A Cool Gadget

Now I’m sympathetic to those who have fallen on hard times, many of us still find people who beg for money to be irritating. So why someone would go through the trouble of building a robot that begs for spare change is anyone’s guess.

Alexander Gurko’s “Bettelbot” (that’s “BeggingBot” in English) has just one mission in mind - to get your money. The old PC plays music on using some old floppy and hard drive mechanisms, then opens its CD tray to beg for your spare change. If you don’t pay, he won’t play - it’s as simple as that. Check out the video below to see Bettelbot in action:

With the veritable cacophony of noises that Bettelbot produces with his motors, gears and disc platters, I might just as soon pay him to shut his trap.

[via Aram Bartholl via MAKE and Flickr]

Share This

Got an old Macintosh or Mac Plus lying around? There’s got to be something better to do with it than turn it into an aquarium, right? That’s what this enterprising modder did when he managed to cram the guts of a Mac G4 Cube into his trusty old Mac Plus, replacing the old B&W CRT with a modern color LCD monitor, as well as the ability to run Mac OS X.

Mac modder Charles Mangin really did an amazing job seamlessly integrating Macs from both the 20th and 21st centuries. At first glance, the machine looks like a stock Mac Plus, but look closer and you’ll see all the detail work that Charles did, like adding a hidden Superdrive (from an iMac G5), a pair of USB ports underneath, as well as a third one tucked away behind a sliding door inside the floppy drive slot.

Thanks to improvements in miniaturization, all of the newer technology fit neatly inside the old case, leaving plenty of room to spare.

He even went so far as to swap out the innards of an old Mac ADB mouse with a modern optical USB one.

The Frankenstein’s monster of a machine is nicknamed “Marvin” after the paranoid robot Marvin from The Hitchikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. If you want to see more of how Marvin came to be, check out photos of  entire build over on Charles’ Flickr album. (The mouse mod is documented separately here).

Now all we need is to figure out a way to cram this whole thing inside a Commodore PET, and we’ll be all set.

[via MacMod]

Share This

These tipsy egg-shaped speakers let you wobble them like a Weeble while you listen to your tunes.

Unlike real eggs (and those colorful Weebles), these only come in black and red, and they don’t crack open to produce omelets. They do, however, twist open to produce enhanced bass output. I wonder if they can only play The Egg Song?

[wow - that video was almost like the time a Koala crapped a rainbow in my brain.]

Just plug one of the ovoid speakers into your MP3 player, and it’ll run for several hours on the built-in rechargeable battery (charges via USB). You can get your hand on these over at Brando for $15 a piece.

Share This

Cisco has unveiled and demonstrated their new On-Stage TelePresence Holographic Video Conferencing. In layman’s terms, it means that now you can actually do that thing they do in Star Wars when they talk to a Princess Leia hologram, and I have to say, it looks quite convincing.

The video is pretty boring except for the fact that it’s a guy on stage talking to two holograms of people who are in other countries. In fact, they look so realistic that it took me a while to figure out that they were holograms. I kept advancing the video to look for the hologram part. So I think that’s proof-positive that this is fully legit.

This is really heartening because there are so many things from the 70s and 80s that we were supposed to have in the future, and we still don’t have them. Hello, hoverboards? Robot servants? Flying cars? Vacations on the moon? Robocop? And all we got is the Internet. OK, OK, actually the Internet is way cooler than all of those things I just named. But still, I’m glad someone’s ticked one of these “future” technologies off the list and put it squarely into the present.

[via ajb{log}]

Share This

If King Tutankhamen could have been buried with his computer, this would have been the one - without a doubt.

Conceived and constructed by Chris Kramer (a.k.a “Jadragon”), his EgyptMod PC is detailed with intricate hieroglyphics and encrusted with jewels. I’m especially mesmerized by Eye of Ra detail crafted from brass and inlaid with polished malachite and verisite.

Did I happen to mention that the case is actually covered with 68 pounds of hand-carved limestone tiles? It took Chris over 200 hours to carve all of the intricate glyphs and place all of the gemstone details, which include turquoise, calcite, lapis lazuli, ivory, coral and carnelian.

