A Cool Gadget

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Eagle this is Houston, what’s poppin? Over?

“Yeah, so.. I float over to where the cooler’s supposed to be, but in it’s place there’s this…I’m looking at this machine labeled “Urine Recycler”. Over.”

Don’t tell me it’s broken again! Dammit Timmy, I thought I told you to fix the Urine Recycler on the Endeavour!

“Houston, Houston: I don’t think it’s broken.”

What? So what’s the problem?

“The concept is the problem Houston. I have a problem with the whole freaking concept behind this machine.”

Eagle we spent $154 million on the Urine Recycler –

“And I spent half of my life training to do what? Drink my own — Jeebus Houston! How much does Gatorade cost nowadays?! How much for tap water?! What is this, Jackass? Am I being Punk’d or something?”

Eagle it’s not always urine; it also recycles moisture and sweat–

“I’m crashing the ISS on your ass in 3-2-1 you sadists.”

[via Scientific American]

Here’s something for people who want some boom outside of their boom - I mean room. Landport’s cube speakers are so tiny, calling them ultra-portable would be an understatement. I say they’re ultra-losable. Measuring just 26 mm x 26 mm x 26 mm (appx. 1″), these 0.8 watt speakers are smaller than an iPod shuffle.

The speakers whisper boom for 4 to 5 hours, after which you can charge them via USB. If you still have them, that is, and have not mistaken them for candy. They’ll be out by next week in Japan. Where weird shit comes from. If they come up with a widescreen HDTV that can fit on a nostril I wouldn’t be surprised. But I would be interested.

[via Slash Gear]

Why choose the great outdoors over a carefully-rendered urban landscape? So long as you stay away from the people in that pesky uncanny valley, the variable world of video games may just be prettier (and easier to control) than the real world.

This cotton/poly hoodie is a steal at $22.99 from jamjamtees’ Etsy storefront, and the graphic is screen-printed on navy for a very basic look. Anyone who’s ever seen those all-brown next-gen titles knows gamers don’t like color anyway. No wonder they avoid going outside.

jamjamtees has a great selection of other custom items as well, from Pac-Man t-shirts to earrings made from 10-sided dice. Get ‘em now before they’re spawn-camped into oblivion.

[Via Etsy]

If you remember the NES game M.U.S.C.L.E. as one of the worst (and silliest) timewasters in all of history, then these tiny USB wrestlers are just the thing you want exercising suggestively on your desk.

In Japan, these fellows are well-known figures from the Kinnikuman manga. Elsewhere, they would probably be more recognizable if they were made of rubbery pink PVC (or NES-era pixels).

They look like flash drives, yes? No, that would be useful, and we can’t have that. Instead, these guys exist only to hump your actual USB devices into oblivion. Alternatively, if you’re looking for any excuse to put off doing anything productive while sitting at your computer, you can stage tiny, awkwardly-positioned wrestling matches.

[Geek Stuff 4 U via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Wanna scare the living crap out of your roommate? Just put this giant furry black widow spider on top of their blanket while they’re asleep, flip on the remote control, and watch the mayhem ensue.

This massive R/C black widow spider is designed to be an “educational toy”, but if I had one of these in class when I was a kid, it would have ended me up in the principal’s office for sure.

Created by London’s Natural History Museum, the larger-than-life (appx 12″ long by 10″ wide) mechanical arachnid can creep forward, backwards, left, right, or even spin itself around on a dime. The remote control works from up to 30 feet away, letting you stalk your unwitting victims from around a corner or hiding in their closet.

Ready to unleash havoc? Head on over to UK gadget retailer Play.com and plunk down your £17.99 (appx. $28 USD). Venom not included.

Remember when it cost just a quarter to play your favorite arcade games? What would you say if I told you that you could play two Atari arcade classics for just one red cent a game.

While these pint-size versions of Breakout and Tetris aren’t totally faithful to their arcade counterparts, they only charge a single shiny copper penny to play.

