Hasta La Gadget!

A poor calf was literally left out in the cold this winter and suffered frostbite to both of its hind legs. The frostbite was so severe that the calf lost both the back legs to surgical amputation. A person stepped up and adopted the calf rather than see the animal put down and turned into steak.

Rather than having a calf that lay around all the time, the new owner of the animal spent about $40,000 to have a pair of prosthetic legs made for it. To attach the legs to the calf, bovine surgeons had to remove a couple inches of bone to make a tissue pad.

The hooves of the legs are made from titanium and urethane. The connecting hardware is made from titanium and carbon fiber, and it has taken surgeons at Texas A&M University about a year to develop the prosthetics.

[via Independent]

We have seen some cool stickers designed to stick inside your toilet on a few occasions. One of the coolest was the Sarlacc stickers that made your toilet look like the monster that ate Boba Fett. Some new and much simpler stickers have surfaced for Star Wars fans that want to pee on something.

The stickers – available from LilMrsCrafty – include a Darth Vader helmet, TIE fighter, and a stormtrooper. If you put these in a toilet on the Death Star, none of the stormtroopers could hit them.

If you ever wanted to take a whiz on Vader, here is your chance. You can also show Vader your fully functional Brown Star. See what I did there?

[via Cheezburger|Geek Universe]

I always get a kick out of mashups of films that I loved as a kid. I really like this new work from artist James Hance. He has taken Princess Leia complete with her giant hair buns and put her in a picture with Indiana Jones.

It is cool to see the wrong character put with his love interest from the Star Wars movies. The art is said to be a work in progress, but it already looks complete to me. In fact, it looks realistic enough to have been some sort of mistake at a movie poster printing factory.

Hance is the same guy who melded Adventure Time with Doctor Who in the past.

[Facebook via Nerd Approved]

Have you ever wondered how many video games there have been? And if you have, have you wanted to view a list of them? It would probably take several days to read. Well, Pastebin user Data_Baser is making a list – and hopefully checking it twice – to finally find an answer.

Once he finishes compiling this impossibly huge list, we will know exactly how many video games have been made throughout history. He’s been working with some folks over on 4chan to create the list and he will include console, arcade, PC, mobile and browser-based games.

It is already at 43,000 entries and climbing. It will be interesting to see how this all ends. The list, so far, can be found below, or over on Pastebin.

[via Reddit and Kotaku via Nerd Approved]

Watching a master at work is a great way to acquire motor skills. But it’s not that easy to keep an eye on someone else while looking at your own movements to see if you’re doing it right. A proof of concept system called Ghostman helps you do both simultaneously, thanks to augmented reality glasses.

Ghostman was designed by researchers from the University of Tasmania and the University of Washington, led by Dr. Winyu Chinthammit. Using two pairs of Vuzix Wrap 920AR glasses, Ghostman overlays a teacher’s hand over the student’s own vision. The student can then see the demonstration from his teacher’s point of view while his own hand is also in full view.

In their limited tests, Dr. Chinthammit and his colleagues found out that teaching a new motor skill through Ghostman is as effective as going about it with an instructor sitting by your side. This means it could one day be possible for instructors to effectively teach motor skills through a remote session. Although I think it would also be beneficial if the teacher could see from his student’s perspective as well to help him provide feedback.

Come on doc, we all know a pottery lesson would’ve been more appropriate. Head to Hindawi to read the researchers’ paper on Ghostman.

All images by Dr. Chinthammit et al.

[via New Scientist via PSFK]