Wriggly, wacky speakers for the iPod

Tangle Toys Inc. ( tangletoys.com), a company founded by self-described inventor, philosopher, and Zen sculptor Richard X. Zawitz, says its Tangle DNA Sound iPod Speakers "seem to float in mid-air" above their base.

Actually, the two speakers are mounted at the end of four Tangles, which are cables you can twist and shape to form your own work of art.

The whole Tangle "thing" does absolutely nothing for me, but Zawitz says he has sold millions of Tangle toys.

And I did enjoy viewing the photos of Zawitz's pretzly artwork, which is based on Buddhist symbols. They're at richardxzawitz.com.

Weather

Home station for weather buffs adds NOAA alerts

New England's topsy-turvy weather can make parenting even tougher. On the days I suit my kid up like Nanook of the North, the mercury hits 60. Yet mild mornings that call for a light jumper seem to give way to afternoons of biting winds and rain. Conditions change so quickly it may be better to be your own weatherman.

One of the most comprehensive DIY weather kits I've seen is the Honeywell Emergency Alert Home Weather Station, which adds NOAA alert broadcasts to your everyday environmental monitoring. The kit (about $350) is a tweak of the Honeywell Home Weather Station.

The station's LCD screen provides a quick read of current conditions. It gathers data from wireless thermo-hygrometers, anemometers, and rain collectors -- up to eight sensors -- that you set outside. You can slide all of those wind speed, temperature, and rainfall figures over to your PC via USB to do some graphical analysis. The station will also relay those NOAA emergency alerts of the events you can't predict with your rooftop wind cups and wireless thermometers.

Prototypes

High school crew aims to harness sun's energy to produce biodiesel fuel

Desirée Amadeo will make a bright addition to MIT's alternative energy programs when she becomes a freshman at the university next fall. But first she wants to perfect the biodiesel processor she's working on with her fellow chemistry students at New Hampshire's Merrimack High School.

Members of the school's biodiesel crew, with help from their chemistry teacher, Tray Sleeper, are producing 10-gallon batches of clean-burning BD, which runs fine in most diesel engines, without modification.

The crew is using an InvenTeams grant from the Lemelson-MIT Program to modify its 10-gallon BD processor, which converts waste vegetable oil from local restaurants into BD, so it can run off of solar power.

"We're trying to create the most efficient way to produce biodiesel," Amadeo said. The Merrimack InvenTeam hopes to release the plans for the prototype solar-charged processor within a few months. Amadeo hopes other schools and even individual BD home brewers will download the plans and build their own processors.

The Merrimack Inven Team (I'll be telling you about other InvenTeams in coming weeks) is also getting help from students in the high school's auto shop. They are helping the chemistry students learn more about BD emissions and how BD affects the life of diesel engines. School buses donated by a local company will run on the veggie oil-derived BD. Merrimack students have also turned one their byproducts into another form of green energy: They have sold soap at fund-raisers, made from the glycerine that results from the production of BD.

Amadeo said she was moved to participate in the biodiesel project by what she learned about global warming and the nation's dependence on fossil fuels. "I felt I needed to be a part of the solution," she said.