If you’ve never tried using a single continuous lines to do drawings, give it a try and you’ll see how hard it is to counter the instinct to pull up your pen. Sam never lifted his pen off the paper while creating these. His drawings include an AT-AT, X-Wing, the Millennium Falcon, C3-P0, and R2-D2.

Sam drew these for his independent final project on technology. He’s had them put onto postcards which will be available for purchase soon. I wouldn’t mind having these on some t-shirts as well.

[via Geek Tyrant]

The guys over at Make: put together this hack where you crack open the cartridge from your inkhet printer and replace they yellow ink with lemon juice. Print anything you want in yellow, and the page looks blank. But apply some iodine or heat the page with an iron, and your secret message will be revealed. Check out the overly complex and sloppy process in the video below:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

It’s a huge pain in the ass, and looks really messy, but the results are kind of cool. Of course, you could do the same with just some lemon juice and a paintbrush or Q-Tip, but what fun would that be. This is way more geeky.

You can grab the full instructions from Make: here [PDF file].

Artist Faith Pearson took a bunch of empty cartridges and turned them into fun miniature versions of movie scenes and models.

I think the Starship Enterprise is the best one, because the entire thing is made up out of cartridges. For all the others, the carts really just serve as scenes for the toy figures to hang out in. Still, one with the theater and all the action heroes is pretty cool, and certainly a much better use for leftover ink cartridges than throwing them in the trash.

[via BuzzFeed via TechEBlog]

The Color Picker pen works just like the eyedropper tool in Photoshop. Use the rear end of the pen to scan the color of the objects around you, and then pen imitates the color by mixing red, green and blue ink, thus negating the need for an arsenal of crayons.

Or will it? A bunch of commenters at designboom have pointed out that the CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black; ‘K’ is used for black because blue already took ‘B’) color system is better suited for print compared to RGB, which is more useful for digital media. Back to the drawing board I guess.

Another designboom commenter, joolz, linked to a similar concept has already been developed by a bunch of MIT students back in 2004. It’s called the I/O Brush, and like the Color Picker pen it scans surrounding objects for color, but it can also scan for texture and even movement. However, the comically large brush is more complicated because it requires a digital canvas i.e. a touch screen, meaning it doesn’t produce real print.

[via Neatorama]

Each pen has a built-in ultraviolet LED light, you can read messages that are invisible to the naked eye. It’s perfect for writing down personal information like your PIN number or passwords – assuming of course that nobody else has a black light lying around, and you can actually remember where the heck you wrote your note. Keep in mind that while the ink is “invisible”, it’s also permanent, so don’t be writing nasty bathroom stall limericks on the walls of your house unless you plan on living with them in perpetuity.

If you want to exchange secret notes with a friend, buy a couple and play a game to see if you can find all the hidden messages you leave for each other. Of course, running around with a UV light in hand, you might come across other evidence of foul play you didn’t intend to. Don’t mind that blood spatter – it’s nothing.

The Invisible Ink Spy Pen is available over at Perpetual Kid for $9.99 (USD).

Perhaps inspired by the oh-so-awesome Ms. Pac-Man bathroom, this piece entitled Perpetual Pac-Man would look great in any game room. Or if you’re a serious retro gaming geek – hanging in your bedroom. Of course, it might freak me out to see Blinky staring back at me with his googley eyes in the middle of the night; “Don’t eat me, man. Eat the cherries! Eat the cherries!”

Created by Donna over ArcadeArt, Perpetual Pac-Man measures in at 20″ (w) x 8″ (h) and is handcrafted from acrylics and urban ink on canvas, then hundreds of individual colorful tiles made by the artist herself.

It’s just one of many fun old school arcade-inspired pieces over in ArcadeArt’s Etsy shop. Be sure to swing by and check it out.

Mark James’ Cardboy CMYK Cartridge critters comes in the four familiar printer ink colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

The 4-inch tall figures are available individually for £5.95 (appx. $12 USD) each, or as a complete set for £19.95 (appx. $41 USD).

Unlike regular printer ink cartridges, you won’t have to replace these guys every twenty pages.

[via Pocket-lint]

Instead of ink or toner, Zink’s compact printers will use a special paper, embedded with color dye crystals that are activated when heat is applied. Thanks to the simplicity of their design, Zink hopes to embed their printers directly into digital cameras, cell phones and media players in the future.

UPDATE: I’ve posted a video below (via Gizmodo) which shows a Zink printer in action…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The portable printer features Bluetooth connectivity and produces 2×3 waterproof prints in about a minute each. Word on the street is that the printer will cost about $99, with the special paper running about 20 cents per print.

[via Ministry of Tech]

The D-Note can record from A5 (148mm