i love me some lego

what's better than a life-sized lego replica of han solo encased in carbonite? a slightly less than life-sized lego replica of han solo encased in carbonite... that way you can be taller than that particular ladies man...

not that that would really help you once your new lady-friend has seen your giant lego creation...


y'know what, all kidding aside (maybe he just didn't have enough legos to make han bigger - i know lego shortages were a big problem for me when i played with lego), it looks like this guy is a really good lego artist and i'm sure i'll be spending some more time on his site looking at his creations...

[via MAKE: Blog]

[shiver]

umm, yeah... so apparently some (mad?) scientists have stuck electrodes into rat's brains for the purposes of controlling them remotely... tell me that doesn't sound wrong to you... hey, i know, let's jab electrodes into people's brains to make them more useful members of society... and we'll call them borg, of course...

what's that? they'd never do that to humans? oh well then everything's ok, because legions of cybernetic rats being controlled by someone isn't nearly as bad legions of cybernetic humans being controlled by someone... and it's not nearly as big a deal to treat animals that way as it is to treat humans that way...

[via we make money not art]

what's in a name?

what's in a name? well not a lot of thought, apparently, because this WEEE Man sculpture isn't exactly all that 'wee'... you'd think folks in great britain would be aware of terms like "wee people"...

or maybe they are and this is in the same vein as naming a giant 'tiny'... in which case maybe they should have called it 'weee beauty', cause that thing kinda gives me the creeps...


[via carbongeek]

have you ever wanted to live in a collapsable home?

well, i can't say that i have... truth be told, i like to have a lot of empty space, but if i had to live in a collapsable home then Quarkhome by Rouven Haas seems like a pretty cool way to go...

[via Treehugger]

my god - it's full of stars

thank you, thank you, thank you whoever it was that invented this... i was not impressed a few years back when they closed the planetarium in toronto, but now you can have a planetarium in your own home - how cool is that?

The Homestar lights up the night, um, ceiling - Engadget - www.engadget.com /

sumo tubes?

wondering how you can look completely ridiculous while being dragged behind a speed boat? well wonder no more because someone has figured it out for you... the SportsStuff Sumo Tube (with video goodness) lets you bounce into things without a care in the world when you're walking around on land, and when you're in the water being dragged by a speed boat you're turned into a human bullet with your head conveniently exposed... and did i mention you look ridiculous?


[via BoingBoing]

the concensus of parts wants YOU!

this page has 2 languages on it... russian and geek... now, i can't read a word of russian but the geek pictures speak volumes... these folks have become very adept at turning pdas and pocket pcs into full fledged laptops - take a look here...


[via Engadget]

property is not theft

more deep thoughts...

a rather contentious phrase i've heard on more than one occasion is "all property is theft"... the idea comes from an essay by Joseph Proudhon called "What Is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government" (which you can read about here) and is often linked to anarchism...

first lets get past the obvious - without ownership a thing can't be stolen... if i claim a thing as my own when it previously belonged to no one, i did not steal it... the only way for it to be theft is if it already belonged to someone else...

the basic premise seems to be that claiming something as property takes it out of the sphere of public access and therefore robs the community at large and causes people to suffer... but this ignores the fact that many things cannot be used by many people at once so the very act of using something takes it out of the sphere of public access (at least temporarily) and causes others who need or want to use it to suffer... we cannot reasonably expect to stamp out suffering by avoiding this because it cannot be avoided in a world where resources are finite...

so obviously property isn't really the problem... at best the problem is excess of property, people taking more than they need or can reasonably use... but even if they didn't there would still be suffering (the thing Proudhon credits with inspiring him to undertake his investigation and come to the conclusion that he did) because we can't get everything we want, it's just not feasible or reasonable...

on a side note, the clever reader will realize that this line of reasoning is actually socialist, not anarchist... questions of property or community are not within the purview of anarchism, rather they are more closely aligned with socialism... anarchism's concern is freedom from the rule of law and government... i get really annoyed when seemingly well read anarchists fail to recognize that the anarchistic societal models they've read about are (necessarily) composed of multiple ideological concepts... i guess that's what happens when you let other people do your thinking for you...

