How to Track Your Own Hamster

Hey everyone! By popular demand, Tommy has written up an Instructable on how he tracks Lizzie's running and progress across America! Everything you need to know, from the list of materials and equipment to assembly instructions and some basic code to get you started is there. Check it out! Now you too can monitor the activities of your furry little friends. :-D

Instructables: Track How Far Your Hamster Runs.

The Main Page Is Up!

Holy crap! I think I need my eyes checked. How convenient my optometrist appointment is tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I may have to call everything I see into question, like the main page actually working and the furry spherical cow having tea with a pink platypus and an anthropomorphic eggplant in the corner of my bedroom.

Even if it is indeed an illusion, I have to say it looks quite fabulous! Major props to Tommy for finally pulling off our lovely Google Maps mashup so we can see exactly where Lizzie is in the U.S.

To get everyone up to speed, Lizzie is not following any particular road or highway. We had originally been considering having her run along I-80, but decided it would be more fun instead for her to cut across and visit famous parks, cities and landmarks. After all, she's a hamster, so she should be able to handle some off-roading to avoid the pesky nuisance of traffic jams, pot holes and angry drivers. Lakes and rivers pose a problem because getting hamsters wet can make them susceptible to wet tail and pneumonia, but let's assume for the purposes of her virtual tour that her wheel is buoyant and water-tight with its own recycling air supply (Oh a hamster submarine! That could be a fun project to work on....). ;)


Looks like at the moment she's finished swimming/sailing across Lake Meade after visiting Las Vegas and is running as I type towards the Grand Canyon. Keep up the good work, Lizzie, and again a huge thanks to Tommy for making this site possible.

Congrats Tommy!

Hey everyone! Just wanted to give a quick shout out to Tommy, who just finished his masters! Congrats! Now you have no excuse to not get the main page working... ;)

In the meantime, Lizzie has become very innovative in her running: she's been running along the TOP of the wheel instead of in it! Kudos for the innovative thinking!


"Let me out of here!!!"

500 miles at last!

A big congrats to Lizzie for making 500 miles!!! Some treats of fresh blueberries were certainly in order. We're 1/6 of the way there! :-D

Soooooooo close!

As I write Lizzie is just at the cusp of breaking 500 miles (497.24 miles to be exact). Time has really flown since Tommy and I started this project together. It's been a fun few months getting everything working (Tommy gets most of the credit for this!) and designing everything on the site. Not to mention we've made several frantic trips to Home Depot whenever we discovered that Lizzie had once again managed to gnaw through the not-as-indestructible-as-we-thought wires and their protective wrappings attached to her running wheel.

Anyways, a night or two more and she'd have run over 500 miles! With Lizzie still less than a year old, I still have hopes she'll make it to the East Coast. A friend gave Lizzie some new chewy treats to celebrate her breaking the 400 mile mark. What should we get for the 500?

Yes, She is REAL

Just to settle any doubts about the existence of our spunky fur ball, here's Lizzie posing in front of her virtual cross-country transporter:

We're finally online!

Wooo! After months of being in beta, we've finally finished the site design and navigation! Tommy has been totally awesome working on putting together the Google Maps mash-up to track our little hamster in her exercise wheel. That'll be up soon, we promise! If it's not, I'll be sure to walk down the hallway and remind Tommy to hurry up. ;)

In the meantime, check out our merchandise page here: http://www.zazzle.com/hamsteracrossamerica ! We set up a small gallery on Zazzle, with all the royalties going to the Humane Society. Currently we've got our logo for sale, but it's totally customizable and you can put it on any shirt/color that Zazzle has available. I've been working on some new designs too so check back soon for updates!