A Cool Gadget

I was buzzing about over on the wonderful world of Etsy today, when I came across these absolutely awesome plush versions of popular portable electronic gadgets. French textile artist Kmila Rodz handcrafts these super special soft systems using felt, needle and thread, with a just a dash of love thrown in.

From the wonderfully whimsical folding Nintendo DS Lite (complete with stuffed stylus and a game of New Super Mario Bros. on the dual screens), to her squishy iPhone clone, I can’t decide which one I like the best. (I’m not sure what that plush Sushi roll is doing there, but it looks tasty alongside the iPhone).

Feeling retro? Kmila has also created this beautiful Nintendo Gameboy, playing a game of Tetris on its faux “LCD” screen. (There’s even a little Tetris “cartridge” sticking out of the back when you flip it over).

Want to get your grubby little hands on these wondrous plush playthings? You’d better head on over to Kmila’s Etsy shop before they’re all gone.

Share This

The cassette tape is probably just a fuzzy memory for those of you who grew up with Compact Discs and MP3s. But for us born before the 1980s, we have to figure out what to do with all of those old tapes. Why not turn them into a lighting fixture?

That’s exactly what the guys over at Transparent House are doing with their cassettes. The designers make each lamp from dozens of individual cassette tapes, arranged into visually appealing patterns. Not only do they look cool as a sculptural piece, they cast dramatic shadows onto surrounding surfaces.

Each lamp uses a bright, cool-burning neon light source to keep the plastic cassettes from melting. Of course, they left each tape in its original transparent case so they could be together glued neatly.

And if you have a fond place in your heart for the old micro-cassette, you don’t have to feel left out. They’ve got a lamp just for you, made from 140 of the mini tapes.

Now the guys over at Transparent House don’t say if they’ll be producing these en masse, or if they’re just one-of-a-kind design pieces. Personally, I’d love a couple of these in my media room.

[via geeksugar]

Share This

These official R2-D2 and Darth Vader USB hubs from Japan’s Cube-Works are a must for any serious Star Wars fan with a computer. Whether you’re pro-Jedi or have a serious Sith streak, they’re the perfect desktop companion for connecting your USB gadgets.

Both R2 and Darth offer four full-speed USB ports on their front. Now my Japanese isn’t all that great, but it sounds like every 3 minutes, R2’s head moves and lights up, and both hubs play some appropriate sound effects from the house that Lucas built.

While I just love the details on the little droid, the minute I read that Vader’s eyeballs glow when connected to a powered USB port, I came over to the Dark Side for good.

For the moment, these hubs are available only in Japan, but it’s only a matter of time before these hubs find their way to the rest of the world via importers.

They should be hitting the streets of Tokyo in July at a price of ¥7,140 (appx. $66 USD) each. Post a comment if you happen to find a retailer!

[via Japan Star Wars and Digital Gadgets Freak]

Share This

These amazing video game images by digital artist RETROnoob take familiar bitmapped sprite characters and marry them to real world photographs.

Through creative and generous application of digital blur tools, each of the images does a brilliant job blending 2-D and 3-D worlds into one.

Street Fighter

Mario Kart

OutRun

Excitebike

Donkey Kong

Mario Bros. 3

Be sure to check out the entire collection over on deviantART and tell us which is your favorite image. I’d have to say my fave is the Excitebike one, but I had a really hard time choosing.

[via HEMMY via Albotas]

Share This

I’ll just start out by saying this: I’m a sucker for cool digital clocks. And this one is a real doozy. UK designer Duncan Shotton’s Digimech clock may look like an LED or LCD timepiece on the surface, but it’s actual a complicated mechanical contraption that creates a 7-segment digital illusion.

A series of cryptic looking numeric black on white segments are printed on vertical sliders which gradually move into position within a black masking box to reveal the current time. As time passes, the sliders climb to the top, until the 9th digit on any given position hits. After that, the mechanism disengages and drops the slider all the way back to the zero position. Each slider is pushed and pulled through the device by a set of 3 servos driven by a PIC16F628 microcontroller.

Check out the video clip below to see this amazing clock movement in action:

Duncan - can I please have one of these in my living room?

[Digimech via NOTCOT]

Share This

The other day, I came across this Cold war-era Geiger Counter PC casemod, and passed along the erroneous notion that it was created by some Russian modder. In fact, it was built by a guy named Andy over at widefault, right here in the good old US of A. While I was over checking out the build log for Andy’s Fallout Meter PC, I happened upon another one of his creations and thought it was worthy of a mention.

