Hasta La Gadget!

Gremlins was one of my all-time favorite childhood movies. It featured just the right proportion of slapstick humor, gore and action for a teenage boy. In tribute to this classic popcorn flick, one talented artist has created a fully-functional puppet version of Stripe, one of the eponymous gremlins.

RPF contributor Batgremlin built this DIY gremlin using cast flexible foam, and built mechanical moving arms with articulating fingers, and even moving eyeballs for the little green dude. Check him out in action in the video below – my favorite part is when the puppeteers are revealed against the greenscreen.

Batgremlin doesn’t share too many details on how he built it, but I’m betting he made a Gizmo puppet first, then fed it after midnight.

[via The RPF]

Remember when you needed a phone line and a dial-up modem to get online? Heck, I was using modems to connect to services like Compuserve and Prodigy before anyone even knew what the Internet was. One of the most annoying things about dial-up modems was that stupid squealing sound they made when you were trying to connect. Especially when you accidentally picked up the phone and had to listen to that incessant noise. Now, thanks to ThinkGeek, you can recreate those sounds whenever you feel like it.

That’s right, the box shown here isn’t a modem, but it’s a machine that makes modem sounds. You can simply press any button and relive the sounds of days gone by, including the dialing and ringer sounds, or you can use multiple buttons to play screechy, unappealing music with it.

Bonus points if you recognize that piece of music at the end there. Yes, that’s the closing theme to Buckaroo Banzai. Wow, I’m really dating myself now. Trust me, if you never saw that movie, you must Netflix it tonight.

While I suppose there’s some nostalgic value to the Music Modem, I think I’d quickly tire of its sounds – just like I did back in the 1980s and early 1990s. But if you really must make these noises, you can grab the Music Modem from ThinkGeek for $29.99(USD). Personally, I’m waiting for a device that sounds like the cassette tapes that software used to come on. Oh, that’s called a cassette player with a speaker.

I think one of the coolest things LEGO has ever done was to launch the LEGO Cuusoo website. This is the place where you can go to vote on DIY LEGO builds that could eventually become kits you can actually go to the store and purchase. Last time we talked about this was when the Goonies LEGO set turned up on the website.

This time out it’s another 80s childhood favorite of mine with an E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial LEGO kit complete with flying bicycle and little brown alien.

The guy behind the LEGO kit says it would have about 575 pieces, including the medical van, Elliott’s house, hooded scientists, Gertie, Michael, and a pack of Reese’s Pieces. There’s even E.T.’s Speak and Spell and Elliott’s bicycle, complete with a basket for E.T. to take flight in.

The kit is up on the Cuusso site right now if you’d like to vote for it. If it happens to make it through to the next round, we might be able to buy one down at the local Walmart someday.

[via Geekologie via Nerd Approved]

It’s a perennial question that gets people on both sides of the debate pretty riled up — should everyone go to college? With the cost of higher education continuing to climb since the postwar era — a time when many people were able to pay for college with part-time jobs and generous government assistance like the G.I. Bill — is getting a university education even worth it these days? In 1987 an educator by the name of Herbert London argued that for most people it wasn’t. But London explained that there were also many factors other than price that would lead to nothing less than the inevitable extinction of the university system. One of the most important, London argues, was the public’s disillusionment with liberal politics on campus.

Read more…

What’s this? Two Q*bert posts in a week? Yeah, you got me. I guess I’m on a roll.

Remember how Q*bert used to let out that weird stream of gibberish expletives when one of his enemies got him? Well, one electronic musician decided to build himself a gadget which solely swears like Q*bert.

The Mr. @#?%! obscenity generator uses a variety of audio chips, including the classic Votrax SC-01A analog speech synthesizer. It was made by Count Funkula, using entirely parts that were available back in 1982, at the time the arcade machine came out. Check out some of the wondrous obscenities that stream forth from the orange guy’s proboscis…

Man, that little dude can swear like a truck driver. You can check out the schematics and read more about how Count Funkula built the Mr. @#?%! obscenity generator here. I’ll give you a hint – it doesn’t involve dropping balls and coiled-up snakes on anything.