Technologically inclined Barbie’s aren’t exactly new, but a Mars Explorer Barbie? Yeah, that’s worth mentioning. In cooperation with NASA, the “Career of the Year Mars Explorer Barbie” is being “launched”… presumably right into Ken’s ever-loving heart. We’re told that she’s ready to “add her signature pink splash to the red planet,” and should be hitting Earthly shelves now for $12.99. The best part? Curiosity won’t have to sing a birthday song alone ever again.
For YouTube’s Geek Week, Tested interviewed robotics enthusiast Mike McMaster about his remote-controlled and life-size Wall-E replica. McMaster is part of the Wall-E Builder’s Club, a group of hobbyists who started planning on building a replica of the lovable robot even before his movie came out.
Image by Mike McMaster
Watch Tested’s video to find out the effort and ingenuity that Mike and his friends put in to make the robot:
As Mike said, you should join the Wall-E Builder’s Club if you want to make your own Wall-E. I wonder if they can make a flying EVE.
This is the planet Jupiter and it’s also an awesome work of art. It looks like one of those Styrofoam models that kids make for their Science class projects, except it’s loads better. That’s because this Jupiter isn’t made from Styro; it’s actually a cake!
Baked by the talented Rhiannon from Cake Crumbs, the cake for the largest planet in our Solar System took eight hours to complete. Rhiannon painstakingly painted the Great Red Spot and the other finer details found in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
Rhiannon explained her love for Jupiter, which pushed her to bake an amazing layered cake of the planet: “In the end I settled on Jupiter predominantly for one reason: its Great Red Spot. The giant anticyclonic storm has always been one of my favourite things and continues to be a subject of great fascination for me. At thrice the size of the Earth it’s bewildering to comprehend the actual magnitude of it.”
The most awesome part of the cake is its insides. The center core is made up of mud cake. It’s surrounded by a layer of almond butter cake, followed by a layer of tinted vanilla Madeira sponge cake. And just below the fondant, the sphere is covered with a crumb coat of vanilla buttercream. Yum!
If you’d like to try and make your own planetary cake, Rhiannon has posted a tutorial, or you can watch the video here:
If you follow Reddit with any regularity, you know their mascot is that little alien dude with the antenna sticking out of his head. Inspired by all of the traffic and support that Reddit has driven their way, the guys over at ThisIsWhyImBroke have made a very special life-size version of the mascot.
The statue was created by TomSpinaDesigns, and stands over 5-feet-tall. This particular Reddit Alien was modeled after the Knights of the /new, a group of Redditors who help separate the wheat from the chaff over on the popular social bookmarking site. The knight sports a special shield with a Reddit coat of arms, an arrow-shaped downvote sword, and an adjustable antenna.
Statue designer Richard Riley posing with his creation
The statue was listed on ThisIsWhyImBroke for $7500(USD), but has since been sent to the Reddit offices as a gift. Wow. Nice present. Why doesn’t anyone ever send me something like this? I guess if I had over 37 billion pageviews last year, I’d have more fans.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posing with his new guardian
Entertainer Phileas Flash made this gloomy balloon sculpture of Ned Stark sitting on the Iron Throne. I think it’s based on this poster from the first season of Game of Thrones. A series so heartwrenching it even makes balloon sculptures a sad sight. We get it George! Nice guys finish last. We get it.
A balloon sculpture of Joffrey would have been more appropriate.
Instructables member Patrick aka Mizchief100 made what he calls the Visual Impairment Aid or VIA, a wrist-mounted device that alerts the wearer of nearby objects by vibrating and emitting a beeping noise. It’s like the Spider Sense toy but in a more practical form, not to mention one that you can build yourself.
Like the Spider Sense toy, the VIA uses an ultrasonic distance sensor. Patrick added a buzzer and two vibrating motors to provide feedback. He also made a 3D-printed case for the device, adding Braille labels to its power switch and two buttons. One of the buttons lets the wearer select whether to use haptic, audio or both types of feedback. The other button switches between long and short distance modes: “…in short distance mode the beeping/vibrating is scaled so it’s easier to tell differences between things close up (<3 feet) and long distance mode makes it easier to tell things far away (~10 feet max).”
Head to Instructables to find out how you can make your own VIA. If you’re looking for a more practical version of Patrick’s device, check out the UltraCane.
Last year we heard about Monitor2Go, a portable external monitor. It seems very well made and has lots of convenient features, but it’s also expensive. The Able-HD is on the other end of the spectrum. It’s a portable monitor at nearly a third of the price of Monitor2Go. There’s a reason it’s cheap though.
The Able-HD is basically a 17″ or 18″ LED laptop monitor. It just has a custom circuit board that makes it work without the rest of the laptop. Otherwise, it’s a standard LED monitor. It’s a 1080p display, it accepts HDMI, DVI, VGA and audio ports and it has a socket for a charger. With all of the unnecessary parts stripped away, the Able-HD weighs just 570g (approx. 1.26lb). In other words, it’s an 17″ or 18″ 1080p monitor that weighs less than an iPad.
Actually it is missing one necessary part: an external case. Its anonymous inventor said that future versions may have an aluminum case, but the first version of Able-HD – the one he’s offering as a reward on Kickstarter – will look exactly like the one you saw in the video. At least you can get or make a case with the money you save. Pledge at least $110 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an Able-HD as a reward. If you have a spare laptop screen, you can just pledge $35 to get the Able-HD conversion kit.
We’ve yet to see how helpful – or harmful – Google Glass can be to people with sight, but you might be surprised to know that it can be used to help blind people too. A two-man company called Dapper Vision is working on OpenGlass, a system of tools and services that can help identify objects as well as provide additional information via Google Glass.
In the video below, you’ll see two of OpenGlass’ services that can help the visually impaired – or anyone for that matter – identify objects. The first is Question-Answer, wherein the Glass user takes a picture of an object and uses voice commands to send the picture to Twitter or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to be identified. The Glass user receives the answer via voice as well. The second is Memento, which is like a real-time version of Question-Answer, but it requires someone to build a database of images and annotations for it to draw data upon.
That was awesome, but I hope as wearable technology improves that OpenGlass will be less reliant on online sources of data. Maybe someday Dapper Vision can cram in a visual dictionary of sorts in Glass. As I said, the video only shows a small part of OpenGlass. Head to its official website to see more information and videos.
If you’re one of the thousands of kids who grew up playing Bill and Lance’s excellent adventure aka Contra, join me in ogling these custom action figures by John Harmon aka Mint Condition Customs. They even come with the different ammo types!
John imagined what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone would look like if they starred in a live action Contra movie back in the 80s. That last qualifier is important; I certainly don’t want to see the Governator with his shirt off these days. The action figures are poseable and have swappable equipment, including ammo belts, flak vests and the machine gun, spread gun and laser ammo attachments.
BROTALITY. It would be awesome if they came in a box that played Contra’s title theme when it’s opened. These action figures are currently being auctioned off on eBay, where as of this writing the bid sits at a criminally low $41 (USD). Although I think part of the reason why it’s that low is because John won’t accept bids from buyers with 0 feedback. In other words, don’t bother signing up on eBay just to buy the action figures because John won’t entertain your bid anyway.
Heartbreak can take on a lot of physical forms. A box of unsent love letters. An engagement ring you never got to take out of your pocket. A luxury mattress your partner boned someone else on that you have to sleep on every night which you’re now selling for $150 on craigslist.
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