Hasta La Gadget!

Now here is an interesting idea – how about churning out your very own Gundams using a collection of electrical plugs? After all, we do know that the average person who sits in front of the computer must at least handle an electrical plug at least once a day, to turn on your desktop or juice your smartphone, and how about turning on your TV? Not only that, chances are there will be a few spares lying around the home, so if you happen to have time to spare and are a huge Gundam fan, here is an idea that you can literally toy around with – to make your own Gundam robot using electrical plugs.

A blogger in the Mie prefecture came up with a fair share of amazing figures that were made completely out of electrical plugs. Combining these together in a creative manner, he not only came up with Gundam-style robots, but also other animals as well as objects which comprise of solely electrical plugs and electrical plugs alone. Dare you follow in his footsteps and outdo him?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bite Me Edible Desk Lamp, NEC DNA Analyzer Miniaturized,

The folks at AERIAL7 have come through with a lovely pair of over-ear headphones in the TANK, here in their newest iteration bringing you a completely do-it-yourself aesthetic. The DIY TANK model comes in all white with a set of materials on the surface that allow for great connections with markets, paint, ink, and everything in-between. Got an artist in the family that also likes to customize everything they own? This might be just the ticket.

These headphones provide a sound quality that’s certainly reflective of the price at $100 USD – 57mm drivers with frequency response between 5-20KHz and sensitivity at 108 +/- 3dB at 1KHz. In other words, they sound great for your average music lover. Also included in the package is a 1 meter long coiled standard headphone jack cable that extends up to 2.5m, a 1.2m light weight cable with a microphone for your smartphone, and a 3.5mm – 6.3mm (1/4″) adapter to plug in on your much more massive equipment.

These headphones are rather adjustable with folding-in action for storage, flip-up phones so you can listen in with one ear along, and thick earphone covers so you’re not hearing all sorts of outside forces when you’re trying to concentrate on your favorite track. The headband also extends for multiple head sizes – even if you’ve got a gigantic melon.

As these headphones are entirely white before you get to coloring them in, the package includes a lovely silky sack to carry the phones (and your cords) around in. Not just for protection against the elements and keeping your bits all together, but to stop the dirt in your backpack from messing up your phones soon-to-be-lovely aesthetics. To color the phones you get three rather generous permanent markers in the box: red, blue, and black. I say generous because they’re not your standard throwaway “10 minutes and over” sorts of crap markers, they’ve got quite a bit of juice in them.

The actual application process you’ll go through with these phones is pretty decent. There’s no surface here that doesn’t readily accept the markets included in the package, and aside from the same “just let it dry for a second” caution you’ll need to pay attention to no matter what surface you’re working with, you’ll find the art portion of this adventure to be entirely enjoyable. We’ve opted for a rather simple set of designs on the phones we’ve got here thus far, hitting each of the different materials and all angles to make sure we’ve got no dead-zones on the hardware – good news: it’s all good!

AERIAL7 TANK DIY over-ear headphones Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you are a huge Star Wars fan, then you would definitely love what fifth grade teacher Morgan has done to his Vespa scooter – by slapping it with Star Wars decals on the vintage luggage case, in addition to decking out the entire old school scooter to look similar to the world’s most famous astromech droid – R2-D2.

According to Morgan, “I am a fifth grade teacher/SW nerd, and I recently converted my Vespa that I ride into work every day to look like the one and only R2. This was done with adhesive vinyl, some meticulous cutting and a 12-pack of beer. It gets a lot of looks and thumbs up, and often times while I am sitting at a stop light someone crossing the street will pause to take notice. The rear trunk is a real vintage piece and I removed the original faded travel stickers and replaced them with various retro style Star Wars art and posters that I found on the internet.”

Definitely one of the more eye stopping DIY work done, and while this R2-D2 Vespa scooter is unable to save the galaxy, it will ferry you from point A to point B in style. No one said anything about hyperspace travel though, so don’t go eyeing the Ferrari at the red light for a challenge.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: DIY R2-D2 can fit in a standard person, Star Wars R2-D2 NES console is truly in a galaxy of its own,

We’ve been following Ben Heck since the days of the Atari 800 laptop, so we jumped at the chance to take a look at the modder extraordinaire’s shop in Madison, WI. As expected, the place is jam-packed with industrial tools, 3D printers and half-finished pinball machines. Check out where the magic happens below — and as a bonus, Heck takes us on a tour of his work-in-progress Ghost Squad pinball machine.

Continue reading Visualized: a tour of Ben Heck’s lab (video)

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You know what they say about us humans – we are a truly creative tour de force on this side of the galaxy, and when passion and genius meets, we normally end up with something out of the ordinary. Case in point, a nostalgic modder decided that having a Macintosh Portable lying around is not going to do the machine any good, which is why he decided to turn Apple’s very first laptop to run on OS X, dubbing it as “a great café computer” in the same process. Of course, the software is not the only thing that has changed, since underneath the clean and sterile looking white plastic lies the innards of a Toshiba NB100 netbook which heroically “sacrificed” itself in the pursuit of perfection.

I’m just being a little bit dramatic here – no one in their right mind would want to shed a tear for the Toshiba NB100 netbook – after all, this is more or less a dead market despite looking all too promising just a few years ago (before the tablet world really took off, of course). Its keyboard has been rewired via a USB controller, while the ball mouse has been converted to an optical mouse. Wi-Fi and USB connectivity have also been thrown into the mix for your added portable computing pleasure.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Vintage Macintosh Portable hacked and modded to run OS X Lion, Skittles Sorting Machine helps you eat only a particular color,