Hasta La Gadget!

Do you ever find yourself wondering how good your dice are? Because I do. Are they really random? Or do slight imperfections in their design favor one number over another? It’s impossible to know. Unless you have precision machined dice. And while you’re precision-machining some dice, why not make them in a variety of rare and exotic metals? Those are the questions Tuscon college student Amber Rix created her Kickstarter project to answer.

Launched December 6, the Precision Machined Dice project on Kickstarter currently sits at $32,701, over 10 times its initial funding goal of $3,000. It aims to deliver American-made, six-sided dice in a variety of metals, including aluminum, stainless steel, copper, brass, titanium and tungsten to backers, but not just any old dice. These are precision machined according to exact mathematical standards, to ensure that each die has a precisely (or as near as is feasible) equal chance to land on any one of its six sides. Rix has a very in-depth mathematical explanation of how she hopes to achieve that, but essentially it amounts to drilling different hole depths on each face depending on how many pips are present, in order to balance the cube’s overall mass.

I’m not going to pretend I understand the math at work here. Rix’s explanation on the Kickstarter page is likely a much better read than whatever insight I can provide if you’re after the nerdy nitty-gritty.

I asked Rix why she wanted to make these to begin with, and at its heart the project is about delivering perfection to everyday folks. “If you’re going to do something you might as well do it right, right?” she said.  ”I could have very easily made cubed chunks of metal with drilled pips, but all of a sudden with a little more time and effort these chunks of metal become near perfect precision ‘cuts’ of metal. Rare metals. They are novelty items that no one else in the world may have.”

Personally, Rix was moved by her love of computer-aided drafting and product design to come up with these dice. As a college student working on graphic design and CAD, she wanted to make something that would help her share that passion with the rest of the world.

“I get the biggest thrill from making something digitally and then eventually being able to hold what I made in my hand, that’s why I love CAD so much,” she explained. “And nothing is worth doing if you don’t give it your all, so I made them precision. Anyone can make a cube in CAD or Solidworks, but its harder to make it precision, and the extra work makes the reward of completion a hundred times better.”

The stretch goal for the project was to get enough funding to be able to make dice out of relatively expensive tungsten metal. Now, the project has reached that level, and Rix has bigger dreams, including creating dice out of Damascus steel, and possibly even silver. She also would now like to look into the possibility of making her precision dice a product that continues beyond the initial Kickstarter shipment, sold through Amazon or perhaps her own website. Other potential projects could involve D4 through D20 dice, likely an attractive prospect to the perfectionist DnD-er, and a full game board created from precision-crafted metal.

This is deviantART user dragonlorefury’s engagement ring. As you may have guessed, she’s an avid role-playing gamer. What you might have not guessed is that the ring was made by her father, who is a jeweler. You guessed that? How about the fact that the die can be removed and replaced with a gem? WHAT! You’re dragonlorefury aren’t you? Or her dad.

dragonlorefury posted this picture on deviantART last May 2011, so there’s a good chance that she and her fiance have tied the knot by now. May you trek through the dungeons of life and overcome its dragons – metaphorical and literal (you never know!) – with love as your saving throw.

[via Boing Boing]

When is a pair of speakers not a pair of speakers? When it’s a pair of dice, that’s when. And that’s exactly what you’ll get if you buy a set of BonoBoss’ dice speakers.

The concept for the BonoBoss speakers came out of Korea’s sadi (Samsung Art & Design Institute), and they really do look like a couple of oversize black dice. The sides of the BOS-S300D dice speakers has dice-like pips on it, though the front houses a full-range 2.5″ driver instead. The clever design even incorporates its controls into the “five” side of one die. Power is driven by a 2 watt class-D amp, and they’ll connect to any device with a standard 3.5mm audio connector.

They’re currently available only in Korea, where you can find them for 27,200 KRW (~$24 USD) over at the EarlyShop. Though I’m hopeful somebody at one of the casinos in Las Vegas is reading this and will decide to import a bunch to sell in their gift shop. Too bad they don’t come in white though.

I know it’s a primitive dice game, but I’ve always loved Yahtzee. I think it’s because it’s basically like playing poker, but with dice. And what better thing to combine with my compulsive gambling habit but a drunk-ass, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling bending robot?

That’s exactly what you’ll get if you pick up the Futurama edition of Yahtzee, which replaces the boring old red dice cup with Bender’s pointy head. In addition, the dice have had their standard black dots (also known as “dice pips”) surgically removed and replaced with the heads (or at least the eyeballs) of your favorite characters – Fry, Leela, Amy, Professor Farnsworth, and Dr. Zoidberg – in addition to Bender as the high-scoring lucky number six.

So accidentally freeze yourself for 1000 years, and thaw out over at ThinkGeek to buy the Futurama Yahtzee set for just $20(USD).

[via Nerd Approved]