Hasta La Gadget!

The Kisai Rorschach is the newest watch from Tokyoflash, maker of timepieces that are intentionally bad at presenting the time. The display looks similar to the ink blots used in the eponymous test, but it’s actually easy to decipher. The top right shows the hour and the bottom left shows the minutes. The other two symbols are just mirror images.

The watch has three difficulty modes. Why? Because Tokyoflash. From what I can tell changing the difficulty doesn’t change how you read the display, it just switches to hard-to-read symbols for the numbers. The date and alarm settings are also displayed in the same manner.

Because the watch uses an ePaper display, Tokyoflash added a power-saving sleep mode to the watch.  As you may know an ePaper or e-ink display does not consume power if it’s just showing a static image. So in sleep mode the watch will only display one symbol, which will be different depending on what day it is.

Tokyoflash even made a fan video to promote the watch, starring none other than The Watchmen‘s Rorschach. Is it still a fan video if you’re promoting a product? Hmmm.

I wish they didn’t use such a tacky font to print “Rorschach” on the display. Other than that I think it’s a neat design. You can order the watch from Tokyoflash for $179 (USD).

This month, Japanese electronics company Kyocera launched the country’s largest solar plant. The facility can power 22,000 homes—and, maybe more importantly, it poses no risk of melting down, injuring workers, or spewing radioactive water into the Pacific ocean.

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In what might be the most creative use of tissue ever, Fuyu Arai created this wonderful stop motion animation video for Nepia, a Japanese tissue paper company. It shows different animals like birds, dogs, kangaroos, frogs, etc. being formed through just tissue paper. The animation is so fluid that you almost believe that these tissue animals are alive.

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A lot of people I know tend to avoid eating two things in public: chicken and burgers. Chicken, because it’s harder to eat without using your hands (and the smell lingers on your fingers when you do) and burgers, because you can look quite unsightly when you open wide to take a bite.

For the former, there’s finger tongs (or trongs). For the latter, there’s the Liberation wrapper to hide you behind a demure facade while you stuff your face.

The burger wrapper was debuted by Japanese burger chain Freshness Burger. Printed on the outside side of the wrapper is a half-face of a smiling woman, which is meant to cover the diner’s actual half-face while she eats.

The wrapper essentially masks the person’s face from the front view, although I don’t think anything can be done for the side view at this point. After switching their wrappers to this, Freshness Burger reported a 213% increase among women who ordered their burgers.

I wonder if they’ll make a male version of the Liberation Wrapper for the men who do care about how they look when they eat.

[Lost at E Minor via TAXI via Foodbeast]

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who did this, but the first thing I did when I got my first laser pointer was go outside and point it at the moon. I’d stare and wonder if someone was up there, would they be able to see the little red light shining from the Earth?

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