Hasta La Gadget!

Let’s be honest, Hollywood doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to adapting video game properties to movies. I’m looking directly at you Dwayne Johnson and that sorry excuse for a Doom movie. Now we have a couple more video game movies set to go into production starring some big names.

Reports are indicating that Tom Hardy, the dude who played Bane in the The Dark Knight Rises, will play Sam Fisher, the trident-goggle-wearing protagonist from the Splinter Cell series of video games and books. While Splinter Cell is coming to movie theaters is cool enough, Michael Fassbender has reportedly signed up to star in a movie adaption of the Assassin’s Creed video game.

Fassbender will be best known by geeks all around the world for his turn as Magneto in X-Men: First Class. Fassbender also played a slightly insane, but awesome cyborg in Prometheus. Here’s hoping both of these video game movie adaptations turn out much better than Doom. Or Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Or Tomb Raider. Or Final Fantasy. Or Prince of Persia. Or Super Mario Bros.

[via E! Online]

A little bit goes a long way, and a little bit of loose change adds up. But what if you’ve got a handful of coins in different currencies that you’ve accumulated from your travels, just sitting in a jar at home?

That’s one predicament the Add Up concept wants to try to eliminate. It’s basically a tiny exchange box with a lot that you can drop all your loose change in, whatever the currency. It then converts the amount to your domestic currency, which you can then add to your online accounts to get phone or Skype credits. Think CoinStar, but multicurrency.

Now this is an awesome way to put all that loose change to good use. The Add Up concept was thought up by Fan Cheng Kuei, Deng Pei Chih, and Hsieh Tsai Ni.

[via Yanko Design]

Halt, citizen! Put the goldfish down. You cannot take care of it, and it will not fill the hole in your heart that your ex punched through when she left. But if you already bought an aquarium, consider filling it with Robo Fish. Lifelike swimming is its prime directive.

Made by Takara Tomy, Robo Fish can move up and down randomly and at times even act like it’s foraging for food. It uses two LR44 watch batteries to power its waggling tail. Here’s a video uploaded by YouTuber Brandon Avery:

They’re not as lifelike as this one, but they’re good enough as toys. Or not. Some of the customer reviews on Amazon Japan – where Robo Fish can be ordered for￥2,980 (~$38 USD) each – say that the toy drains its batteries in just 2 hours. So maybe it really is looking for sustenance.

[via Boing Boing]

Horses are beautiful and majestic creatures. Armored limousines are stately and practical vehicles. But I think we can all agree that the only mode of transportation worthy of a great man is a dinosaur. Behold:

Yes, that is indeed George Washington riding a T.Rex while carrying a bazooka. The Brothers Brick’s Editor-in-Chief Andrew Becraft made these awesome LEGO creations, featuring some of the USA’s leaders riding dinosaurs. Here’s Abraham Lincoln on a velociraptor:

Now that’s a vampire hunter. Here’s Benjamin Franklin on a triceratops:

I love the lightning bolts on his hand. Finally here’s Teddy Roosevelt on a pterodactyl.

The Expendables have nothing on these badasses. Especially someone who’s on a missile-toting flying dinosaur. Check out Andrew’s Flickr page for the original images.

[via The Brothers Brick via Geeks Are Sexy]

Every once in a while, I feel like being alone and that’s one of the times I feel extremely lucky and fortunate that we have a spare room in the house. Not that I’m a loner or anything, but I just like being able to get away from everyone and everything sometimes.

If I didn’t have a spare room to go to, then I’m sure something like the plastic-shelled Cocoon 1 would be totally up my alley. Although the price, not so much.

The Cocoon 1 is a piece of furniture that you can actually live in. It’s like the Cocoon Tent we saw earlier, only it’s made with a tough and clear material–and, well, it’s not a tent.

Designed by Swiss design group Micasa Lab, the Cocoon is cushy and roomy enough to let people sleep, eat, relax, and do whatever they want by their lonesome while they’re in it. The inside of the Cocoon is modular, so it can be configured as a living, working or even a cooking space. You can even get a Wi-Fi module for surfing the web inside of it.

The Cocoon 1 seems like a concept, but it’s actually an actual product that will be arriving sometime in Fall of 2013.

The only downside? The base model is priced at $2,990(USD), and goes up from there.

[Cocoon 1 via Yanko Design]