intellectual property reform

i've been having some deep thoughts lately (deep like a saucer, really) and i just have to get them down before i asplode...

my country (canada, the great white north, where our highest paid comedians sit in parliment) wants to follow the united states lead and offer legal protection to TPM/DRM technology... let's examine what this means, shall we?

the way Digital Rights Management is enforced is through a Technical Protection Measure... it's some bit of technology used to stop you from doing something with the media that the content owners don't want you to do... legal protection for TPMs basically means that it's illegal to bypass the TPM to get at the media and use it in a way that the owners don't like...

what that effectively means is that our copywrite laws become pointless because the government will have given the content industry carte blanche to make policy regarding the copying of media as strict as they like... the TPMs enforce the content industry's policy and the government enforces protection against bypassing the TPMs...

do you think content industry will make balanced and fair copying policies? do you think they'll protect the consumer's rights? do you think the defacto copyright that only releasing content in Technically Protected form represents will ever be allowed to expire? hello perpetual copyright, goodbye public domain...

legal protection of TPMs constitutes outsourcing of policy creation to a relatively small group with a vested interest who are not answerable to public... a government that allows this to happen is either corrupt or incompetent or both...

macguyver ain't got nothing on this guy

y'know, we as humans have been able to claim mastery over fire for quite some time now, but this is a new one on me... how to create fire with a coke can and a chocolate bar...

it's actually pretty simple but i leave it to the originator to explain how...

[via MAKE: Blog]

beware of terrorist penguins

look out for penguins, you never know what kind of concealed weapons they might be carrying... good thing airport security know to take precautions....

ok, so i was being facetious... too bad the people in chage of airport security at this airport were being serious - what a bunch of morons... they actually made penguins walk through the metal detector... TheDenverChannel.com - Slideshow



[via BoingBoing]

now this is cool

3M Canada: Scotch(R) Transparent Duct Tape

yes, you read that right, transparent duct tape... 3M took a great product and made it better... i know someone who'll be wrapping next year's christmas gifts with this stuff...

[via Fark]

well, since i'm going to hell anyways

who doesn't love Pope on a rope? i have fun just saying the words... pope on a rope, pope on a rope, pope on a rope...



but you know, looking at it, i could really see something similar in chocolate... the same shape, but a nice chocolatey brown... couldn't you just bite the head right off?

[via All Things Christie]

when tribbles and trackballs collide

the latest thing out of hungary (hungary? ok, cool) is this furry trackball that looks like something out of star trek the original series... i guess this would make your computer seem softer and cuddlier, but be careful you don't grab the cat accidentally while playing quake



[vial Engadget]

dude, where's my lettuce?

definitely the next technological innovation to hit grow labs will be Red LED Hydroponics... 'why' you ask? well, because not only do things apparently grow better under the red LED lights than they do under the sun or florescent lighting, but LED's use a lot less energy so your electricity bill won't necessarily give you away...


[via MAKE: Blog]

ebay is stranger than fiction

of all the weird things i've heard about on ebay, a phallic lemon takes the cake... at least until next week...


[via All Things Christie]

file this under 'too much free time'

i've been thinking recently that i wouldn't mind having one of those leatherman multi-tools... one thing i wouldn't do, in spite of my tendancy to mod things (to make them uniquely my own, of course), is create The Leatherman Spoon Attachment... i have a camping cutlery set that works quite well, i don't need to add cutlery to an all-in-one tool...

[via MAKE: Blog]

oh wow!

here's a cool applet to digitally age an image of yourself to see what you would look like in 10, 20, 30, or 40 years... and not just your own images, you can use anyone's images... you could use pictures you download off the net...

so far from my experimentation, guys stand up to the rigors of time a lot better than girls... try it yourself and see....

[via All Things Christie]

you have 0 seconds to comply

this is not the softer, kinder, gentler side of japanese robots... not by a long shot... unfortunately i'm missing the cultural reference that is the Votom... is there a tv show i missed?


