A Cool Gadget

Looking for a really cool family heirloom? Look no further than these handmade pixel cross-stitch portraits.

For just $30 bucks, crafter Rubykhan will create a teensy, tiny pixelated cross-stitch likeness of you and a loved one (and Fido or Fluffy too).

Ready to have yourself immortalized in pixels? Then head on over to Rubykhan’s Etsy shop, plunk down your cash and send her a couple of snapshots for inspiration. Within about 2 weeks, she’ll work up your custom-made personal pixel cross-stitch. She’ll also do larger group portraits on a special order basis.

Ruby also makes some brilliant pop-culture pixel peeps inspired by the Craig Robinson’s Minipops - but alas, they’re not for sale.

You can check out more of Ruby’s wonderful pixel people cross-stitchery over on her Flickr gallery.

We’ve already seen not one but two iterations of Space Invaders undies for dudes, so it’s high time we let the ladies in on this brave new world of geeky underpants. Behold: the robot-themed bra and underwear set.

This marks an exciting milestone for nerdy guys everywhere, who can now, in one fell swoop, combine their top two loves: robots and lady parts. And of course, if you have no access to real, live ladies, you can always hook this onto one of your creepy stand-ins.

I’m a woman, but please don’t look to me to explain what the heck those rubberband-lookin’ things on the side of the underwear are. I have no idea and have never seen them before. They baffle and confuse me to no end.

You can get the set for around $16 from Tilly’s, if you dare. I mean, I’m tempted to get some, but I’m concerned they just might make me too magnetically irresistible to a certain binary code-loving, Star Wars toothbrush-having, javascript joke-making segment of the populace. Actually that pretty much describes myself, so that’s a bit tautological.

[via GeekSugar]

Leave it to those wacky Japanese gadget makers to come up with something so silly as this mobile phone that looks like a teddy bear.

Mobile phone provider Willcom recently demonstrated their “Kuma Phone” (Bear Phone), at the 2008 Good Design Expo in Tokyo. Now what I find amusing about that last sentence is the fact that a fuzzy stuffed animal that you hold up to your ear to make phone calls would in any stretch of the imagination be referred to as “good design”. Did I happen to mention this ridiculous thing costs about $500 bucks?

Now this isn’t just an ordinary cell phone stuffed into a toy bear. The user interface is bear-specific too. For instance, to make a call, squeeze one of its four paws for one of your speed dial numbers.

And to answer or hang up the call, you press on the bear’s tail. Of course, you never know how pissed off a bear might get if you squeeze its paws or press on its tail.

The trick to using one of these phones is to know whether it’s a black bear or a brown bear cub that’s gnawing on your ear wax. If it’s a black bear, stay completely still and it won’t claw your eyeballs out. If it’s a brown bear, run like hell… or is that the other way around?

[via CScout Japan and Impress Watch]

The Hidden Radio by John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen is designed to make the human-radio interaction more intuitive and less cluttered. Also, it’s designed to make your radio look more like a futuristic mushroom than a regular radio.

So how does it work? They say, “lifting the lid increases the volume proportionally with height” which means, of course, that moving the cap up makes it louder and moving the cap down makes it quieter. To change the station, you just rotate the cap. There is an LED light in the base that gets brighter and darker with tuning.

Of course, like so many cool gizmos this thing isn’t available yet, but you can visit their website, from which you can send them an e-mail and pester them to make it.

[via Core77]

Nixon is coming out with yet another awesome watch. The Rotolog RePly watch is inlaid with reclaimed skateboard parts.

This is recycling at it’s best. Thin strips of reclaimed skate decks are artfully layered to create a unique and colorful watch. It would make the perfect accessory for the erstwhile punk teen turned corporate bad-a$$.

And then there’s the actual, you know, watch part: super stylish analog display, with Japanese quartz movement and LEDs for nighttime time-telling. It’s not waterproof, but I’m betting you didn’t expect it to be.

