🐜The RoboRoach, Bucket Farming, and One Time Payment SaaS
unhinged one time payments
Hey everyone!
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.
February is here, and Valentine’s Day is just a few days away. The only hack I can recommend is buying flowers + chocolate the day before. There’s a lot less competition!
It’s also more fun to buy flowers that are alive and planted in some fashion.
This week, we find ourselves swirling about in the milieu of various takes on the Apple Vision Pro. The articles just won’t stop!
However . . . if you’re willing to read just one more, this one on Wait but Why is really good.
It’s thoughtful and VERY in-depth.
Are you going to start a garden this year?
We’re going to start our seedlings here in the next week or two.
Hopefully, we can get a good crop of delicious veggies going this year, and maybe a few fruits. This year, I need to give the vegetables more encouragement and words of affirmation.
Did you happen to take a look at that Pinball site I shared last week?
I plan to visit Viking Pizza Co. nearby in Spring Hill so I can get in a few rounds!
(Most pinball places are in Nashville, and far away from my home).
Oh! The Buy Wander website went live a few days ago too. This Bidding system is pretty intriguing.
Shall we dive in?
🐜The Roboroach
Do you want a pet cyborg cockroach?
Of course you do! With the RoboRoach kit you can grab one of the ones scurrying around (or outside the house) and quickly convert it into a cyborg.
No this isn’t a joke. This is 100% real - no lie. no cap. Here’s the description.
We are excited to announce the world's first commercially available cyborg! With our RoboRoach you can briefly wirelessly control the left/right movement of a cockroach by microstimulation of the antenna nerves. The RoboRoach is a great way to engage with neural microstimulation, learning, and electronics! The RoboRoach Bundle comes with a complete surgery kit that gives you everything you need to add the RoboRoach backpack to your cockroach. (source)
Fortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) the cockroach does not die from the surgery, and can happily live on its own once you’ve had fun making the cockroach move around.
How does it work?
Following a brief surgery you perform on the cockroach to attach the silver electrodes to the antenna, you can attach the backpack to the roach and control its movement for a few minutes before the cockroach adapts. When you return the cockroach to its cage for ~20 minutes, they "forget" and the stimulation works again . . . After about 2-7 days, the stimulation stops working altogether, so you can clip the wires and retire the cockroach to your breeder colony to spend the rest of its days eating your lettuce and making more cockroaches for you. (source)
You control the movements from a simple app on your phone.
Unnerving, yet fascinating.
Go check it out!
🌱Bucket Farming
I’ve been noticing more and more videos about bucket farming.
The phrase “bucket farming” is trending up . . .
Have you ever thought about it?
It’s quite literally what it sounds like - growing food in buckets.
It’s an easy way to grow vegetables without having to create a giant garden bed. It’s much easier to put soil, rocks, and fertilizer in a bucket, instead of all the tilling, weeding . . .
And - buckets are cheap - around $5 apiece.
Better yet, it’s something you can do if you have limited space in your backyard, or only have a small apartment porch.
You can create some epic scaffold (this one is pretty incredible too) like the one above, or just put a few buckets in a spare corner.
Want to grow potatoes in a 5 Gallon Bucket - you can!
If you’re interested in trying your hand at some bucket farming, check out this tutorial!
This article has some fantastic information about fertilizers and PH levels.
You can also do self-watering versions too!
💲One-Time Payment SaaS
All SaaS (software as a service) is both a blessing and a curse.
It saves us time but costs money.
The more tools we add, the more expensive it gets. Unless the tool is on Appsumo, we’ll pay till the end of time.
Once.com wants to change that - with one-time purchase software.
“Introducing ONCE, a new line of software products from 37signals.
Pay one time, own forever.
We write the code, you get to see it.
We give you the software, you get to host it.
Simple and straightforward, not enterprisey and bloated.
For one fixed price. Once.” (source)
They’ve just released their first product - Campfire.
You pay $300 - and that’s it. No more costs and bare-bones support is included.
Now - it doesn’t have video, audio calls, or screensharing - but ole’ Google Meet is only a few clicks away.
I’m curious to see what Once is planning . . . .
One time payment zapier clone? Crm?
Check out Campfire at the link!
🐙The Land of Random!
Dive! Dive! Dive!
Hackerpulse Newsletter
Do you love tech? Stay up to date on the latest trends with Hackerpulse. There’s lots of interesting trends and ideas to explore!
The Vintage Computing Commandments
Do you obey these ancient rules?
Youtube Looper
Need to listen to Nyan Cat for the next 3 hours? You can do that with . . .
Graybox Chan
Random 4chan style board. I didn’t see anything NSFL or NSFW - just existential posts and typical chan content.
Conscript
This horror game is set in WWI trenches. Looks terrifying!
Make a Mixtape
Find some Youtube videos, and create a mixtape!
German Trains Still Running Windows 3.11
Auncient Tech, running the modern world.
Make a Video Phone?
I really wish this kind of thing caught on. It would be such a fun alternative timeline. That being said, Android video phones do exist . . .
🎶TikToks You Can’t Miss
An extremely based use for a Flipper Zero
Ok - Do i need to download Fortnite again?
I love some lost media conspiracies.
Well that’s freakin’ terrifying.
i want this BBQ so bad.
What am I watching.
🤖AI AHHHHHHHHHHH
This week, there is only one link - and that is to the Frame AI glasses. These glasses look insane - and I honestly will need to watch a review to believe they’re real.
That’s all for this week! See you next time
unless you want to look at ancient bread
omae mona...
"omae mona!", yelled the Boarders.