Each mini-machine is actually a piggy bank, which encourage you to deposit coins in exchange for games. Every coin you drop triggers the start of a new game, which is a whole lot more fun than putting your pocket change in the back of a porcine ceramic bank. Check out the video below to see some gameplay action:

These rarities are tough to come by outside of Japan, but the guys over at Strapya World have started to take pre-orders (¥3850 / $39.90 USD) and are willing to ship them worldwide.

While you could fill your salad bowl with lettuce, tomatoes, bacon bits and honey dijon dressing, that would be pretty boring. Personally, I prefer my salads to be made from anodized aluminum, magnets, and wire. Yum.

UK modder HoopsOnToast was shopping at his local IKEA store when he realized the potential to make some nifty orb-shaped speakers by gluing together pairs of 8″ Blanda Matt solid birch hardwood bowls.

The speakers get their sweet sound from a pair of full range (100Hz - 20kHz) Bandor 50mm drivers, mounted into the sliced-off face of one of the bowls.

Word is that the cabinets sound simply brilliant, and they only took about 3 hours to put together. And since IKEA offers the bowls in multiple sizes, you could build a full surround sound system using these (front speakers in the 8″ bowls, surrounds in the 5″ bowls, and subwoofer in the 11″ bowls).

…croutons not included.

[HiFi WigWam via IKEA Hacker]

Yeah, I know. The Dark Knight was arguably the best movie of 2008, but can Christian Bale’s throaty rasp really hold a candle to Adam West’s booming baritone Batman? Now you can bring back memories of the classic camp of the original Batman TV show with these great accessories that help you turn your room into a regular Wayne Manor.

Imagine the phone rings when your friends are over for dinner. You saunter on over to your desk, where you proceed to pull this candy apple Batphone out of the drawer and answer the call. Just be sure to end every call with “we’re on our way,” to keep them wondering if you’re living a secret double life as a superhero. Need to make an outbound call to Commissioner Gordon? Just press the button on the face of the phone, and the cover flips open to reveal a push-button dial.

When you’re ready to run out to your garage Bat-Cave for some crime-fighting action, dash on over to this replica of Bruce Wayne’s famous Shakespeare bust, flip open his lid, and activate the switch inside to activate the door to your secret Bat-cave. What, you don’t have a secret door? Then maybe you can plug it into a set of Christmas lights, or maybe your stereo so they turn on when you activate the remote power outlet that’s connected to the Bard’s bust.

The guys over at RED5 sell the Batphone for £50 (appx. $77 USD) and you can find the the remote-control Shakespeare bust over at Red Hot Phones for (holy credit card, Batman!) $312 bucks.

If you haven’t already gotten your turkey for tonight’s Thanksgiving festivities, it’s probably too late for you. Unless, of course, you plan on catching your own bird.

This Cass Creek electronic turkey call is sure to attract the elusive birds as it cranks out digitized samples of real turkeys. The loudspeaker can produce a variety of authentic bird sounds including clucks, yelps, “kee-kees”, an assembly call, and even a purr. Who knew that turkeys purred? Sounds like you might end up attracting a few neighborhood alley cats if you press that button too often.

While it’s designed for hunting turkeys, I think it might be just as fun to walk around the your neighborhood grocery store with one of these, occasionally mashing on the buttons as customers grab up their frozen Butterballs and canned yams. (I think I know what I’m doing next Thanksgiving.)

Call me a dork, but Futurama has always been one of my favorite programs on the old idiot box - at least when it comes to animated programs. Now, just in time for the holidays, I’ve found the perfect decoration for my office.

Inspired by the classic Futurama Christmas episode, A Tale of Two Santas, the set includes 6-inch tall bendy desktop versions of Santa Bender and (the bloodthirsty) Robot Santa for you to pose into a variety of compromising positions.

Robot Santa and Santa Bender were actually released by Toynami as a limited edition release of just 2000 at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, but you can still find them over on Amazon for $54.99 for the set.

My only question is, where is Robot Santa’s tommy gun?

[via Captain Toy]