Hasta La Gadget!

Fans of Mega Man will find this kitchen accessory as hard to resist as taking down Dr. Wily. It’s an awesome cutting board assembled to look just like the classic 8-bit gaming icon.

Jim Van Winkle of Prairie Oak Studios made this intricate cutting board from a whopping 504 individual blocks of wood. He used walnut, maple, cherry and purpleheart woods to provide the appropriate pixel shading of Mega Man. The 16.5″ x 13.25″ x 1.75″ thick cutting board is food safe, and finished with oils and waxes to protect it from damage, should Fire Man, Ice Man or Stone Man take a shot at you while preparing dinner.

Given its complexity, the Mega Man cutting board isn’t cheap – selling for $230(USD) over on Etsy – but with nearly 2000 individually glued joints, there’s a ton of labor that went into this amazing thing.

[via r/suatmm]

Back in January, we talked a bit about the JaJa Stylus that was on Kickstarter. This is a cool pressure-sensitive stylus for the iPad. The company behind the project, HEX3, needed $25,000 to fund and eventually raised more than three times the amount needed. The company has announced this week that the JaJa Stylus is now shipping to the initial batch of Kickstarter funders and developers.

In case you forget, this wireless stylus supports 1024 levels of sensitivity, making it a very capable input device for artists. The stylus also now supports the latest version of the iPad illustration app Procreate. The company also says that other major developers are working on versions of their apps that support the JaJa stylus.

This looks like a really cool product, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in action. Normal retail availability is expected to happen in September with an MSRP of $89.99(USD).

In Soviet Russia, you carry the Helicarrier. But that’s all right, because just like the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying fortress, this small remote-controlled replica made by a Russian RC enthusiast can also float and take to the sky.

The replica was made by RC Design forum member native18, the same guy who made the DeLorean quadrotor. Strangely enough, native18 also pointed out a very similar toy that was shown off at an RC airplane show way last February, except this one is literally an (RC) aircraft carrier:

Here’s native18′s Helicarrier in action:

Brush up on your Russian (or use Google Translate) and head to native18′s thread on RC Design for more details and images. Combine this with this and you have a winner.

[via Buzzfeed]

While we’ve definitely seen our share of video game themed bathrooms here on Technabob, all of the ones I’ve come across seem very much like they were intentionally done that way. Not so much with this bathroom, which has a subliminal message for all fans of retro gaming…

Look carefully at the tiny blue tiles, and you’ll see a Space Invader lurking there, right in front of the toilet. The guy who snapped this picture says his employee that installed the tiles in the bathroom of this drug treatment center is a video game fan, so he suspects it was intentional, but I like to think that it was totally random. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stared at the marble tiles in my bathroom and tried to imagine a pattern was there, like a demonic human face staring back – but it’s always my mind playing tricks on me – like the man on the moon, or Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich.

Have you guys come across other video game characters lurking in seemingly random patterns? Feel free to post in the comments if you find any cool ones out there. And installations by Invader don’t count.

[via Reddit]

If there’s one thing that I never thought you could turn into a DIY project, it’s lava flows. But leave it to the ingenuity of sculptor Boby Wysocki and geologist Jeff Karson at Syracuse University to create their own DIY lava project. They create molten rock, then pour it out to produce lava. Then, kids get to melt marshmallows on it.

The lava is created by melting crushed basalt from Wisconsin that’s 1.1 billion years old. It’s melted in a gas-fueled, tilt furnace up to 2192 degrees Fahrenheit. A couple of hours later, the rock has become molten, and it’s poured out. They’ve done more than 100 lava flows since the start of the program.

I’m not sure how the lava-toasted marshmallows will taste, but the project is pretty awesome as most of us haven’t seen lava up close and personal. Geologists and volcanologists are on hand to answer any questions you might have.

It sounds like a great field trip! If you don’t like marshmallows, then you can opt for hot dogs and roast them up on the lava as well.

Wysocki and Karson are currently working on making even more realistic lava flows, as is demonstrated in the video below:

[via Make:]