Hasta La Gadget!

Like to eat and drink, then use your computer keyboard without washing your hands? Eventually, you end up with a sticky, dirty mess of a keyboard. Apparently, one office worker was sick and tired of seeing the grimy keyboard in their co-worker’s office, and did something about it.

No, they didn’t clean it up – instead, one Redditor transformed the grimy, slimy keyboard into a pocket garden, filling the already dirty bits between the keys with more dirt, and a bunch of garden cress seeds. The end result looks something like a Chia Pet, but in keyboard form. It took only a couple of days before the seeds started to sprout, and within two weeks, it was a fully-grown sprout garden.

While it’s a hilarious prank, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the keyboard isn’t particularly functional anymore after being saddled with dirt, water and vegetation. I suggest that if you decide to try this on one of your vacationing office-mates, you try it with a crappy old keyboard nobody cares about.

[via Reddit via Mashable]

The 2012 Olympics are over. And, chances are, you didn’t win a gold medal. Luckily, thanks to a bit of Photoshop trickery, you can make anything in your life gold. More »

If Jim Gordon had a thing for crafts, this is the Bat-signal that we would get. The upside is that it can still be dramatically killed by an axe, but Batman has to be really close to see it.

All you need is some thread, nails, a ton of patience and a desire to summon Batman and you too can make one. It actually does light up from behind as well, so maybe Batman can see it from a slight distance after all.

Why hasn’t anyone tried calling Spider-Man with this sort of thing? It’s basically a spider web right? Then you don’t waste this on Batman. The right tool for the right job and all that. Spider-Man would love this. And Peter Parker needs some gimmick where Police can call him anyhow, right? It’s a cool piece of art, I just really want Spidey to have his own signal.

[via Obvious Winner]

This week it’s been announced that the musical artist known as Beck will be releasing an album comprised of 20 pieces of sheet music called “Beck Hansen’s Song Reader”. This is 20 pieces of music that are not recorded by the artist, instead intended by the artist to be played and recorded by whoever so wishes to do so. Licensing issues and future recordings by associated artists aside, we applaud Beck’s ability to have so much cash on hand that he experiments with each new release.

Beck previously released an album by the name of “The Information” which was also accompanied by a strange method of release. The Information was released, in some cases, with a DVD which included a music video for every single track on the album. The album was also released with a blank sleeve and booklet with one of four different sets of sticks so that no two album covers were the same: “The artwork is going to be customizable. The idea is to provide something that calls for interactivity.”

That quote comes from a Wired Magazine interview in which Beck also notes:

“Artists can and should approach making an album as an opportunity to do a series of releases – one that’s visual, one that has alternate versions, and one that’s something the listener can participate in or arrange and change. It’s time for the album to embrace the technology.” – Beck

Now that Beck has embraced the technology, it appears that his newest release is taking a whole new direction. Just paper in a “lavishly produced hardcover carrying case” with “full-color, heyday-of-home-play-inspired art” created for each track by several artists. What it actually is though, if we might be so bold, is an opportunity to expand in ways a recorded album can’t. If there’s no original, noone can say, “the original was better.”

Will have to wait and see what the Beck lovers of the world do with the treasure trove they’ve just been given – see it soon in stores, of course! December 2012, that is.

[via Beck]

Beck “Song Reader” album cuts out the music is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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If you completely avoid the bar scene because you’re tired of spending your nights dealing with creeps, you’ll sincerely wish this bar stool—crafted from an F-4 Phantom ejector seat—were fully functional. Because instead of having to jot down a fake phone number to escape an awkward situation, you could simply send the jerk blasting through the ceiling. More »