Boing Boing's Happy Mutant Mobile: Submit your ideas!

boing
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A Happy Mutant Mobile (HMM) should be all about connecting, collaborating and generally getting people involved. Think mobile maker lab, but also with lots of crowd-gathering appeal.

@chaostic put out many great ideas already, and I won’t even try to top those. Still, I kinda see the HMM with lots of slide-out cabinets, ideally in a fractal way: You slide out two racks from the back, and from each of those, you slide out two more. Don’t worry about loading the racks with actual merchandise (that would foul up the fractal-rack mechanism anyway): Let them instead sport things that can are flat and can be folded out: Touch screen displays, flipboards, free USB-ports for people to drop data into, whiteboards for doodling world domination plans on…

Anyway: Leave room on it for further editing. When you hit the road, you want all those happy mutants you meet to add things to the HMM. Maybe someone will want to laser-etch something onto the hood, or someone else has a spare projector that can be mounted to the roof to project an interactive hopscotch field onto the sidewalk for passing folks?

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Jack Hammer Jill on the roof that blows bubbles

5 Likes
27

Can it be towing a unicorn?

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Unicorn Banana Hybrid.

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Project Gutenberg on a stick: Wifi served version of Project Gutenberg, Raspi with wifi and a small drive, memory stick.

and how about adding a key signing party?

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Some kind of web cam:

  1. Stereo! one in the driver’s side rear view mirror, one in the passenger side, for a 3D view of whatever the car is pointed at.

  2. Google street view style panorama, navigable in the time dimension

  3. Live web stream

  4. All of the above, at the same time.

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An official Boing Boing vehicle should absolutely have a key-start ignition.

Keys are awesome and eminently hackable.

“Secure” wireless fobs and push-button starts are for people who enjoy dumbed-down, consumerized systems and shun the DIY mentality.

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Convert to run on recycled vegetable oils? Then its emissions will smell like fries (no, seroiously)!

That or make it run on the pure, untapped power of butthurt bbs commenters’ rage.

1 Like
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What better way to honor BB’s love of both Breaking Bad and coffee than with a Gale Boetticher style coffee maker?

Cold brew is a good idea but there isn’t much whimsy involved; Cory’s favorite, Aeropress, may make great coffee but is a bit too straightforward too.

I’m thinking Rube Goldberg x Gale Boetticher. Which is to say, obviously there needs to be a Rube Goldberg machine of some sort, and obviously there needs to be coffee. It’s a matter of basic efficiency, really.

Actually, involving an Aeropress in a Rube Goldberg machine could totally work too. Lots of options. Maybe a big bank of Aeropresses that send the coffee through thin tubes that pass through refrigeration units and pour into cups (with ice cubes that came from another part of the machine) for iced coffee, since the van will probably be in LA.

Regarding the drones that have been mentioned; I think it would be best if they were launched automatically from a hidden compartment on the roof.

What would be really neat is giving control of the drones to the audience. Perhaps ahead of an appearance, the general area can be mapped out by the operator and the drones programmed not to leave the designated area (and not to go low enough to be a danger to people, though obviously they’ll have sensors to prevent collisions as well). Operator interface can basically be point-and-click on top of Google Maps; using GPS and other sensors within the drone (quadcopter) it can be programmed not to accept commands that take it out of the preselected area.

Audience interface will involve physical joysticks and knobs and such, no touch screens, with one or all of the screens streaming video from the drone. Or even a VR helmet, or just a bunch of monitors wrapping around to give a cool immersive effect.

With augmented reality - monsters of some sort, maybe. Different modes - turn everyone on the video feed into walking bananas. Make a 3D scan of an audience member (a kid, most likely) and have an animated CGI version of them at 50x the size walking the streets, visible on the drone camera feed and from any van-mounted cameras too.

But, uh, Rube Goldberg coffee is my main idea :coffee:

1 Like
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Not sure if this qualifies but here goes - the primary problem with this project will be engagement, that is to say getting people to take that step after seeing the thing and thinking “wtf” to actually walking over to it and participating. So what I would recommend altering is who you get to drive the thing.

You can build the most awesome thing ever to be found in the world of weird, wonderful and wicked things in technology and culture, but if you can’t get people to come over and participate it doesn’t matter. Put Patrick Stewart (assuming he isn’t too stoned to drive :smiley: ) behind the wheel!

Warp, Happy Mutant Mobile - Engage!

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John Cusack, Adam Savage, Wil Wheaton, and John Hodgman, among others, are well-known celebrities who are also friends/readers of Boing Boing, and are more realistic prospects.

But that does prompt another idea - holograms. Have Patrick Stewart appear to beam in with a hologram, and people are going to stop and look as much so - if not more - than if he was actually there :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Yes!! Other people certainly suggest themselves, I was just throwing one favorite into the discussion.

My main concern was how to get people to walk over and participate - and hells yes Wil W or Adam S and others would be so awesome as well as wonderful representatives of the idea and tech.

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How about a wagon full of complaining over-educated complainers to complain about everything to drag around behind the Boingmobile on a long chain? Rob could preside over the group with a whip and a display of appropriate animated GIFs.

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It needs a mast and a sail, and a video projector aimed at the sail. No van is complete without a sail. And uniforms!

Uniform

1 Like
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A few additions:

  • You need a cannon. no modification is complete without a cannon. Make it fire LED stickies or glitter or bananas or a ‘standard projectile container’ that anybody can 3D-print and load with their own ideas or pretty much anything. You could go modern with a compressed air cannon, or oldschool with a trebuchet.
  • A pirate box. Simple, cheap, easily embedded somewhere invisible. Your car can become a CC-licensed-file-sharing-mobile. A few people have already suggested this, and a pirate box is the easiest way to make it happen.
  • Bobble-head Jesus on the dashboard. Underneath is written ‘Christ, what an asshole’

In terms of outward appearance, I have attached some prior art you may wish to draw upon.

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I think the way to go would be with a table and seating that extend out of the back, for either making neat stuff, showing off neat stuff, or even just be an outdoor booth.

Due to space limitations, the only paper should be for a printer, not in comics and books - those should be available on readers of the users’ and visitors’ choice (yes, even iPad).

Perhaps a trailer hitch, to haul along a trailer with the souvenirs and raw feedstock for the printers and CNC lathes, etc.

And a big honkin’ satellite dish on the top, for internet access anywhere.

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That is pretty much AWESOME.

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You need to include an infinite supply of Guy Fawkes masks to hand out on request, no questions asked.

1 Like
45

Kind of looks like an Xk-E!

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As they say on The InterCommentsWeb: “And we’re done here.”

Sure, you can’t really make this vehicle, but this deserves a special de-luxe prize.