When Cory Newton-Smith made her son Cooper’s DeLorean push car last Halloween, she said that she would love to make epic costumes for her son every year. Fortunately for us, Cory and her husband Jeremy stuck to that promise. This year they dressed up Cooper as a Ghostbuster for Halloween. Naturally his push car had to go as Ecto-1.
Cory modified Cooper’s push car using “cardboard boxes repurposed from their recent move, spare electronics from an old vehicle, salsa cups from Mexican take-out, empty pop bottles, LEDs from the local electronics store, and some paint and tape.” Cory also bought felt replicas of the Proton Pack and Ghost Trap from Etsy shop owner Jezebel Rose. Cooper’s dad Jeremy also stepped up his game from last year. He installed LED lights and Bluetooth speakers that they can use to play the Ghostbusters theme and sound effects from a Windows Phone app.
My how Cooper has grown. Where you gonna surf? To Cory’s Instructables page or the couple’s website for more images.
You don’t get to 10 Mega Man games without making a few enemies. 80 of them to be specific. Patrick Merrifield reminds us just how difficult the Blue Bomber’s life is with his massive masterpiece. Patrick made bead portraits of each of the Robot Masters that Rock faced in the classic Mega Man series.
Patrick said it took him over 90 hours and more than 67,000 beads to put the collection together. I don’t think I’ve ever arranged a thousand of anything. And yes, it is a collection of portraits, not one big wall, so you can split them however you want. You can’t buy them separately though. Here’s a closer look at one of the portraits.
Turn into Pay Man and buy the collection from Patrick’s Etsy shop for $1,000 (USD).
Other kids might be ashamed to ride next to the kid in the Normandy stroller, but not baby Cooper. Thanks to his mom Cooper has a flying DeLorean push car, and it didn’t take a ton of power to make. Just some cardboard, tape, paint, EL strips and of course a tiny red puffy vest.
Cooper’s mom and Instructables member Cory4281 made the car last year for Halloween. She attached the DeLorean’s parts on top of a Step2 push car. I love the small details in the car, like the cutouts. But the best part has to be how Cory4281 made it so the actual car’s wheels are now hidden, making it look like Cooper has a floating ride.
Cory4281 said she wants to make epic costumes for her son each year. I hope Cooper never grows up so we can keep seeing more push car mods from his mom.
NECA’s upcoming RoboCop action figure caters to a tiny slice of Alex Murphy fans: the now grown men and women who played the 1989 NES RoboCop game. To everyone else, it’ll look like someone dropped the toy in a jar of ink, but in reality it’s the future of law enforcement rendered in the past of video game graphics.
If it still doesn’t look right to you, this video by YouTube channel nesguide should set things straight:
Ah, the bane of RoboCop’s existence: stairs. The action figure is articulated, is 7″ tall and has his signature Auto-9 Pistol, which you can store in its spring-loaded holster.
Dat box art! Your Prime Directive is to remember this date: February 2014. That’s the tentative release date for the action figure. NECA says it won’t make the action figure available ever again after it sells out. So don’t miss it or… there will be trouble.
The first Mega Man game celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, while its sequel is still “only” 24 years old. But it was Mega Man 2 that catapulted the Blue Bomber and his franchise to fame, and is widely considered to be one of the best videogames of all time. So I don’t think anyone would ridicule NES modders Platinum Fungi and Custom NES Guy for paying tribute to the legendary platformer one year in advance.
Platinum Fungi made the cutout backlit design, which features the eight Robot Masters from Mega Man 2, while Custom NES Guy did the slick paint job.
Cool Man. I’m not sure if Platinum Fungi is selling this particular console. You can hire him and Custom NES Guy for custom NES builds though, so maybe they’ll make another one for you.
If you like the look of tilt-shift and low-fidelity images, you should probably have a camera that looks the part. I’ve been playing around with one particular camera that fits both bills – creative lo-fi images and retro style.
The Bonzart Ampel Dual Lens camera is an unusual little camera that looks like an old-school twin-lens reflex camera, but in this case, each lens is being used to feed a five-megapixel digital image sensor. The top lens offers normal images, while the lower lens offers an optical tilt-shift effect.
The camera even has a clever pop open viewfinder like old cameras, which conceals a small 2″ LCD screen inside. This top-down position for viewing images while shooting takes a little getting used to, but is actually kind of fun once you do. As an added bonus, the pop-up sides around the viewfinder keep glare off of the LCD.
In terms of storage, the camera accepts standard SD memory cards, and gets its power from three inexpensive AA batteries. Controls for switching between effect and shooting modes are located on side of the camera, while the shutter and lens select buttons are on front. Menu controls for changing resolution, exposure, date/time and other settings are located on back.
So how about image quality? Well, I won’t say that the Bonzart Ampel can compete with today’s better digital cameras, but that’s not what it’s designed for. It’s designed to allow photographers to explore their creativity in the capture of artful, lo-fi imagery – and it does that well. Check out some sample images I shot below:
Outdoors, Tilt-Shift Mode
As you can see, it performs quite well in daylight conditions, and the tilt-shift effect is spot on.
