"A first person walk through of 'Machine', a steam punk horror show we built and performed in our garage."
"it took about 18 months of tinkering in the garage to build it, we've been planning and designing it since way before. There's one top secret bit of kit we had to build first to enable the the machine to travel between scenes. The whole set is only in a normal sized double garage. One of the most time consuming bits of the build was the brick walls in old London, each brick hand carved from polystyrene, that might have been a mistake."
There's not really enough value in this to make cities need to install them everywhere, but it's one of those ideas that at least makes me pause to think about it.
Pop-Up is a set of platforms that is embedded in the sidewalk and can be pumped up or down by anyone. The advantage is in being able to free up sidewalk space when not in use, while also not requiring other storage space for bulky furniture. Also, since each component can be raised or lowered independently the furniture can be used as benches, tables, or some combination.
Downsides:
A) Potentially filthy (dog-doo smears on your table?)
B) Some kid decides to pump your seat up or down while you're sitting on it and you have to chase him away.
Maybe you have to be in Holland for this to work.
Wired has an article titled 12 Good Gadgets for Hard Times listing the dozen things that any fallout shelter owner would want to have.
I own a few of these, and whenever I pick them up, I have a sense that, if anything really bad were to happen, at least I would still be able to open cans and listen to AM radio.