kind of response we get, we’ll probably keep getting different/more stickers printed when we run out of a batch.

Read on for some of my favorite shots so far.

Go Elf Yourself, again.

Well it’s that time of year again and the brilliant folks over at JibJab.com have done it again. This year you have a few more choices and you can add more elves to your mix. I have made one and after the jump you can see for yourself how much fun this really is. I encourage you all to go elf yourself and please share the fun with all of us. I’d really like to see yourself elf’d. It’s fun and it’s free.

This year you have a choice of dances to choose from so you could send out three different version if you have the time and energy. Who knows, I may make a couple more when I get the time.

I posted another version from last year here if you remember, if not that’s ok I have a link.

http://www.theispysite.com/2007/11/22/i-spyelf-yourself/

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/

So what is Wix.com? Good question. Wix is a flash based application that allows you to build your own websites that look amazing and it’s very easy to use. It all looks very interesting and I signed up just to give it a go. I actually found it very fun to play with until it crashed by browser (firefox + mac).

Here is what they have to say about themselves:

Wix offers you a simple powerful online platform to create free flash websites, MySpace layouts and more. No programming or downloads necessary.

One of the real benefits here is that all the sites they let you build are full flash based sites with animation and the whole gambit but yet they are still very search engine friendly. See most flash sites are still pretty much hidden to most search engines. That is unless you have a very talented developer who is smart enough to build that into the site. It’s not impossible to do but just not very easy to do let’s say.

I have not been able to login to this site for a while now. At first I thought it was a browser error and was busy so I didn’t bother trying to fix it. But, for the last couple weeks now I have been spending an hour a day trying to fix this bug instead of actually writing content.

I finally solved the problem and for anyone else out there who is having trouble logging into wordpress read on.

The Problem

Each time I login to the admin secion of the site it redirects me back to the login page and tells me to login again. After resetting the password I try again. Still no love.

The Solution

I tried a lot of stuff. Stuff I didn’t need to do in retrospect but hey we live, we learn. Basically I renamed the plugins folder on the server to plugins.old then I was able to upgrade the whole wordpress system to the latest version, login and see what plugins were technically installed. Of course now I have no plugins at all and that’s now good. I love my plugins. So I went through the folder I just renamed to Plugins and found a folder or file that didn’t look right. I have had this problem on a couple sites using wordpress and each time the folder or file is different but you can tell it’s not supposed to be there. In this case it was a file called “the-i-spy-site.php”. I never made a plugin called that and it did look out of place. Just to be sure I also removed any other plugin I knew I was not using anymore.

I think renamed the plugins.old back to just plain old plugins using FTP and all is good in the world of wordpress again. YIPEEE.

We all know you can make pretty much anything from plastic. But how many of us know how to do it from the comfort of our own home? Let’s say you wanted to make your own action figures or collectibles. I for one would probably start in China or Taiwan but honestly would not have a clue, until today.

These guys at Shapeway can take virtually anything you could imagine and turn it into something you can hold in your hands. With the number of easy to use 3D applications out there you have plenty of choices. I mean even Google offers a free option that’s pretty easy to use. (http://sketchup.google.com/).

Another very easy to use piece of software for making 3D images is Swift 3D. What ever you end up using to make your model does not matter, once your finished you upload the file to their website, wait 10 days and you get your model in the mail.

They have no real colors to speak of as of yet but the do offer different textures. I better fire up the old 3D application and give this a go.

For more image, some videos and more information visit Gizmodo

We all love the feeling of grass under our feet. Well, most of us do. For me it means it’s summertime and weather is warm. It also reminds me of living in Hawaii were I have spent days, weeks and even months at a time wearing nothing but flip flops or slippers as they call them in Hawaii. So when I seen these real grass flip flops from Krispy Kreme I smiled and even chuckled a little bit.

I was surprised to find out that Krispy Kreme actually have stores in the UK as well. I assumed they were only in America. Good to know since I live near the UK.

The grass flip flops are part a of promotion they have going on right now.

thanks to Neatorama for the link.

http://view.break.com/533617 – Watch more free videos

I love the way these look. I also like the idea of them being solar powered. Less batteries the better. Basically we have an old school jar that has been equipped with a blue or yellow light and a mini solar panel to charge the lamp.

Not only is the jar waterproof but the frosting on the jar creates a nice glow from the light inside and they are equipped with a light sensor as well so the only come on when it gets dark.

Features:
• Extra Large Eco “Firefly-Powered” Lamp
• Waterproof Seal: can be used Both Indoor or Outdoor, like Living Room, Bathroom, Garden, Balcony, Swimming Pool, Camp Sites……etc.
• Environmental Friendly: Recharged by the SunLight
• Automatic Switch: Charge Up under Sunlight, Auto Glow up when getting Dark
• Natural Light: Glowing led similar to Candle
• Top diameter: 9.5 cm
• Bottom: 10.8 x 10.8 cm
• Height: 16 cm

Package Included:

• 1 piece Extra Large Eco “Firefly-Powered” Lamp

Brando Gadgets

These tiny little wind-up lights look pretty neat. I know batteries are good and in these LED lights they last forever but what if that little battery goes dead? I know I don’t keep the little ones on hand. I have a drawer full of A’ AA’ and even D’ batteries but I don’t have any of the little tiny flat ones. This is why I think this little tiny crank light would be handy to have. Plus at only $8 a pop and a bunch of colors to choose from you can’t go wrong really.

Features:

• Mini Dynamo Keychain 2-LED Flashlight
• Brightness LEDs

Dimension:

• 4 x 3 x 1.3 cm

Package Included:

• 1 piece Mini Dynamo Keychain 2-LED Flashlight

http://gadget.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00599