The graphics on the side and front of the tiny cabinet are reminiscent of the ones on Space Invaders, and it’s got a little joystick and fire button for playing its rudimentary Invaders knock-off (called Earth Defenders) on its LCD screen. Each time you drop a coin in the bank (yes it can even be a penny) you’ll get 2 minutes of gameplay. As time ticks down, you’ll get a warning when you only have 30 seconds left so you can put another coin in the bank.

Sure, it’s not as cool looking as that official Space Invaders piggy bank from a few years back, but at $19.95 (USD), it’s also way cheaper than that one. You can grab the Arcade Piggy Bank over at Kleargear.

A bottle of the limited-edition whisky will cost you $245(USD) if you have a void in your liquor cabinet that needs to be filled with a the nectar of the Gods.

[via GeekAlerts via Thats Nerdalicious]

The Planet Hoth Wampa Cake was created by Jill from Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons to celebrate her son’s 6th birthday. I sure hope that he knows what a wampa is at his age, so he can fully appreciate its awesomeness. The cake perfectly captures the Wampa’s ice cave, replacing the frozen bits with cookie frosting and white chocolate. The walls of the lair are made primarily from pretzel rods and graham crackers, with a cake forming the floor. Yum, I like sweet and salty together.

While Luke, his lightsaber and the wampa are just off-the-shelf action figures, it still looks great – though I would have liked to chomp on a bit of wampa arm if given the opportunity.

[via Geeks are Sexy]

Mace wowed crowds at the Maker Faire with his dope glasses, sick rhymes and tycoon showers. Perhaps the last two were exaggerated but these glasses really are cool. The 20 x 6 matrix of LEDs are “driven by SPI from an integrated Arduino-compatible” board mounted on the right temple and powered by a Lithium-polymer battery mounted on the left temple. Charging and code downloading are done via USB. Swag is attained by wearing the glasses.

You can see more pictures of the shades on Mace’s Lytro profile. Mace said he’s planning to sell a kit of the glasses on his website once he’s polished the device; he seems to be having trouble with the hinges. He also said that if he can’t find a low cost solution he might turn to Kickstarter. It would be funny if Mr. West backed and filled up the fundraiser on his own.

[via Hack A Day & Reddit via MAKE]

You have the choice between the Hulk’s fist, Captain America’s shield, Iron Man’s helmet and Thor’s hammer. Personally, the Iron Man USB flash drive (which looks very familiar) looks the most appealing, but no one is stopping you from choosing the Hulk if you prefer a green fist sticking out of your computer. They also just announced a War Machine USB drive, which also looks pretty sweet.

Each of these USB flash drives has 8GB of storage, and they sell for $30 each. 4GB versions are also available for $20. They’re currently listed on Yahoo and eBay, but they’ll probably be available through more retailers soon.

[via HiConsumption]

Here Commander Steve, Play Video Back:

Which did you choose? The 240p, 360p, 480p or 720p version? Were you satisfied with the diversity of choices or enraged at the fact that you got the exact same video regardless of your choice? Should we sue Avemagnadude and YouTube for making the video that way?

[via Kotaku]

At least, that’s what the folks from Carmichael Collective are doing in Minneapolis. The tags they’ve placed beside objects you can pretty much find in every other lawn are slightly larger than the ones you’ll see beside plants in pots, but they pretty much contain the same elements: the common name of the object, its “scientific” name, care instructions, and the object’s placement.

As you can see, there’s one for hydrants, one for mailboxes, as well as No Parking and STOP signs. Be sure to check out the full collection over at the Carmichael Collective.

[via Laughing Squid via Neatorama]

And there’s no end in sight to volume of content being produced. Over the last year, video uploads to YouTube have grown 50%. According to the streaming video site, approximately 72 hours of video is uploaded every minute compared to 48 hours of video uploaded each minute just one year ago. To put things in perspective, back in 2007, only six hours of video was uploaded to the site each minute. I wonder how much it costs Google to run YouTube, streaming that much video has to have massive bandwidth costs.

[via Gigaom]

The game comes from artist Lee Moyer, designer Keith Baker, and sculptor Paul Komoda. The playing pieces look fantastic, Paul. They should since this game has been a work-in-progress for nearly 20 years. Now it is finally going to get real because their Kickstarter campaign was a success. (Though you still have about 2 weeks to get in on the action.)

This looks much better than all of those other lame Monopoly clones. Hopefully it will have been worth the wait. Supposedly it plays like a combination of Arkham Horror, with play elements of Munchkin thrown in.

[via io9 via Nerd Approved]

The tower reminds me more than a bit of the Washington Monument. The tower is larger at the base in the tip and uses supporting guide wires along the way to keep it from toppling over onto the crowds. The project used over 500,000 LEGO bricks when all was said and done.

Among the builders were 4000 local kids conscribed into LEGO slave labor. By that, I mean the children won a contest and were allowed to help build the massive tower. Don’t expect to see LEGO release this tower as an off-the-shelf kit any time soon.

[via Huffingtonpost]

This is one of the first Ukiyo pieces that Jed created, and it depicts our favorite wore-green-every-day-until-he-was-seventeen hero: Link. I particularly like how the Master Sword was redone – still recognizable, but not the same. Overall, a good mashup of ancient Japan and the Legend of Zelda in this wooden print.

I like the Samus ukiyo print more than the Link one simply because there’s an explosion and more women. The dragon was definitely a smart way to pull off the fact that Samus shoots electric balls of death all of the time. To see all of the prints, go to the newly-created Ukiyo-Nintendo Facebook page.

