Hasta La Gadget!

Man, the TSA can suck. Who knew that going from point A to point B would ever become such a nightmare. Yeah, this isn’t the same country that many of us grew up in. Our rights mean very little these days it seems. And when they harass the likes of Chewbacca, they have finally gone too far.

For one thing a Wookiee can rip your arms out of it’s socket. For another, when you harass 69-year-old Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca, you will piss off a whole planetful of geeks. The man was just trying to get his large lightsaber cane and be on his way while traveling after attending Denver Comic Con.

Apparently having the incident tweeted encouraged them to release the cane. Wise move TSA. Now go grope Jar-Jar. BTW, how awesome is it that he has a lightsaber cane?

[via Neatorama]

European automobile maker Fiat has teamed up with appliance company Smeg to create some awesome retro refrigerators out of old cars. They’re basically finding classic Fiat 500s, cutting off the front ends, gutting the insides, and turning them into the coolest fridges ever.

It’s sad that all these cars are being chopped up, but the resulting refrigerators look pretty darn cute, so it is hard to be too mad at them. The instrument panel is still inside, though it’s not exactly where you’d expect to find it. You can use it to adjust the temperature.

The “Smeg 500s” are coming soon and will be available in white, red and green. We don’t have any word on pricing, but I’m sure they won’t be cheap. Who wants one?

[via Hypebeast via Gizmodo via Dvice]

Now this is a real low-rider. If you have ever wished you could drive your own street legal bumper car down the road, your dreams could come true. This beauty that you see here is for sale.

Just keep in mind that while it is legal to drive this on the road, it is not legal to ram the other cars. This 1984 Dodge Colt does a great impression of a bumper car. It’s on eBay right now for $1,980(USD) with the reserve not yet met. What are you waiting for?

It doesn’t appear that it would function as a bumper car, but hey, you can’t have it all.

[via Jalopnik]

Have you ever accidentally formed a shape or a letter while playing Tetris? Felt swell did you? As always, the Internet is here to remind you that other people are much more awesome than your are. First up is Michael Birken, who wrote a software algorithm that can draw a portrait by playing a modified version of Tetris.

As I mentioned above, Birken’s Tetris Printer algorithm needs to use a custom variant of Tetris. The game field is bigger and the algorithm also controls the sequence of pieces. But it’s still very remarkable because it actually plays by the rule of the game, i.e. if it forms a horizontal line, that line is wiped out and so on. That means it has to go through ridiculously tedious methods to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

For instance, all tetrominoes are made of four blocks. So what if it only needs to “draw” one block? Birken states, “To generate an individual square, the algorithm assembles a structure consisting of a rectangular region fully supported by a single square protruding from the bottom. When the rectangular region is completed, its rows are cleared, leaving behind the protruding square.”

You can head to Birken’s website for his full explanation and the source code of Tetris Printer. Or just play the video below and enjoy the result:

Surely such precise manipulations can only be done by machines and their cold logic. WRONG. YouTuber John Schuepbach aka Shuey187 is the human equivalent of the Tetris Printer. As in, he doesn’t know which pieces will come out. He just plays and plays and plays, taking each little opportunity the game gives him so he can impose his will on the game’s relentless chaos. In fact, he’s been doing this way before Birken ever came up with his algorithm. Here he is painstakingly drawing Mario:

That took him 90 minutes and he wasn’t even able to complete Mario’s hat. But holy crap. What’s next? Printing in a Tetris game in a Minecraft game in an emulator in Garry’s Mod?

[via BuzzFeed, The Daily Dot & Joystiq]

In the age of mobile devices and Google Maps, will street signs soon become obsolete? Not if they turn into Points. Points is an electronic directional sign that does more than just point to nearby landmarks. It can act as a weatherman, a news ticker, a Twitter feed and more.

Points was invented by Breakfast NY, the same organization behind the Instagram-printing machine. As you’ll see in the video below, Points has a control panel near its base. The panel has buttons that people can use to select what type of information they want to see. Points updates not just its directional arms but also the choices on the control panel. For instance, the choices in the morning will differ from the selections at night to reflect our habits.

Right now Breakfast NY is offering Points units for rent at events. They’re still working on a weatherproof version that can be sold for permanent installation. Head to Breakfast NY’s website to inquire about renting the sign, learn more about what makes Points work and even interact with a Points sign using Twitter.

I think Points is a very cool product, but I think an augmented reality sign would be more useful and practical. You can’t really expect people to form a line behind Points and wait for others to finish faffing about and gawking at the robot sign so they can use the control panel and find out where the nearest restroom is. Or. They might be prompted to do something drastic like, I don’t know, ask another human being for directions. Now imagine if you had a Points app on your Google contact lens or Apple holo-watch. You say Okay Glass Siri simply think of your question, and your device overlays the answer over the sign or over any surface for that matter.

But all this shallow brainstorming and ranting on my part only emphasizes what impresses me most about what Breakfast NY has done: Points looks like it was stolen from a street in the Tron system, but it’s here and it works.