Hasta La Gadget!

I’m not particularly fond of sweets but I’m willing to make an exception for Häagen-Dazs’ Ice Moon Ice Cream Cakes that are coming this Christmas. Who knew ice cream could be done up artistically?

What you see above looks like the moon (or a sculpture of it) but it’s actually Häagen-Dazs’ Ice Moon dessert. These ice cream cakes might look simple on the outside, but they’re just brimming with flavor and delightful fillings on the inside.

The white moon consists of a pistachio biscuit base, layers of macadamia nut ice cream and meringue and a coating of raspberry ice cream. The orange moon has crunchy chocolate at the bottom, layers of nutty ice cream and salted caramel and a coating of vanilla ice cream.

The Ice Moon is a result of the efforts of Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien of Doshi Levien after the ice cream giant hired them to create the ice cream cakes for this Christmas season. I think they did a marvelous job at incorporating the jolly flavors of the holidays with the Ice Moon.

Here’s a look inside the orange Ice Moon:

As to why they chose the moon, Doshi Levien explained:

We imagined the shape and texture of an ice cream scoop being like the moon as in a famous childhood Bollywood song. We were reminded of the stop frame movie Le Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Méliès. We were inspired by Armenian surrealist Léon Tutundjian’s relief work of 1929. We found some early examples of the ‘Bombes’ ice-cream that are near spherical.

[via Dezeen via Laughing Squid]

I spend so much time in front of a computer that I do see myself sometimes being buried with one. However, keyboards are definitely a nice piece of technology, which can be used in a variety of different ways. German artist Babis Cloud created a Trojan horse that’s completely made up of key caps from old computer keyboards.

hedonIsM(y) trojaner is a somewhat awkward name, but the horse definitely looks awesome. The recycled keys weren’t assembled haphazardly, but arranged to create gradients of ivory-white, in order to replicate the famous horse that’s referred to in Homer’s Odyssey and originally mentioned in Virgil’s Aeneid.

The sculpture is suppsoed to be a commentary on the hedonist susceptibility of contemporary culture, referencing trojan viruses as well. Whatever the reason it was made for, it’s definitely an amazing looking piece of keyboard art.

[via designboom]

We’ve featured lots of cool and geeky chess sets over the years, but never one that’s quite as badass as this one, made from bullets and steel. Yeah! This chess set will chew you up and spit you out like an Expendables movie.

Every individual piece in this chess set is meticulously crafted by Olde World Collectibles and Creations. They take empty .223 caliber bullet casings and cut and bend them into various shapes – then mount them each on a hardwood base. Each one conveys the different chess pieces well, and I especially like the way he made the rooks look like little castles, and the king is just an undisturbed bullet, complete with tip (but hopefully no gunpowder inside.)

Not only are the pieces cool but the board underneath is a work of art, made from cut pieces of hot-rolled steel, welded together onto a sturdy frame. You could probably drive a truck on this thing without damaging it (but don’t.) Shipping weight for the set, including board and pieces is a whopping 23 pounds. Heck, yeah!

The Steel and Bullet Chess Set is available over on Etsy for $550(USD), and each one is made custom to order, so it’ll take 2 to 4 weeks for completion. If you can’t afford one don’t try and make your own using live ammo.

Most of us will eat anything as long as it’s been battered and fried in hot oil. How about some deep-fried gadgets? Maybe served up in a bucket with the picture of Colonel Sanders on it. Well if you like your consumer electronics like you like your fast food, then read on.

Artist Henry Hargreaves likes to deep fry all of the gadgets that we know and love. He doesn’t care about calories or artery clogging oil. He really just wants to burn and melt things in the name of artistic expression.

He fried up stuff like Macbooks, Game Boys, iPhones, iPads, earbuds, you name it. They don’t look very appetizing, but they are probably better for you than most actual fried foods. Or not.

I think we’d all try to put things we’re not supposed to in the fry basket if we had access to a deep-fryer, just to see how they turned out.

[via Insanely Gaming via Obvious Winner]

Take a look at the gun this woman is wielding. Sure it doesn’t looks like it could fire any ammo, but it still looks pretty badass. What if I told you it wasn’t a gun at all, but it was a custom-bound book? Libertarians Librarians, rejoice!

Yes, this impressive bit of hand book-binding is the work of Montreal’s Strikebooks Bindery. It’s designed to look like a full-size sub-machine gun, but is actually a functional writing journal.

Inside, of the leather covers, you’ll find 84 pages of high-end blank paper, along with black suede endpapers. It’s not exactly the most practical of places to keep your diary, but it’s definitely unique. Of course, all this meticulous craftsmanship comes at a price, with the sub-machine gun book selling for about $523 (USD), and taking about a month to build to order.

They also sell a smaller book that looks like a revolver, and it goes for about $240.