[via Engadget]

go fly a spy-kite

so there's this Itsy-Bitsy Drone with cameras on the front and back, that's only 13 inches wide and only 7 ounces...


y'know, i had an idea for a small autonomous vehicle like this... only mine had rechargable batteries and solar panels... and no cameras... and a much different goal because i have no desire to fly tiny little spyplanes around... far better, i think, to use the ozone emissions from typical electric motors to seed the ozone layer... but maybe that's just me...

[via Gizmodo]

this is such a good idea

talking post-it notes... that's basically what these are, and it soundes like a simple idea, but it's golden... especially these days when you consider how many people have completely illegible writing (blame it on computers and other technologies that we use instead of writing and thus reduce the practice we get with the old pen&paper) or all the people who (for whatever reason) can't read very well...

and then of course there are those of us who are just too lazy... VoiSec -talking notes made easy is an idea whose time has come

[via we make money not art]

neener neener neener

hey hollywood, this sentiment is for you!


and you can even get it on a t-shirt... how cool is that?

[via BoingBoing]

a farmer made this?

this thing kinda reminds me of that computer game, mechwarrior... it's like someone made a locust with mini-guns on the sides...

now we just have to find the rest of the cresent hawks...

[via Gizmodo]

much better than that FemDefence thingie

this purse-brass-knuckles-hybrid is a much better defensive product than that FemDefence thing... this at least requires conscious effort to maime someone... no accidents where mister pointy meets mister not-so-pointy-anymore...

[via BoingBoing]

product delivery over the internet

so, i was reading this story over on Techdirt about using inkjet printers to spray live human cells on a wound to help regenerate tissue and i had a convergence moment...

the classical notion of delivering real world products (as in things you can hold in your hands) over the internet has always been of the matter transporter variety, where someday in the distant future when we finally figure out how to transport matter like they do on star trek we'll be able to order our products on the internet and have them beamed to some peripheral attached to our computer...

but why wait for matter transport technology? if we can print human skin and circuit boards and such, it seems to me that with the appropriate component slurries we should be able to print up a variety of hard products right now... we'd just need to download the printer codes necessary for the printer to know how to print them...

ok, now i'm giving this idea to the world so someone can go out and actually do this... it would be so cool...

owwie!

ladies, please, if you're going to use this kind of protection, please don't put it in and forget about it! your boyfriends would definitely not be happy campers...

FemDefence


[via Gizmodo]

Welcome to The World

Welcome to The World, please make yourselves at home during our first annual Evil Genius Convention.



And please keep your atomic monsters under control while you're here.

[via BoingBoing]

we can rebuild him, we have the technology

hmmm, power assisted ambulation... be the first cybernetic crime fighting unit on your block, without the messy "you have 20 seconds to comply" problem...

HAL 3 bionic suit

this actually reminds me of the rig that they 'used' in that tv show "Dark Angel", except this one is knobbier and more obtrusive... i think the only person who'd be able to fit their pants on overtop of one of these would be Ronald McDonald... or maybe some of those old school rappers whose names always started with "MC"...

i am the centre of the universe

so i code at the speed of 3 average programmers*, do i? eeeenteresting...

[*] or so i hear... it's amazing the things you can take away from a dev meeting...

uuuuhhh... i don't need any help, thanks...

yup, it's a urinal... with arms... and hands... and fingers... fingers meant to grasp something... and it's called a "Shakeutron"?...

what could possibly go wrong?...

well lots of things, i'm sure, and i definitely wouldn't want to be in it's firm mechanical grip when it does... besides which, how does a robotic urinal wash it's hands thoroughly with soap and water and then dry them after each use?

robo-whatsit?

they say $10 dollar robotic floor cleaner, i say $10 cat toy that cleans floors...

RoboMaid

if only we didn't have wall to wall carpeting in just about every room in the house, this would be perfect for peeler...

monitor arch

now this is a pretty impressive waste of time



but for full effect you should check Gizmodo's caption for it.

lego-y goodness

why do i repost these things i find elsewhere? why contribute to repetition?

well, because somethings really deserve to be repeated so that as wide an audience as possible can see them... like this lego grand theft auto video i found courtesy of The Raw Feed