A Cool Gadget

Someday, people are going to learn not to mess with the dangerous technology. You’re not supposed to build an AI! Haven’t the movies taught you people anything? Apparently not, since some guy has gone and built himself a transforming robot.

Is it awesome? Of course it is–it’s a damn Transformer. It may not be a fancy little car or anything, but it moves and changes smoothly. And now we’re one step closer to things like world destruction and some guy emotionally yelling, “Optimus!”

At least there’s not a do-it-yourself tutorial along with this video, at least, not that I’ve seen. There’s just this video, but when you’re talking about more than meets the eye, maybe that’s enough.

[via Hack n Mod]

A Japanese company called solidalliance has come up with Mnemosyne, an aluminum cube that holds an otherwise ordinary 16GB flash drive inside. But it’s not that simple: the cube is actually a puzzle.

It’s made of smaller pieces that you have to slide apart before you can get to the flash drive. That’s the flash drive right there, the one one that looks like a domino piece. Here’s what solidalliance has to say about their product: “As we wanted our USB flash drive to be used with care and attention, we chose a precious, expensive, bulky and heavy material that would be difficult to use.”

WOW. So if you want people to use your product with “care and attention”, you screw them over by giving them a needlessly complicated piece of crap? Why don’t you just give us flash drive parts in a brown paper bag scribbled with assembly instructions written in hieroglyphics?

And there’s another catch: the Mnemosyne is priced at a whopping $10,410 (USD). Wow. Apparently to solidalliance, rich people are stupid. I hope that’s not true.

[via newlaunches and akihabara news]

I apologize to anyone who has seen Revenge of the Fallen and liked it, but personally I think I got ripped off on that one. My sentiments – and then some – have been represented elsewhere, so I’ll just leave it at that. So let’s look at here’s Robonova instead. Robonova is a programmable, fully articulating 12-in robot powered by 16 digital servos. He can walk, run, dance and even do cartwheels.

Lynxmotion, the company behind Robonova, is planning to produce a variety of accessories for the robot, such as a Bluetooth controller, gyros and even speech synthesis modules. Here’s a video of Robonova “practicing” martial arts routines:

And here’s a Robonova painted to look like Optimus Prime, amusing a group of movie goers. Unlike the Prime in the movie, who might as well be called The Fallen himself. Fallen from grace that is.

You can buy your own Robonova kit for $900 USD at Lynxmotion. It will take you approximately 6 to 8 hours to assemble the robot, so if you think you won’t be able to do that, you can buy the Ready-to-Walk version for $1,050. That may seem expensive, until you realize that it took $200 million to excrete create Revenge of the Fallen.

I’m not sure who decided that water guns and rubber duckies were just the thing to help sell the console that has never spent more than a few days at most sitting on the shelf, but that seems to be the thrust behind GameStop’s wacky new Wii bundles.

The GameStop bundle: when it’s important to buy a water gun and a gaming console at the same time!

Some of the retailer’s bundles make a little more sense, and by some, I mean one: the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games bundle includes a console and the aforementioned game. It’s a bundle; it’s made up of things that go together.

The Take a Bath with a Buddy bundle? Includes a Wii and a rubber duck. Let’s just hope no one thinks that the buddy who goes into the bath is the Wii. Somebody’s gonna get sued.

[via Destructoid via Joystiq]

In a study published in Nature magazine, a group of scientists revealed that human cells may be induced to regenerate appendages in the same way that salamanders do. Meaning we can also grow salamander limbs. Kidding.

Apparently the cells on the stumps of a salamander “only” need to revert to a “less mature” state instead of a day 1 embryonic state to differentiate and turn into the cells that will make up the new limb. Dr. Elly Tanaka, one of the biologists behind the study, said that this bodes well for us, because it means that tissue regeneration is much more probable than previously thought. But this is future-future tech, and further studies are needed before any human tests will be performed. I recommend that Dr. Tanaka and her colleagues read this document, published in 1963, so that we may avoid having to deal with the likes of this:

*shivers* Dr. Tanaka, please conduct research on radioactive spiders as well. It’ll be fun I promise.

