Hasta La Gadget!

Fast food pizza is the lazy man’s favorite meal, next to the Anything Edible Within Arm’s Reach value meal. I loooove that one. But ordering pizza is still quite the hurdle for the indolent. Thankfully iStrategyLabs is here to solve that problem with the PiePal, a device that orders pizza in just a few seconds.

Before you sloths utter an unintelligible moan that can only mean that you’re beside yourself with joy, there are a few caveats with the PiePal. First of all, it can only order one type of pizza and only from Dominos. Second, you have to have a user account on Domino’s online delivery website. That’s because the PiePal is actually a Raspberry Pi that’s running an automated pizza ordering software. You’ll need to enter your Wi-Fi network’s name and password, Domino’s account details and the specific pizza you want into the program. You can do it; it’ll let you be lazy in the long run.

Also, I lied about the one button thing. You actually have to turn a dial before you can press the button to order. I know, it’s hard, but the dial lets you select the number of pizzas you want to order. Then press the big button on the PiePal to place your order.

If you’re interested in owning a PiePal, get off your butt for a second and sign up on the PiePal website to become a “beta taster.” Mmmm, beta.

[via iStrategyLabs via CNET]

Pokémon X & Y have lots of hard to find monsters, from highly conditional evolutions to the legendaries that you can only catch after finishing the game’s story. But the most coveted type of Pokémon, the rarest of the rare, are the shiny Pokémon – alternate colors of the game’s creatures. Allegedly you only have a 1-in-8,192 chance of encountering one in battle. That’s why Redditor dekuNukem hacked his 3DS to do the dirty work for him.

dekuNukem’s hack was made for battles started via fishing; I don’t know if it can be modified for the more conventional grass-hunting method. In simple terms, the hacked 3DS automatically casts the fishing rod and enters into battle on its own. If the encountered Pokémon is ordinary, the hack automatically runs away from the battle and repeats the process. But if it hits pay dirt, it emits a buzz to alert dekuNukem. You can read a full explanation in his video, or you can skip to 1:08 to see it in action:

If you think you can build your own Shiny-farming 3DS, download dekuNukem’s code here. Here’s another code you should get: my friend code is 1048-8685-2995. Remember me when you catch those shinies!

[via Joystiq]

How do you follow up Pac-Man light bulbs and an aquarium in a phone booth? With a police car turned into a Chicken Coop obviously. Benedetto Bufalino strikes again.

His newest piece of art is The Police Car Barn. That seems like a natural progression. I’m sure these police cars feel like a chicken coop to the criminals that ride in them, so it makes at least a little bit of sense. This functional chicken coop was built inside of an old 1970s era French police car.

The interior was gutted and he propped up the hood, the trunk and the passenger door for some extra room.

These chickens have it good. A cool car and lots of room. It must be a pain to clean up though. And forget about it if you have to drive this thing in a high-speed pursuit.

[via designboom via Neatorama]

Last month I talked about Bare Conductive’s Electric Paint Pen, which can be used to make simple or hidden circuits. Thanks to the company’s newest product, you can use the pen to make more complex and fun devices. Bare Conductive’s Touch Board turns anything conductive – including the Electric Paint and your body – into a trigger for its built-in mp3 player or MIDI device.

The simplest way to use the Touch Board is to load an MP3 file to a microSD card and load the card to the board. Then you just connect a conductive material and a Li-Po battery to the board. Now all you need to do is touch the conductive material and the Touch Board will play the MP3 file.

The Touch Board also has a distance sensor, which means you can set it so that you don’t even have to touch your sensor to trigger the Touch Board.

Combine it with the Electric Paint and some creativity and you can make neat stuff like a cardboard boombox, a talking wall, a cookie thief alarm and more. But that’s not all. The Touch Board is also compatible with Arduino Shields, so you can extend its functionality beyond just triggering sounds. Anything that an Arduino Shield can do, you can turn into a distance- or touch-activated action.

Pledge at least  £45 (~$72 USD) on Kickstarter to get a Touch Board as a reward. Bare Conductive will even throw in a microSD card and an Electric Paint Pen with your Touch Board unit.

UK-based artist Hetain Patel’s first car was a 1988 Ford Fiesta that was handed down from his father. In honor of his first set of wheels, this collaboration with his father and brother turns a similar vehicle into a Transformer-like robot that is far more than meets the eye.

The car is a symbol. As he says, “Manufactured in England, this car stands as a symbol of working class Britain, a native body, albeit here a car body.” And of course, he was inspired by the Transformers, seeing this art piece as a symbol of empowerment:

Another significant influence for me and this work are Transformers, an American film and toy franchise since 1984, and a widely recognisable pop culture reference that reaches far back in Hetain’s memory. In this new sculpture, Transformers have been made manifest, physically, in a literal transformation of a Ford Fiesta car into a large-scale squatting human-like figure. For me, these ‘robots in disguise’ (as per the cartoon’s theme tune) stand as a metaphor for the other, in a fantasy world where they can transform out of a marginal position into one of empowerment.

Forget all the fancy talk of art and empowerment and all the rest. This piece of art is just plain awesome and stands on it’s own. No pun intended. It shows what a father, son, brother trio of geeks can accomplish.

[via Make:]