Hasta La Gadget!

Traditionally, maps were made to help people find their way around a city that they might be visiting for the first time. However, Kate McLean took the basic concept of the map and spun it around to come up with an all-new series that have made the jump from being reference materials to art: the Sensory Maps.

Instead of telling you where certain streets or landmarks are located, Kate’s sensory maps will instead let you know what it would feel like if you were actually there. How? By letting you smell its scents, taste the surrounding atmosphere, feel whatever might be there, and hear the sounds in that location.

Of course, it would be impossible to let you experience all these senses through a map – but that’s what your imagination is for, right?

To construct some of the maps, Kate invited people to go to her studio and smell bottles with scents in them. She then had them recall what that scent remind them of and write down the place or feeling that they associated with the smell.

That’s a lot of work, considering that this is just for one of the senses that Kate’s trying to capture in her work.

[via Pop Up City]

Everyone loves Jell-O. Heck, even the Doctor loves him some Jell-O, as well as fish fingers, custard, and Jammie Dodgers of course. This special Doctor Who Jell-O will give you a nice, wibbly wobbly snack for that Who marathon you are planning.

If you you want to make your own galaxy in a jar, made of Jell-O, you can find the recipe at Bakingdom. You see, it looks like a galaxy. In a jar.

The TARDIS as well as Doctor and companion figures are optional. You don’t need them to enjoy this treat, it just makes it taste even better when you have props. I wonder if the TARDIS would get stuck in a Jell-O universe or just keep going.

[via Neatorama]

I normally don’t wear slippers on my feet, but if I had a pair of these Panzer Tiger tank slippers, I’d wear them every day. Heck, I’d wear them when I head out of the house  to the grocery store, and to the Starbucks, and to the park, and to the movies… you get my drift.

What you’re looking at are simply the most epic slippers ever created. Designed by Miligurumis, these comfy knit slippers look just like a pair of Panzer tanks. While they don’t actually fire ammo, they’ll definitely scare off any other footwear – unless your significant other happens to be wearing a pair of Landkreuzer Monster slippers on the other side of the room.

Unfortunately, if you want a pair of these awesome slippers, you’ll have to knit them for yourself. And the intersection between people who like tanks and people who knit is probably a pretty tiny demographic group. But if you happen to fit that profile, head on over to Etsy now and order up the PDF of the pattern for $6.99 (USD).

[via Ian Brooks]

I’ve seen some impressive projection screens in the past, but I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve seen a screen that’s made up of thousands of moving styrofoam cubes.

The Hyper-Matrix Cube Wall was created by Korean interactive artist JônPaSang for an installation for the Hyundai Motor Group. It’s a massive grid of mechanised white 30cm x 30cm (appx. 1 foot x 1 foot) cubes which can move in and out to form images. Overall, the wrap-around display measures a whopping 45 meters (~148 feet) wide by 8 meters (~26 feet) high. According to my math, that means there’s about 3848 cubes.

As you can see from this video from the guys over at Mechatronics, it’s quite an incredible display:

Nifty. But where’s the projection, you ask? Well, since the Mechatronics guys were most interested in showing us the mechanical aspects of the rig, they cut off the presentation right before the projection portion. Here’s another clip which shows off the entire show:

Pretty cool, no? That part with an individual image on each cube is pretty sweet. Though there appears to be a single cube on the left wall of the screen that’s stuck in that second clip. It’s really bugging me, and if I have to know about it, so do you. If you want to know how this massive installation was built, here’s one more video clip for you to watch:

I’d love to see them do more projection mapping type effects on the screen. I can only imagine the cool pixel art shows one could do with all of those blocks. I’m up for a giant game of Super Mario Bros… or even Pong.

Every time I think about the retiring of the Space Shuttle fleet, it bums me out. I’ve been following the Shuttle since grade school when the Challenger disaster was all we could think about. It’s sad to think that for the foreseeable future, United States astronauts will have to catch a ride with foreign governments to be able to make it into space.

With the Space Shuttle fleet now retired, the massive Kennedy Space Center runway where the Shuttles used to land will no longer see astronauts returning home after touching down on its surface. To commemorate the final three active Space Shuttles, black granite plaques have been placed alongside the runway showing where the three Shuttles made their final landings.

There are plaques for the Endeavour, Discovery, and Atlantis – conspicuously absent are plaques for the ill-fated shuttles Challenger and Columbia.

The plaques are placed where the nose gear stopped on each of the shuttle’s final missions and offer details on how many missions each shuttle flew, how many days they spent in space, and how many miles they flew.

[via Florida Today]