While the exterior is decidedly out of the 18th Dynasty, there’s actually a reasonably powerful 21st Century PC lurking beneath the covers of this beast.

[via Flickr]

Share This

While these brief musical interludes won’t win any prizes for their sweeping cinematography, they do win a place in my heart for being put together using some good old fashioned 8-bit gaming technology.

Created using a combination of retro console art (inspired by, but probably not actually created on an NES) and blips and beeps courtesy of the 8-bit Nintendo-powered FamiTracker, these mini videos do a great job embodying the spirit of these musicians, even if they are just represented as chunky blocks of pixels.

Animated by 72RK, these clever clips feature short and sweet music videos of classic acts like New Order, Michael Jackson, the Ramones and even Portishead. There are a bunch of other lesser known Japanese acts in the complete collection, but they’re all worth a watch.

Share This

This nifty proof-of-concept demo shows off just one of the many gameplay possibilities for multi-player video games on Apple’s wonderphone.

iPong is a variant of Atari’s classic paddle ball game, with a multi-device, multi-player twist. Using some clever trickery, players can actually bounce their ball off of their iPhone’s screen onto the display of another phone. While the game can’t actually detect the proximity of the devices at this point, it does appear to store the exit position of the ball on one screen and transmit that as the entrance point on the adjacent screen.

Given the fact that it only took the guy who developed iPong a couple of hours to put this game demo together, I can’t wait to see what sort of games emerge when there’s actually time to design and develop. Very cool stuff indeed.

[via Waxy via TUAW]

Share This

If you’re the kind of person who rolls out his Chewbacca impression at parties, this “Empire Strikes Back”-themed belt might be the piece de resistance to round out your existing collection of Boba Fett bobbleheads and ceramic Stormtrooper figurines.

The belts are made by Refinding, a wee company out of Kansas City that makes accessories out of all kinds of trash, er, reclaimed materials, like tire treads, tennis balls, typewriter letters, and, in this case, used trading cards. Refinders Sean and Linda use the word “trashion” quite liberally to describe their unique approach to accessorizing.

The belt is described as “Trading cards laminated, stitched to heavy nylon and then harnessed for the nefarious purpose of **holding up your pants.**” But since they sell this handmade and unique piece of fan-fashion for a mere 32 bucks, it doesn’t seem like there’s much malice to be found.

Share This

I don’t know what it is, but I’m a real sucker for Nixie tube clocks. There’s something about the soothing orange glow tubes that offer a simple, yet elegant way to display any numeric information. I hadn’t seen a design that really caught my eye in a while, when I stumbled onto this wooden beauty.

The clock features a set of dramatic surface-mounted Nixie tubes which peek through the front of the warm reddish African Sapele wood case.

The only thing keeping me from putting one of these clocks on my mantle is the fact that it’s only sold as a kit. And between writing this blog, a day job (yes, I have one of those too), and trying to retain some semblance of a life, it’s almost impossible to envision having the time to build this sucker.

For those of you with more free time (and are more adept with your soldering skills than I), the kit comes with everything you need to build the clock, including pre-cut wood case parts, 6 Nixie tubes, a couple of bright neon bulbs for the hour:minute separator, and all the electronic parts you need. In all, there are 115 parts you’ll need to put the clock together.

If you’ve got the time on your hands to build your own clock, you can find this kit (along with a variety of other Nixie kits) from eBay seller Neonixie.

Share This

If you’ve ever complained that the keys on your computer are too small for your fingers, have I got a keyboard for you. This ginormous keyboard is so big - How big is it, Bob? - It’s so big that in order to type on it, you need to walk almost 20 feet to get from one end of the keyboard to the other.

Built by electronics hacker Maurin Donneaud, the huge keyboard rug rolls out onto the floor, and lets your type with your socks on. In order to make the larger-than-life keys work, Maurin had to punch hundreds of individual holes under each letter to ensure that the conductive switches beneath the fabric would trigger when walked on.

The whole thing kind of reminds me of the giant piano keyboard that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia stomped all over in Big.

[Flickr via Ladyada via Hack a Day]

Share This