Hasta La Gadget!

I was sitting around the house the other day thinking what I really needed to make my life complete was a pair of articulated cat ears that I could wear on my head. I mean, I have a cool car, a gigantic television, and a sweet job (not this one mind you). The only thing lacking in my life is a nice set of giant plush cat ears. You can imagine how happy I was to notice that Necomimi has now officially launched its Brainwave Cat Ears in the United States.

We talked about these things last year and apparently you could previously find them at certain geek conventions. Apparently, they will now come to other retail locations for you to purchase for $99.95(USD). The idea is that the cat ears are on a headband that has a sensor that rests on your four head to read your brainwaves. The ears will tell other people what you’re feeling so you don’t have to bother with stupid stuff like talking to people.

The cat ears are able to show three emotional states. When something catches the wearer’s attention, the ears stand straight up. When the wearer is relaxed, the ears will droop down. When the user is both highly focused and highly relaxed the ears wiggle back-and-forth. Sadly it’s missing the indicator for “I’m going to dust you with bath salts and chew your face off.”

For this epic LEGO project, a team of people from Rolls-Royce the built an incredible 675-pound replica of the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 jet engine. The LEGO jet engine you see here took 152,455 bricks to build and is accurate all the way from the fins of the intake fan to the combustion chambers were jet fuel would be burned. The LEGO engine is nearly 5 feet long making it 4 feet shy of the real thing.

The actual Trent 1000 engine, which is used on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, is 9 feet long and weighs about 12,710 pounds. The entire LEGO engine consists of 160 separate engine parts and took a team of four people about eight weeks to build. The entire project is amazing, and the builders made the individual components from actual CAD drawings of the real parts.

The blades on the intake fan are so thin it’s hard to imagine them staying together. Rolls-Royce Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stein said the company built the engine to inspire the younger generation. “We are very pleased some of our own graduates and apprentices have contributed to building it, ensuring it is as realistic as possible,” Stein said in a statement. “We hope that this representation of our technology will help to enthuse and inspire the potential scientists and engineers of the future about the career opportunities they could pursue.”

Or maybe they just did it because it’s fun to play with LEGO bricks.

[via Wired]

Damn! Look at the size of that hole in this Stormtroopers helmet. I think that before the shot was fired, this corpsetrooper heard a rebel utter, “You’re all clear kid, let’s blow this thing and get out of here!” So he turns and goes, “Huh?,” thinking that they are talking about blowing up a piece of equipment. But no. No. They were talking about your head. That sucks.


His Imperial tombstone reads: Here lies Les Moore. Four slugs. From a rebel forty-four. No Les. No More.

Seriously though, this is some gross cosplay people. This helmet was spotted at the recent London Film and Comic Con. It’s disgusting, yet I love it. What’s wrong with me?

[via Obvious Winner]

It has been about a year since Hasbro launched its own LEGO-style building sets under the name brand KRE-O. The first of those kits Hasbro offered were Transformers themed. The toy maker is back with a new line of KRE-O building sets that are officially licensed Star Trek kits, based on the J.J. Abrams-helmed Trek movie series.

There will be multiple building sets to be unveiled a preview night starting on July 11 at San Diego Comic-Con 2012. The first of the sets to be unveiled is a U.S.S. Enterprise kit. Some the details on this kit are missing such as exactly how big it is and how many parts it has, but it does look pretty good. The company will also offer special “KREON” figures of Trek characters.

KREON figures are the KRE-O versions of LEGO minifigs. Three of the special figures will include Kirk, Spock, and Bones. There’s no word on when the sets will be available for purchase or how much they will cost.

Minecraft players are experts at pulling off what I call the Reverse Field of Dreams: “If you come, they will build it.” Thus the existence of WesterosCraft – a Minecraft server that contains a replica of the fictional continent Westeros – should surprise no one. But it should delight every Game of Thrones fan.

That is of course, the Wall, home and hell to the Night’s Watch. Take a tour of some of the other places in the video below:

I know what you’re thinking. Here you go:

You’re welcome. There are more videos at the WesterosCraft playlist on YouTube. The making-of time lapse videos are particularly impressive.

[WesterosCraft via Nerdcore]