Above is the newly released ukiyo sketch of Mario Kart, which is just a draft that was just posted on the Facebook page – he’ll add color, among other things. I wanted to share it though, because the Koopa and the squid were too good not to put into the post. Creepy turtles!

If these prints are right up your alley, then check out the Zelda Fireplace Art and the Bathroom Filled With Nintendo Art!

[via Geekologie]

Jack Kieffer owns Cool Gizmo Toys, a blog that tailors to geeks

These ear plugs were made by deviantART member Marcus Hermansson. For those of you interested, unfortunately he’s not interested in selling them. Maybe you can one-up him and plug actual parts from consoles into your lobes. +1 if you can fit an entire console in there.

Head to Hermannson’s gallery at deviantART for high resolution images, including a picture of his LED plugs, which lets him see in the dark as long as he swings his head from side-to-side.

[via Sprite Stitch]

What you’re looking at here is the Bioshock Mr. Potato Head – called Potato Daddy, or as I like to call him Mr. Bubbles Head.

This crazy creation is the work of one Ginger Troll, and is the perfect mashup between Bioshock’s Big Daddy and Mr. Potato Head.

I love how he still has the googley eyeballs from Mr. Potato Head, but wields that nasty killer drill. From the looks of things he’s even a little bigger than this Bouncer, so maybe he could take him on in a fight. Er, maybe not.

Check out more pics of Mr. Bubbles Head over on Ginger Troll’s Flickr stream.

[via Kotaku via Nerd Approved]

The Tesla Gun is the creation of mad scientist Rob Flickenger, who based it on a weapon used by none other than Nikola Tesla in the graphical novel The Five Fists of Science. You can see the fictional gun on page 14 of this pdf file. Flickenger admits that the gun that Tesla wields in the novel is far more advanced than what he made, but his gun has two advantages: it is battery-powered, and more importantly it exists.

So how does it work? “You pull the trigger, and lightning comes out the front.” It’s that simple.

Actually it’s not that simple. Flickenger went to great lengths to create the gun, including making an aluminum housing molded from a Nerf gun, a porcelain high voltage switch and a power supply that steps up the voltage from a drill battery from 18V to 20,000V. There’s more to it than that, but I think most of you just want to see it in action. Here you go.

Like most Tesla coils, Flickenger built his gun for entertainment and science, not as a weapon or a mere toy. If you’re as mad, talented and responsible as Flickenger, you can try building your own Tesla Gun using the information that he posted on his website.

[via I Heart Chaos]

The level is appropriately called Whimsyshire. It can only be reached by playing a game-long Easter Egg hunt of sorts. You’ll have to collect items and a plan as you play the game. Here’s footage of Sanctuary’s dreamland:

If you want to join in on the fun, BattleNet forum member Zerofire will tell you how to get to Whimsyshire. If only there was a secret offline single player level.

[via Destructoid]

As a matter of fact, we mentioned back in March that LEGO was giving away a free limited-edition minifig Avengers movie poster to 2 million people. LEGO isn’t clear on how many of the free Hulk minifigs it will be giving away though. It does say “limited-edition,” but that could mean 2000 or 2 million for all we know.

The Hulk minifig is automatically added to your cart if you purchase $50 worth of merchandise from LEGO online or in-store while supplies last.

The numbers refer to three of the most common errors that players encounter while trying to play the game. Personally I’ve only managed to play about 15 minutes of the game in two days, not that I incessantly tried logging in for the past 48 hours. To console myself I’m just imagining that no one at Blizzard talks to this guy anymore. They just give him cold stares whenever he’s around.

To the people who say we knew what we were in for: really? Instead of thinking that gamers should have expected this, I say Blizzard should have expected this. They did beta tests. They have experience with server load with World of Warcraft. They have a tally of pre-orders to work with. They have loads of money. How financially disastrous could it have been for them if they over prepared? “Jeez, we set up too many servers, now more people will be able to play. Can’t have that.”

I don’t care what reasons Blizzard has for not including an offline single player mode in Diablo III – DRM, preventing hacking and cheating, more profit from the Auction House – none of those “good” intentions matter if your users can’t play, which, correct me if I’m wrong, is kind of the point of a videogame.

[via Reddit]

It’s a pretty simple concept, what with the vents and zippers and all. But it turns out to be a pretty good combination, because aside from providing your with cushy bedding, it lets you stay cool by unzipping the vents, exposing only the parts of your body you want.

When it’s chilly out, you’d obviously want to keep it all zipped up. But you’ll appreciate having all the vents when you’re out camping during those warm summer nights.

The Zipper Vents Sleeping Bag can be purchased online from Hammacher Schlemmer for $119.95(USD).

[via Gadgets Matrix]

Since the helmet flips up you can rest your head on either Iron Man or Tony Stark. It all depends who you want to cuddle with I guess.

[via Albotas]

The cranial confectionery was the brainchild of 3D tech company Inition. I’ve already outlined the steps above, but in case you need something that makes more sense, watch the video below:

They would’ve skipped a couple of steps if they just used this 3D printer instead, although I guess it would take way longer. Inition also put up an Instructable for those interested in eating chocolate brain, including an MRI file containing a scan of Millns’ brain. I can’t decide which is weirder: eating a chocolate brain based on another person’s brain or one that’s based on your own brain. Or that Chocolate Rain song.

[via Ubergizmo]