Who among us hasn’t had a love/hate relationship with Tetris at some point in our lives? Still seeing the little blocks while drifting off to sleep, swearing off the Tetris addiction after “just one more game”, and finally getting that long piece just a little too late. Whereas most of us eventually parlayed our Tetris habit into excellent organizing skills, others have continued their Tetris practice to championship levels.

Below are three videos of insane Tetris skill on display. The first shows a Japanese arcade player with unbelievable swag. The second video is LapSiLap’s world record run in “40 line” Tetris, clearing the 40 lines in only 21.9 seconds. I believe this player is using LockJaw, an open-source game which can be customized to remove animations and choose your keyboard commands. The third video below is an interview with Jono Pearson (pictured above), Australia’s fastest Tetris player. He says he can clear 40 lines in 24 seconds (roughly 4 pieces per second). YouTube seems to be of two minds on how much swag he has.

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Back in 2000, three rare comic books (including a very high grade copy of Action Comics #1) were stolen out of high security picture frames in Nicolas Cage’s home around the same time he was throwing a party (an awesome party, apparently). Earlier this year, the comics were found in a storage locker and recovered by the LAPD.

It was unknown what condition the comics were in, or even who would be considered the owner of them now, although Cage told ABC he would be trying to get them back. The Action Comics #1 is particularly valuable, as it is the first appearance of Superman and the first superhero comic.

An Action Comics #1 CGC 9.0 has just appeared on Certified Guaranty Company’s Comic Book census — which is a publicly-accessible database of every comic the company has graded. Given the circumstances, it is very likely that this CGC 9.0 copy is the Cage copy recovered by LA police. And it is the best copy ever graded by CGC. [BleedingCool]

Last year, a copy of Action Comics #1 graded by CGC at 8.5 sold for $1.5 million, a record at the time. This 9.0 copy is going up for sale at Comic Connect, and may become the first comic to ever sell for more than $2 million. We’re guessing he’ll spend it on more dinosaur skulls and albino King Cobras to keep his other dinosaur skulls and albino King Cobras company, and maybe he’ll drive them around in a Lambo because they deserve the finer things.

So there you have it. Maybe it’ll break an auction record. Maybe it won’t. Nobody knows yet. I just really, really wanted to photoshop Wicker Man Nicolas Cage into Action Comics #1. And now I have. To commemorate the occasion, here is a dog in a bow tie playing a keyboard:

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Paul McKinnon and his team at Evolution Motorsport broke the land speed record for the fastest sofa during a run at Camden Airport in Sydney, Australia, last week. Their top speed of 163km/h [101 mph] broke the previous Guinness World Record of 148km/h [92 mph] held by Englishman Marek Turowsk since 2008. You gonna let Australia upstage your motorized sofas, England? Start connecting motey-motes to sit-abouts immediately. (We assume this is what they call motors and couches over there, right Governor?)

Australia’s leather two-seater, with handy coffee table (complete with cup of coffee and bowl of fruit), was built by designers Evolution Motorsport. It is powered by a Suzuki GSX 1400 motorcycle engine. Project leader Paul McKinnon said the challenge was not just making sure it was fast, but that it could battle the aerodynamic challenge of pushing a squared-off piece of furniture at that speed. [Herald Sun]

They used the coffee table to help break the airflow, and the bowl of fruit is for (we assume) nutrition on the go, which is totally important you guys. The motorized couch was built for Parmalat Australia’s “Add a Motor to It” promotion, which led to some confusion when we tried to add motors to some kangaroos and then told the police Parmalat put us up to it.

Two videos of the record-breaking run are below. Now that the land speed record for a couch has been updated, somebody needs to break the water speed record (if one exists) likely set by these dudes.

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In case you hadn’t heard, AMD and Intel are kind of fighting over who gets to be the biggest processor manufacturer in the world. And, right at the start of Intel’s developer conference, AMD managed to steal their thunder in a big way.

How? By getting a bunch of respected overclockers to take their latest processor, the AMD-FX, and using everything from water to advanced chemistry to crank it as high as it could go.

And how high was that, precisely? 8.429 GHz.

Yep, you read that correctly. AMD claims that with basic cooling rigs, the FX chip can run at 5 GHz. Here’s video of what it takes to unlock a chip’s full potential:
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Nerds like tiny things. There is nothing that exists that we do not want to make smaller: just ask Ben Heck. But sorry, everyone, the tiniest motor ever will be built. And it’s a molecule.

Specifically a butyl methyl sulfide molecule. The way it comes together, it’s essentially a lopsided propeller, with one carbon bonded to one side and four on the other. Run some electricity through it, and it rotates, fulfilling the requirement to be a motor: directed, electrically controlled motion.

This does actually have some practical use beyond bragging rights: it can be used to push fluid through nanotubes. But, yeah, still, mostly for bragging rights.

[ via the tiny motors in the wine at New Scientist ]

Colin Furze wasn’t deterred by an arrest on a firearms charge for his flamethrower scooter, so he went on to break a Guinness World Record by building the world’s fastest mobility scooter. But getting a Guinness World Record is totally like racking up sex offenses in that I don’t want to stop at just one. *rereads analogy* Yep. That’s exactly what I meant to say.

Furze set out to break another record for the world’s longest motorcycle, as seen in the video below. The previous record was held by a motorcycle which was about 46 feet (14 meters) long and traveled about 328 feet (100 meters). Furze’s modified motorbike is 72 feet long and traveled a mile at a top speed of 35 mph.

He was the only one riding at the time, but is planning to reinforce the aluminum frame to hold passengers while in motion. Which would be awesomely safe since he says it’s “impossible to steer” and needs six lane-widths to turn. He built it out of parts from one-and-a-half 125cc mopeds and a lot of aluminum. It takes three people to move the bike, which he says is worth £3,000. That’s either US $5,200 or eleventy billion dollars, depending on what the market did today.

[Sources: DVICE, SayOMG, DailyMail]

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