Hasta La Gadget!

The microwave is the lazy hungry man’s best friend. Developer Nathan Broadbent went and modified his oven to become even more lazy user-friendly. His Picrowave oven is voice-activated, reads bar codes, can be taught how to cook a particular item and more.

Broadbent used a Raspberry Pi to smarten up his oven. He even rewired its touch panel and made a new interface for it. The thing is, he doesn’t need to use the new panel, because he made the oven understand voice commands.

He also made an online database containing instructions for cooking. The instructions are tied to bar codes, which are read by a scanner that Broadbent connected it to his oven. In short, all he has to do is scan an item and the microwave will find out how to zap it from the database using Wi-Fi. If it’s not there, Nathan can just add an entry. He also made an online interface so that he can control the oven from a website, even from a mobile device. Finally, the oven can also tweet when its done cooking.

If only 3D printers were that easy to use. Head to Broadbent’s website to see how he made the Picrowave.

[via TechCrunch via DVICE]

Illustrator Elizabeth Sherry likes to make classical-style art based on videogame characters. No, not 8-bit. She went way more old school than that. Her digital paintings even have cracks and creases on them to make them look really old.

The one above is my favorite, but her Mario still life is a close second.

Elizabeth said she’ll be selling prints of her artwork at the Toronto Fan Expo, but she’s also accepting orders online. Head to her blog or her deviantART page to contact her and check out her other artwork.

[via Gamefreaks]

The release of Pokémon X and Y is still about three months away. But because we live in the age of pre-orders, Banpresto is already dangling plushies of the game’s starter monsters to fans. You don’t have to choose between Chespin, Fennekin and Froakie either, because you can order them as a set. Also because Froakie is the only correct choice.

You can pre-order the 5.11″ plushies from NCSX for about $16 (USD) each or $40 for all three. Animeraro also has the DX edition of the stuffed toys; they’re about 9″ tall and sell for $30 each or $70 for the set.

[via GoNintendo & AAPF]

The researchers behind Shape-It-Up call it a “Hand Gesture Based Creative Expression of 3D Shapes Using Intelligent Generalized Cylinders”, but it’s totally a pottery simulator. Decades from now, if – when? – Paramount Pictures decides to remake Ghost, the characters will be using Shape-It-Up while a dubstep remix of Unchained Melody plays in the background. Oh, my WUB WUB WUB WUUUUUB…

Shape-It-Up is a project by Purdue University Engineering students Vinayak, Sundar Murugappan, HaiRong Liu and Karthik Ramanilets. It lets users manipulate a virtual cylinder by using simple hand gestures, which are tracked using a Kinect. Skip to around 1:28 in the video below to see it in action.

I guess you could say that was… righteous. YEEEEA- I’m old. The researchers think of Shape-It-Up as a way for designers to start their sketches in an easier and more intuitive manner, not as a way to create a polished model. But if you pair it with a 3D printer, I think it can also be used as a way to teach kids about the basics of CAD and 3D printing. Now get off my lawn and head to Purdue University’s website for the project’s abstract.

[via Gajitz]

We’ve already invented a (partially) reusable spacecraft. But the rockets that were used to boost NASA’s space shuttles – and other spacecraft in general – were all designed for one-time use only. That makes space travel wasteful and expensive. That’s why the space transport company SpaceX is working on creating reusable rockets.

Like other rockets, the SpaceX Grasshopper takes off vertically. But instead of returning to Earth as a thousand molten bits when its work is done, the Grasshopper gracefully lands vertically, like a gymnast with a flaming butt. Have you seen one of those? They’re amazing. The video below shows it rising up to a height of 1,066 ft. before landing smoothly on the same launchpad that it came from. SpaceX claims that, thanks to its advanced navigation sensors, it was “directly controlling the vehicle based on new sensor readings, adding a new level of accuracy in sensing the distance between Grasshopper and the ground, enabling a more precise landing.”

Either that or they just played the first half of the video in reverse. Then again, the geniuses at SpaceX literally specialize in rocket science, so uh, rocket science… isn’t rocket science for them. I think I broke an idiom. Anyway, let’s just believe in them and egg them on so that one day a SpaceX rocket can teach me how to parallel park.

[SpaceX via Reddit]