Widefault happens to spend his days working near a Goodwill thrift store, and happened upon this plastic lunchbox when he was trolling the aisles one day. He thought to himself - what better use for this thing than to house a firewall for his network? With a little X-Acto knife work, Widefault transformed the lunchbox into a quick-and-easy computer.

Since it didn’t need to be all that powerful to run the GNU/Linux-based Smoothwall firewall app, the lunchbox packs a compact Via C3 motherboard, along with a low-voltage power supply and an inexpensive 4GB Compact Flash memory card for storage. All told, the entire project cost under $100 bucks.

While a 2007 Hot Wheels lunchbox isn’t exactly a rare retro artifact, it certainly could have carried some kid’s PB & J and Juicy Juice for at least one semester before meeting its maker.

[Read Complete Worklog]

Share This

Mule Design came out with this Web 2.0/Kool-Aid mashup t-shirt. But why? Simply to express their enthusiasm for the state of the net by conflating Web 2.0 and delicious fruity powders that turn into refreshing beverages?

Nope. I’m pretty sure this is a highly niche geek product aimed at those of us who remember Steve Rubel’s much-cited blog post from last fall entitled The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid. And Rubel, of course, was using the Jonestown massacre metaphor in his title. I could go on, but at this point it’s all getting much too meta for me.

Anyway, did you ever notice how Kool-Aid man has a crewcut made of ice cubes? I didn’t until just now. So: T-shirt! Kool-Aid! Web 2.0! Yaaaaaaay! Get one for $20 at Mule Design, and don’t worry, I don’t think anyone will get the reference.

[t-shirt via GeekSugar]

Share This

If actually being able to tell what time it is lists low on your wristwatch priorities, then have I got a watch for you. The EleeNo Cyber is the latest in a long line of non-standard LCD digital watches to surface in the last few years.

These unusual watches feature a disproportionately long face, with a bunch of little circular portals which somehow add up to show the current time. They’re available in either a dark or light metallic finish, with either green or red LCD portals.

The example in the diagram below shows 5:36. It took me a minute to figure it out, but from what I can tell, the tiny discs on the left each have two half-circles that fill in to equal 2 hours. So 2 and 1/2 filled in small circles = 5:00. On the right side, each of the larger circles has 10 pie slices that each equal a minute, so 3 full pies, plus one that’s got 6 pieces filled = 36 minutes. I think the bottom right pie can be used for seconds display when it’s not serving as the last ten minutes of the hour, but I’m not certain of that.

Now I don’t know about you, but even if I could read Cyrillic characters, I’m not certain that I could figure out the time without having to really think really hard about it.

While these leaked images come courtesy of Russian watch blog 12-5-9, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these show up at TokyoFlash at some point in the not-too-distant future (since they’ve carried EleeNo watches before).

Share This

I thought I’d seen some awful electronic gadgets in my travels, but this has got to be the worst one that I’ve seen in a long time.

Somebody must have thought this thing would be cute, but this “dog doll” MP3 player turned out hideous and disturbing. Not only does it look nothing like a dog, it seems incredibly impractical as a music player thanks to its strange lumpy (yet fuzzy) shape.

Unless you think a troll doll on all fours in a green leotard with a tracheotomy tube sticking out of its neck and a USB port in its ass is charming, you’ll probably want to avoid this.

I really can’t think of any reason that you’d ever want to buy this thing unless you’ve want to play a really cruel joke on someone. You know, one that goes something like this: “Hey, you know that new iPod Touch you’ve been begging for? I already bought you a brand new MP3 player that’s waaaaay better!”

Share This

If you drive down the average city street, you’ll see scads of ugly satellite dishes protruding from the side walls, balconies and roofs of homes like some sort of convex grey metal virus. So it was only a matter of time before someone would come up with a way to do away with all those unsightly dishes.

The oddly-named Sqish (I know, a ‘Q’ with no ‘U’) conceals a satellite antenna inside a compact rectangular box, which can be covered with a camouflage weatherproof label to help it blend into its surroundings. What’s really cool is that you can actually send a digital photo of your surroundings to the Sqish folks, and they’ll make a custom camo sticker to make it blend in perfectly to your environs.

At this point, Sqish satellite antennae are only available for UK satellite customers using services such as Sky or Freesat. Hopefully, they’ll work up a version for Dish or DirecTV at some point.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in the UK, be prepared to drop £149 (appx. $294 US) for the antenna, and another £25 (appx. $49 US) for each custom matte photo sticker.

[Sqish via Daily Mail via Unplggd]

Share This