More Experiments

Rodents' love of chewing can wreak serious havoc on everything in their cages, as we discovered during our first few attempts at wiring up Lizzie's cage. Lately I've been experimenting with a laser cutter to create unique toys for her to chew on and keep things interesting (seriously, you'd be bored too if your universe mostly consisted of a glass tank).

A particularly successful prototype has been to cut out little pieces of cardboard that can be interlinked to form all kinds of different structures. Think K'Nex for hamsters. Also pictured is a more ambitious project to create fun, safe home for Lizzie. All of the pieces are connected using slits and pressure nubs so no glue or any other materials that could potentially have been hazardous were used in anything. Just pure, good old cardboard. ;)


"Mine! Keep off!"

















"Yesssssss, from this castle I shall rise to dominate. They will all fall before me. One day, it shall all be mine...but first, nap time."

How Fast Does a Hamster Run?

As more and more people get interested in tracking Lizzie's progress we've more and more great quesitons. One such question came as a comment on our Instructable from mrbob1001 and asked "Have you ever calculated [Lizzie's] top speed?"

To answer the question I constructed a graph of Lizzie's speed distribution, how much of the time she runs at different speeds.

From this graph we can tell a couple interesting things. First it appears that her sustainable top speed is about 2.5 mph. In addition while she can go that fast she prefers to run at around 1.85 mph. Interestingly enough her time running at each speed looks like it might be a standard distribution around that center point slightly skewed because of  the ramp-up necessary while she accelerates from a stop. A slightly more detailed graph is available here.

On a related note, we love questions! Please feel free to keep asking them in the comments or by email. We'll do our best to answer them and feature the best ones in the FAQ and on this blog.

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?