Outdoors, Tilt-Shift Mode
Without any focus controls at all, it even captures pretty impressive macro images, complete with unplanned depth of field effects.
Close-up Outdoors, Tilt-Shift Mode
Close-up, Indoors, Front-lit
Close-up, Indoors, Back-lit
Close-up, Indoors, Vivid Color Mode
The camera also offers digital effect modes for vivid color, black and white, sepia tone, and something called “REF”, which seems like a washed out Fuji film style. While you could achieve many of these effects in post-production with image editors, it’s kind of fun to see them in real time on the LCD, and without need to boot up Photoshop.
In addition to still imagery, the Bonzart Ampel can shoot video in resolutions from 320×240 up to 720×480 at 30fps. It also offers a 1280×720 HD mode, but the frame rate is extremely poor at that resolution. Suffice it to say, this isn’t really designed for HD videography. Still, it’s kind of neat to be able to shoot SD video through a tilt-shift lens.
One caveat with this camera is that it’s pretty much useless in low-light conditions. It captures great daylight images, but even in dimly-lit indoor rooms this is the sort of result I got, even when playing with the manual exposure controls:
For those of you who like to use Instagram, the camera also has a built-in 1:1 proportion mode, so you can capture ready-cropped images for upload to the service (or for square picture frames).
Overall, this quirky little camera really grew on me, and I think it’s a fun addition to any photographer’s bag of tricks. If you keep in mind that it’s designed for creative imagery and not for precision, you’ll be much happier with the surprising and serendipitous results it produces.
The Bonzart Ampel Dual Lens camera is available from AC Gears for $180(USD).
One of the fascinating things about modern epics like, The Lord of the Rings,Naruto or Star Wars is the quantity and diversity of their characters. Illustrator Max Dalton shows us the many faces that appeared in the original Star Wars trilogy with his limited edition poster, simply titled Episode IV – VI:
The 18″ x 24″ poster shows nearly every character in the first Star Wars trilogy, arranged in the order of their appearance. Max also included different versions of the main characters. You’ll see Han Solo and frozen Han Solo, living Obi-Wan and ghost Obi-Wan etc.
You can buy the poster from Spoke Art for $50(USD) unframed or to $170 framed. It’s limited to just 500 pieces. Buy or miss out; there is no reprint.
We’ve seen a full-sized arcade cabinet hacked to control a Nintendo DS. Redditor button-masher decided to cram the handheld into a tiny arcade cabinet instead. Then he went to great lengths to make it look like a real arcade cabinet, adding tiny joysticks and buttons, a marquee and even a couple of coin slots.
The joystick and buttons are wired to the DS’ circuit board. The upper screen of the DS serves as the cabinet’s monitor, while its lower half is crammed inside. Even though the cabinet’s banner bears Galaga’s logo, the cabinet can actually play any DS game. Or at least, any DS game that can be controlled with a joystick and two buttons. But I think button-masher’s good with his cartridges: Namco Museum and Konami Classics Arcade Hits.
There are probably cheaper or easier ways to make a tiny arcade cabinet, but if you have a spare or unused Nintendo DS this is a great way to repurpose the aging handheld. Head to Imgur to see more pictures of button-masher’s mod.
If you’re going to the New York Comic Con with a kid, stay away from Booth 208. Otherwise you’ll have to explain why there’s a small batch of gold-domed R2-D2 action figures each rocking a purple hat, a cape and a cane. Because this isn’t a Count Dracula costume.
This robotic uh, solicitor is the work of Jason Chalker aka Manly Art. He also made a poster featuring his scandalous creation:
You can get the poster from Jason’s online shop (his other artworks are NSFW) for $20 (USD). As I said the action figure will only be sold at the New York Comic Con and will go for $50 each.
On numerous occasions, I’ve thought about going on eBay and picking up an original Macintosh, just so I could have one in my office? But I always talk myself out of it because I don’t really have the desk space for what amounts to a museum piece. Now, one enterprising hacker has the solution – a miniature Macintosh.
Not only does this 1/3rd scale Macintosh look exactly like the original, it’s actually functional.
While it doesn’t have the brains of an actual Mac, it uses a Raspberry Pi miniature PC, along with Macintosh emulator to replicate the experience of using an original Macintosh – only smaller.
RetroMacCast host John Leake built this marvel of miniaturization by hand carving and bending PVC, and set the teensy Rasperry Pi circuit board, power supply and a 3.5″ LCD inside the case. Given the fact that John made the case by hand, it’s just that much more impressive.
Its display only runs at 320×200 resolution, less than the 512×342, 9″ screen found in the Macintosh 128K. Still, this mini Mac has an HDMI output for driving larger screens, as well as USB and Ethernet ports. Unlike the original Macintosh, this one boots off of an SD card, which should prove much faster and more reliable than 3.5″ diskettes.
Congrats on an amazing build, John! If you’d like to learn more about how he built his mini Mac, be sure to check out his blog. You need to start selling these now. I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
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