Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve talked about Swiss daredevil Yves Rossy several times since he began making flights using a wing powered by jet engines strapped to his back. In the past he’s flown his backpack wing in formation with a fighter jet, jumped from a hot air balloon and completed a loop wearing his backpack wing.

Rossy recently completed another flight when he flew over the Japanese landmark of Mount Fuji.

This was his first flight in Asia. He used his carbon-Kevlar jet wing mounted to his back and flew around the mountain to celebrate its designation as a world heritage site.

The backpack wing Rossy uses can reach speeds of up to 190 mph. The flight speed is controlled by a hand held throttle. The wingsuit can fly to an altitude of 12,000 feet and travel 9.3 miles before running out of fuel. He then returns to the ground using a parachute when he runs out of fuel.

[via Telegraph]

Earlier this year we saw the awesome oversized N64 pillow made by Donna Marie Evans. Donna was bombarded by requests for the pillow, but last month a customer asked her to make a controller pillow from an earlier Nintendo console. The result is this very huggable SNES controller pillow.

Donna said that this pillow was harder to make than the N64 one, partly because of the Super Nintendo phrase. She had to embroider it by hand because she doesn’t have a cutting edge embroidery machine. Contact her on deviantART if you want your own SNES pillow.

Now that he’s conquered the world of tiny LEGO Macintosh and iMac computers, LEGO builder Chris McVeigh (aka Powerpig) has headed further backwards in time to create LEGO kit versions of the Atari 2600 and C64 personal computer.

These awesome little kits accurately capture the spirit of these seminal parts of consumer electronic history. The Atari 2600 kit sells for $42.50(USD). It’s assembled from 130 pieces, and includes two tiny joysticks and three little cartridges. When complete, the console measures about 3.75″ wide x 1″ tall x 2.5″ deep.

The Commodore 64 kit (also $42.50) is a bit less complex, and is made from 82 bricks. But that doesn’t make it any less perfect. I can imagine connecting my 1530 C2N Datasette player and loading up a copy of Attack of Mutant Camels. The C64 is also a bit bigger than the 2600, measuring 5″ wide x 1″ tall x 2.5″ deep when assembled.

Great job, Chris! Keep ‘em coming. I’ll definitely bite when you make me an Atari 800 and an Apple ][.

As a lover of art, I’m beyond impressed at these sculptures Maya Sum has carved from lipstick. As a lover of makeup, I am appalled at the thought of brand new tubes of lipstick being hacked at to create these sculptures.

Then again, there’s a price that must be paid for every great piece of art, right?

For her women in power series, Maya has sculpted lipsticks and stick blushes in the images and likeness of Lady Gaga, Madonna, Victoria Beckham, and Coco Chanel. She has received extensive media attention for her lipstick sculptures and is now accepting custom orders on Etsy.

Each piece is priced starting at $450(USD) for objects and $620 for portraits. It’s pretty steep and is probably enough to buy you 22 brand new tubes of high-end lipstick – but then again, none of them will have your face on it.

[via if it’s hip, it’s here via Incredible Things]

Some people spend like there’s no tomorrow, even though they might not have the means to pay for all of their purchases. It’s only when they’re neck-deep in debt that they realize the importance of saving.

A concept that aims to present saving in a unique way is the Living Wallet.

It’s a concept design where the wallet basically “lives” and implores its owner to save and only spend when the owner’s budget has a favorable balance.

It has three save modes: Evade, which has the wallet rolling away on it’s built-in wheels so that it’s owner can’t get to it; Asking for Help, where it basically “screams” for help so that other people can chastise the owner before he or she can take any money out of it; and Last Resort, where the wallet sends a text message to the owner’s parents. It also has a fourth mode called Consumption Mode, which encourages you to spend money when you’ve got the money to spare.

The Living Wallet was designed by Yasuharu Sasaki, Kentaro Sagara, Noriaki Onoe, Satoshi Kuno, Rei Kawai, Hideyuki Saito, Yui Gokita, and Daichi Sato.

[via Bit Rebels]