Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re always losing track of your keys, it’s nice to have a place to hang them up when you come and go from the house. I’ve got a couple of little hooks on the wall, but I’m digging this idea much more.

Designer Felix Grauer came up with the idea of a simple keyring with a LEGO-compatible brick on it. To hang your keys up, simply snap the brick onto a wall-mounted LEGO panel, and you’re set. Make sure to leave them hanging over by one position to make them easy to remove. Not only can you use the blocks to color-code individual keyrings, but you can snap them together to combine rings.

I love simple, smart ideas like this that just plain work. Now all I need is some LEGO bricks with holes drilled in the side of them, and I’ll be all set. I suppose for now, I’ll just have to settle for some of these.

[via ICECREAM]

Lego savant Hans Andersson has created an updated version of his Time Twister clock that’s even more fascinating to watch. If you’re in a hurry the complicated spinning mechanisms that slowly update the display will drive you crazy. But if you’re a fan of brilliant Lego designers finding new uses for Mindstorms, this is right up your alley. More »

Every time I think I’ve seen every possible LEGO contraption you could build, somebody comes along and makes something I’ve never imagined. This time, we’ve got a giant folding LEGO structure that works like a pop-up book.

It wasn’t enough for Japanese LEGO fanatic Talapz to simply create an architectural model of the Todai-ji Buddhist temple. Nope. He had to show off and make one that could actually fold up. Here, check it out:

Pretty nifty, eh? It turns out this isn’t the first folding LEGO building Talapz has made – back in 2009 he built another, though the 2012 model and folding mechanism is even more impressive.

Stick around to the end of the first video to see exactly how he built it.

[via Kotaku via Nerd Approved]

It’s easy to get lost during a video game adventure. Here, take this. This LEGO Hyrule map won’t fit in your pocket, but it will help you get your bearings while you seek Princess Zelda.

This LEGO map of Hyrule is from original Legend of Zelda and was created by madoruk for BrickCon 2012. The detail is amazing Each LEGO stud on the map represents one 16 x 16 section of pixels in the game. The full map measures 256 x 88 studs. I need this now!

This would look great on any Zelda fan’s wall. Especially if you get lost in the game so badly that you have been trying to create your own map.

[via The Brothers Brick via Geekologie]

Space exploration. We like to pretend it is about all kinds of noble things having to do with mankind’s place in the universe, blah blah blah. We all know it is really about all the cool things that you can do while in space, right? You know, like control a robot on Earth. From Space.

Astronaut Sunita Williams used a specially developed laptop on the International Space Station to control an Internet-connected LEGO robot in Germany. That’s pretty awesome. The technology is called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN). It works like this: traditional Internet protocol standards assume that there will always be a route of connections available from node A to node B. However, DTN accepts that there will be disruptions in connectivity from where the signal is being sent to where it is supposed to be received.

Aside from having a great time playing with a LEGO robot from space, there was a point to this. NASA sees an opportunity to one day use this technology to control robots on the surface of Mars or some other planet. That sure opens up many possibilities when it comes to exploring (and someday colonizing) other worlds. DTN has been tested for years, but not for robotics applications – for which it now looks promising.

[via Geek]