You can see the tear sheet and look at a couple more close-ups of the watch here. It’s not for sale yet, but you can drool over/purchase previous Nixon Rotolog series watches at the Nixon website.

[via Kris Lovett]

While most people like their Nintendo Wii just the way it is, this casemodder just couldn’t leave well enough alone, and insisted on gutting his Wii and replacing its innards with a PC.

I’m not really sure if this should be considered an upgrade or a downgrade, but Japanese modder “Mr. H” cracked open the shell from his Wii, and replaced its brains with those of a fully-functional Windows XP PC.  The computer runs on a Celeron core, and has 512MB of RAM and packs a 40GB hard drive. And just like a “real” PC, it sports DVI video and USB ports. In order to make space, it looks like the DVD drive is no more.

Other than the Wii-themed startup wallpaper, and the iconic white case itself, not much about the original Wii was preserved.

And while the Celeron 1.3GhZ processor isn’t going to win any speed records, it’s still about twice as fast as the Power PC chipset that powers the Wii itself. (So I suppose that’s an upgrade, right?)

[A9VG via YouTube]

This speaker, called Ode to Beethoven, lets you to dock your mp3 player in a stone bust of Beethoven’s head.

Ode to Beethoven was designed by UK artist Fiona Thomson. It’s part of a series of projects that combine classic artistic aesthetics with modern technology.

Unfortunately at this point it’s still just a concept. Which is too bad, because I think it would be really funny to crank some eurotrash techno or gangsta rap out of Beethoven’s noggin.

[via DesignBoom]

Check out this pocket game system which plays arcade games including Pac-Man and several other classic Namco games.

Created by modder Sam Thornley, the portable Pac-Man Mini console gets its brains from one of those Jakks Pacific Namco Arcade Classic systems, seamlessly melded with a tiny 2.5-inch LCD display and powered by a set of 4 rechargeable AA batteries for easy travel.

While the screenshot photos below look a bit blurry, Sam assures us that the screen is actually very sharp thanks to a direct composite video connection to the Jakks circuit.

Besides Pac-Man, the chunky portable system can play Galaxian, Rally-X, Bosconian, and my personal arcade version of crack, Dig Dug.

The only thing left out of the portable console is a sound system. That’s because those Namco “arcade on a chip” systems that run those Jakks systems don’t offer the exact same sounds that the original versions played, and Sam is clearly an arcade purist.

Sure, I suppose Sam could have just gone an grabbed a copy of Namco Museum for the Nintendo DS, GBA or Sony PSP, but what fun would that have been?

[via Ben Heck Forums]

The guys who designed this LEGO block lamp managed to dig up some sort of industrial-strength blocks that won’t melt into a pile of smelly goo when subjected to the heat of a lightbulb.

What makes the Block Light really cool is the fact that you can rearrange the pieces into pretty much any configuration you’d like.

The kit comes with 219 small, 16 medium, and 4 large heat-resistant clear acrylic blocks which can hold up to the heat of a 40-watt lightbulb. Of course, if snapping all those blocks has you intimidated, you could always buy one of these giant LEGO block lamps instead.

Ready to build your own custom lamp? Head on over to RED5 and plunk down your £25 (appx. $45 USD) for the kit. Keep in mind that RED5 is located in the UK, which operates on 240-volt power, so you might need to swap out the plug and lightbulb for use in North America.

Marubeni InfoTec will be coming out with 10 different wooden animal USB drives. There are 5 different animal shapes, and they come in maple or walnut.

I can’t find out too much more info about these cute flash drives, but the 411 is that they’re coming out in Japan on September 1st. For 1GB of memory and a blocky little block of wood, you’ll need to shell out ¥7290 (about $72.)

I appreciate their childlike blockiness, and like the juxtaposition of low-tech design and high-tech function, but I will concede that they seem too angular and pokey for maximum pocket comfort. Also, there’s that whole problem of having to go to Japan to get one.

[Marubeni Infotec via Fareastgizmos]