Hasta La Gadget!

Action figure modder Sillof loves to remake popular characters by casting them in the style of different eras or genres. But when the owners of the Best Western Denver Southwest hotel approached him last Spring, they wanted him to combine two popular franchises. But he stepped up to the challenge and delivered. Welcome to Seusstastic Park!

The hotel owners asked Sillof to mashup Jurassic Park with Dr. Seuss because they were giving their business a dinosaur-themed makeover. Also because they just love Dr. Seuss. Sillof came up with Catahaturuses, a Lorceritax, Dilos, Yellosneechtors, and the most terrifying creature of them all, the Grinchasaurus rex. He also came up with a Seuss-ified version of the Jurassic Park gate and car.

But that’s not all. In true Dr. Seuss fashion, the hotel owners provided Sillof with the first and last stanzas of a poem about Seusstastic Park, and Sillof filled in the rest of the poem. You can read the poem on Sillof’s website. Sillof said he had fun with the project and is thrilled with how it turned out. He also said that the hotel owners may auction off the figures for charity, so keep an eye out on the Best Western Facebook page if you want to own a piece of Seusstastic Park.

[via Sillof via Super Punch]

A few months ago we saw the subatomic particle jewelry by 3D printing specialists Mixee Labs. Now they’re making something much much bigger: molecules. Available as pendants or earrings, the molecular jewelry are sure to get a reaction from chemistry geeks and are a great way to strengthen bonds with loved ones.

Mixee Labs has a variety of ready to print templates, which include molecules of popular substances. Adrenaline, testosterone and of course caffeine. The shop also has a link to molecule databases in case the one you want – crystal meth? – isn’t one of the templates. After you’ve chosen a molecule, you can tweak the thickness of the atoms and the bonds. Finally, you can choose whether to have your jewelry printed on nylon plastic, stainless steel, sterling silver or gold-plated brass.

You can order the molecular jewelry from Mixee Labs. Prices start at $10 (USD) for nylon plastic, $60 for stainless steel and $160 for sterling silver and gold-plated brass. Yeah science! Yeah 3D printing!

If you have to ask what an oscilloscope is, Gabriel Anzziani’s invention isn’t for you. The founder of Gabotronics made waves when he created the amazingly tiny Xprotolab oscilloscope. Now he’s working on the Oscilloscope Watch, a more portable and versatile version of the Xprotolab.

Like the Xprotolab, the watch is an oscilloscope, a waveform generator, a protocol sniffer, a frequency counter and a logic analyzer in a device that’s about the same size as a sports watch. It has a 1.28″ e-paper display and a 400mAh Li-ion battery that should last up to 12 hours of continuous use or over 30 days if you’re just using it as a watch. It’s powered by the ATxmega128A4U 8-bit microcontroller and will have complementary PC and Android apps. Gabriel is still figuring out the best form for the instrument’s probes. He’s leaning towards integrating them in a keychain, but he’s also considering turning them into wristbands or even the straps for the watch.

Pledge at least $100 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an Oscilloscope Watch as a reward. Eat your heart out, Tokyoflash.

Man who catch fly with chopstick, accomplish anything. Man who catch most sushi with chopstick, become ChopsticKing. That idea behind – I mean that’s the idea behind Chopsticking, an Arduino-based board game made by NYU ITP students Christina Carter and Jess Jiyoung Jung. It’s a two-player game where you compete to grab the greatest number of sushi.

Chopsticking consists of two pairs of chopsticks, a board with a circular receptacle and tokens that look like sushi. There’s a metal plate that obscures part of the bin as it rotates, making it harder to fish out the tokens. Before you play the game, you first have to hold the chopsticks in the proper manner – your index finger and thumb must be resting on the upper stick while the lower half of your thumb anchors the lower stick in place. The Chopsticking sticks have sensors that detect if your fingers are in the right areas, so no cheating by using a fork or your fingers.

When the game begins, you pick up sushi tokens as fast as you can, but you also have to dip them in “soy sauce”, which is actually an RFID reader that detects the tags on the sushi. The player is awarded two scores at the end of the time limit. One is for the number of sushi you were able to dip in the sauce while the other is for how well you held the chopsticks.

Christina and Jess showed off Chopsticking at the World Maker Faire in New York City. It must have been a hit-and-miss affair.

[Chopsticking via MAKE]

Replicate the opening credits of HBO’s Game of Thrones with this multilayered puzzle map of Westeros. Aside from the flat map of the war-torn continent, the kit also includes tiny replicas of cities and castles, plus a few other figurines. Make sure to hum the opening theme while you’re putting it together.

The map was made by 4D Cityscape, a company known for two things: building puzzle maps of cities and misunderstanding the concept of the 4th dimension. This definitively 3-dimensional continent puzzle is made of 1,200 pieces. Then there’s a smaller 200-piece puzzle that sits on top of the continent puzzle that outlines the “current landscape” of Westeros. I assume that refers to the layout of the land based on the TV series so far. The final layer consists of the aforementioned figurines of cities and castles. There are also “over 45 flags to mark famous landmarks, 10 sigils to mark the Houses, and 5 battle markers to learn the locations of five major battles.”

You can pre-order the puzzle map from ThinkGeek for $60 (USD), and you’ll have it in plenty of time as a gift for that Game of Thrones fan on your holiday shopping list.

[via This is Why I’m Broke]