Weird Tech: Drunken inventions & robot flies

Thankfully this is a real fly not a robot one - or else we'd all be in really big trouble

"Drink is the cause of - and solution to - all of life's problems," Homer Simpson once said, and the yellow blob would surely be intrigued by It's a Guy Thing: Awesome Real Innovations From the Underdeveloped Male Mind - a book detailing some of most ridiculous gadgets ever invented, presumably after a few pints at Moe's.

HIghlights included on The Bachelor Guy include a Helmet-mounted Pistol, a Penis Exerciser, a Pogo-copter and a head-butting game for small children.

Strange then that there's no mention of Harvard University's robot fly in the book. The 60 miligram bug-bot was apparently modeled on a real fly and maybe used for spying on people in the future. The roblem is, no-one's figured out a way to remote control it yet so it has to be kept on a tether - presumably with a bear-sized hairy scientist at the other end.

The lovechild of Darth Vader and ET?

More robots reared their mis-shaped heads at new store in Tokyo this week. RoboSquare is home to some 111 robots from Sony's sublime, but now defunct AIBO to a Robovie-R which looks like the result of an unfortunate coupling between Darth Vader and ET.

There are no couplings of any description on Xu Jinglei's website, and yet the Chinese actress/director is currently the owner of the world's most popular blog with more than 100 visitors per second and 100 million page views in just two years.

Bargain of the year

Mind you her popularity will pale into insignificance when you consider how many new friends a Norfolk 16-year old has made this week . The unnamed teenager bought a PlayStation 2 for £95 on eBay and was stunned to receive it minus the two accompanying games he was expecting, but with £44,000 cash inside. Talk about a bargain!

Mind you a poor PC got more than it bargained for when its reluctance to work forced its owner - a 51-year old German to lob it out of a window . German police decided not to press charges when the owner's frustrations were explained to them saying: "Who hasn't felt like doing that?"

Perhaps he was doing a spot of programming and then read Codesqueeze's 101 ways to know your software project is doomed .

FInally it's emerged that Scots are the most prolific when it comes to chatting on their mobile phones. Maybe they've been discussing a fake Apple ad featuring one Homer Simpson .