russia on technabob...

Ever wonder what classic arcade games might have looked like in an alternate dimension? From the looks of it, the arcades of the Cold War era Soviet Union were definitely not what you’d find anywhere else on the planet. Isolated from western gaming, the nation developed their own unique games to keep minds occupied back in the 1970s and 1980s.…

If you’re looking to make a real statement at your next dinner party, you might want to set the centerpiece of your table with these candles instead of the boring old beeswax jobs you picked up at Pier One.

The guys at Russian design shop Mystake have created these candles that look just like bombs and dynamite sticks. They’re called…

Here’s a great way to dress up your office or apartment with some 80s retro-geek style.

Designed by Daniil Dadiomov for Russia’s Art Lebedev Studio, these Digitus address numbers get their chunky, funky shapes from the classic bitmap computer fonts of days gone bye.

I’m pretty sure this was the same font that my old Atari 800 used when I…

Russian graphic designer iunewind cooked up this cool concept for a robot. Modeled after a mosquito, iunewind calls it Night Watch. His work is so detailed, I can almost believe that it’s a shot of an actual invention. There is one problem though: iunewind’s English isn’t that good, so I’m not sure as to what the purpose of his robot…

Can a city full of people be wrong? The residents of Chita in Siberia (population 300,000) claim that at around 6pm last February 15 they saw a giant UFO cross their city at a speed of about 25.2 kph (15.66 mph) and then “disappear over the horizon.” Michael Cohen of all news web says that people in the town center…

The word Matryoshka isn’t exactly a part of the English vernacular, but once you realize that it’s really just the Russian name for those little nesting dolls your grandmother has sitting on her mantle, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

This concept for a set of speakers the designer calls “Audiomatryoshka” is definitely bold, if not a little over-the-top…

Tens of thousands of years from now when robots and ninjas rule the earth, they will find all sorts of man-made stuff which will surely baffle them, such as toilets. And poo. Maybe archeologist ninjas and robo-historians will be scratching their heads when they find this strange collection of shaped stones in Ekaterinburg, Russia.

Upon closer inspection, the robo-historians will…

When I first spotted this dot-matrix numbers on this clock I thought it was a modern-day blue LED display. But lurking beneath the surface of this timepiece is something far more interesting.

What we actually have here is a very rare Russian relic from the early 1980s. The Elektronika-7 (Электроника-7) clock was built using vacuum tubes, not LEDs to drive…

These candy apple red cylinders started out life innocently enough as a couple of fire extinguishers. But after they ran out of foam, they got a second life as a pair of speakers.

While it may seem like a simple idea, Russian modder Strannik put a tremendous amount of effort into the construction of these tower speakers, which required precision…

How’d you like a mouse like this connected to your PC? Looking like a mix between an electric shaver and some sort of mini tank, this Steampunk pointer definitely stands out from the pack (or more accurately in the case of mice, it’s actually known as a “mischief” – go figure).

The Russian-built contraption got its start as a basic…

What better way to keep your “on the rocks” cocktails chilled but with some whimsical Tetris block ice cubes?

Given the heritage of Tetris, it’s only appropriate that these Icetris ice cube trays would come from Dima Komissarov of Russian design shop Mystake. With enough frozen blocks, you should be able to play a complete game in the confines of…

Before all you budding nuclear physicists attempt to correct me, I know this isn’t truly a Geiger Counter. It’s actually one of those Cold-War era Ion Chamber radiation detectors. But that’s not what most of us think, so I’ll stick with the more familiar Geiger name. Regardless, this computer casemod won’t actually detect radioactivity, but the nuke gauge will kick…

If you’re unfamiliar with the Russian craft of Matryoshka, they’re those little stacking wooden dolls that fit inside one-another, gradually getting smaller and smaller. Designer Art Lebedev has taken these traditional dolls and put a geeky spin on them, adding data storage measurements to each one.

So the big mama is a Petabyte, inside her is a Terabyte, followed by…

If I saw this brightly glowing motorcycle coming down the street, I’d definitely have to stop and stare.

Alas, it’ll never get out of the starting gate. This heavily modded, liquid-cooled PC is strictly for use while parked (unless you want to strap a monitor to your lap while riding, and connect a really long extension cord). While it may…

Here’s a cool hack which uses an old oscilloscope to play an accurate game of the arcade classic, Tetris.

Engineer Lars Pontoppidan created Scopetris using an AtMega32 micro-controller to drive the beam of an oscilloscope to mimic the game play of the classic Soviet puzzle game.

Lars had to create custom circuitry and programmed the beam to produce a similar…