Kickstarting the weekend!

It’s nearly the end of the Thursday work day, so we reckon we can legitimately call this the kickstart the weekend page…

If only we actually could use Kickstarter to kickstart the weekend, eh? Imagine how fast that campaign would reach its target… 😉

Anyway! We’ll put House of Astbury’s awesome legwear project up first, as it closes on Saturday… 

House of Astbury is “a reflective, feminist, sport and cycle-friendly clothing brand based in London“. It’s raising funds to make its reflective winter tights in an ethically-run London factory – and these aren’t your average road safety items, oh no, these have THUNDERBOLTS on ’em, and not a little humour. We like ’em, quite a lot. They’re designed for women, but we’re sure there will be some men out there who will want to try and squeeze into them anyway. You’re welcome.

Next up, two alternatives to the humble turbo trainer. This one has us completely baffled – not least because you’d think if you’d gone to the trouble of Kickstartering your genius patent-pending idea, you’d come up with a better idea for a name than the Bicycle Trainer by David Evans. We’re going to quote the campaign blurb verbatim, because even after a second afternoon coffee, we can’t make head nor tail of what it does…

“The essence of operation can be that compared with a paddle steamer. When the paddle steamer travels down river (with the flow) it requires little effort from the paddle to move the steamer down river whereas when moving up the river, against the flow, far more effort is required by the paddle. This trainer works in a similar fashion. A fluid flow is created and the cycist’s “paddle” either turns with the flow or against it. Controls are used to alter the flow to aid or resist the cyclist’s efforts… No other cycle trainer on the market takes body size and weight into consideration and accommodates for this in reproducing assistive or resistive forces encountered in a real ride. Wind force simulation can be reproduced in any direction taking account of the force a larger person encounters as opposed to that of a smaller person. With the aid of an assistive force, down hill simulation can be achieved. Ground frictional forces can also be accommodated.”

Er, quite. And then there’s the Revbox, which – as well as having a properly Kickstartery name – looks like it would double up as a very useful industrial cheese grater. Ahem.

Moving swiftly on, let’s have a gadget. You can’t beat a gadget, right? Unless it’s a gadget like the Fogo, a 1,000 lumen light with GPS. And a digital compass. And Bluetooth. And a walkie-talkie that also sends texts. Wowsers! Truly unbeatable. We bet it still can’t fix a puncture, though.

And here’s something that might actually be useful. Fed up of licking your gloves to make your touchscreen work? Then Glovys are for you!

The Glovy is a second screen for your iPhone 3, 4, 5, 6 or 6+, made of two clear layers with what can only assume is magic sandwiched in between. Or spit. No, on reflection we’ll go with magic. Anyway, it means you can use your phone even when wearing the woolliest of gloves. Smart stuff, and all thanks to the submariners, apparently. Cheers guys!

Lastly, a project that has already reached its target, and has the potential to be genuinely very cool indeed.

Shot in 2013/14, MTB Out Of The Box follows Iran’s top downhiller Hossein Zanjanian and friends as they road-trip their way round a country that the vast majority of people will only ever have seen on front line news reports. They Kickstarted for funds to put the footage they’d shot through the costly edit and production process, and the film is already winning awards.

We hope the change left over also helped them buy a better breakfast than whatever the hell this is…

And on that note, we’ll leave you to your dinner. Enjoy!