[via Wired via Neatorama]

This weensy little computer is so small that you might accidentally misplace it if you’re not careful.

The oddly-named Marvell Sheevaplug (I think I went to college with him) is about the size of your average gadget’s power adapter, but it actually contains a complete computer (sans video output). The device has a 1.2GHz CPU, 512MB of flash memory and 512MB of RAM, which should be plenty for running a web server or other Linux applications. It’s got a built-in Gigabit Ethernet port for network connectivity, and a USB port, so you might even be able to hook up a DisplayLink device without any video card.

The compact PC uses very little power (just 5 watts), and (of course) doesn’t require any sort of external power adapter. It looks like Marvell is going after larger distribution relationships at this point, but they are selling developer kits if you want to tinker with one for yourself. You can get your hands on a SheevaPlug developer kit (which looks a bit more clunky than the svelte production model above) over at Globalscale Technologies for just $99 (USD).

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Here’s an odd little gadget fresh from Japan. It’s a digital pedometer with a twist. Instead of just measuring how many steps you’ve walked, it has you play a little Samurai game as you amble along.

From what I can tell, Bandai’s YUU HO KEI pedometer game involves ordering your foot soldiers out to battle with you – by making them walk – and then walk some more. The more distance you cover, the closer your army gets to the battlefield, and the closer you get to becoming a Samurai master.

But this pocket-sized gadget isn’t just for fun. It actually seems like a pretty nice pedometer, capturing data from your activity, and letting you upload it to Bandai’s website so you can keep track of your progress – a la Apple’s Nike + iPod kit. And it doesn’t just use a cheap motion sensor to figure out your footsteps – there’s a true 3-D accelerometer under the hood. Those Samurai warriors were sure crafty buggers.

No word on if or when you’ll be able to find this thing outside of Japan, but if you happen to live there, you’ll be able to grab one from the Bandai online shop for ¥4725 (appx. $49 USD) when it’s released later this month.

[via CoolThings via TOKYOMANGO]

The Super Nintendo has been the target of some really sweet mods in its time, and this latest portable fits right into that pantheon of excellent mods. Marshall’s Supertendo looks so good that you’d swear it was professionally made.

To get a good idea of the size of this custom handheld, check out this picture from the point of view of the top of the portable, where the cartridge fits. The design works really well around the SNES game cartridge.

And you can even follow along with the entire creation process on Marshall’s website. Even the wiring is beautifully done. It’s enough to make me want to build one myself, except I would probably manage to electrocute myself and then set the house on fire.

[Supertendo via Ben Heck forums]

These office chairs are crafted from old military aircraft ejector seats – and they are awesome.

The guys over at Motoart took this seat from an authentic Vietnam-era F-4 fighter jet, and turned it into a cushy, padded desk chair. The seat has been upgraded with a sturdy aluminum base, durable double-wheel casters and upholstered with clean new fabric. Plus, those armrest look like they could be a little uncomfortable.

Are you a bomber, not a fighter? Do you just need a little extra upper-back support? Then you might like this disproportionately tall B-52 ejector seat instead:

Of course, the big flaw in the design of these things is the fact that they’re meant to be desk chairs. Really, why would you need to eject yourself from your own workspace? I’d much rather have a pair of visitors’ chairs that I could use to eject annoying co-workers from my office. I could use that today – and yesterday – and tomorrow.

To check out the complete collection of these airplane office seating and other cool furniture crafted from antique aviation parts, fly on over to Motoart.

[via MadeMan]

Another day, another pillow–stuffed examples of geekery are fluffing up all over this week. But yesterday’s RSS pillow’s got nothing on this plush rendition of the sarlacc pit where Boba Fett met his ignoble end in Return of the Jedi.

Those tentacles may look soft and harmless, but I’m not sure I would be willing to put any portion of my body on that thing. Better safe, man. Better safe. I don’t like being digested.

It’s an excellent recreation, though. All fears of being eaten slowly aside, I have to admit it looks great. This pillow is yet another geek craft project from Stitch Wars, the Star Wars crafty exhibition.

[via Geek Central Station]