Swedish artist Love Hulten built the Sputnik 0667 as a labor of love, giving it a retro 20th century feel inspired by old wooden “hi-fi” radios. Actually the more I look at it, it feels like the love-child of an old radio and a Commodore PET computer, with those sharp angular lines and its trapezoidal display housing. The wooden keyboard and mouse surface folds up when not in use, and the back of the system even has that old-school perfboard ventilation found on older electronics.

Hulten refers to the Sputnik 0667 as a “concept computer”, but from the looks of the screen there, there is a complete PC lurking somewhere inside there. As a matter of fact, under the hood is a Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 Mini-ITX mobo, an Intel Core i3 550 3.2GHz CPU, a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 GPU, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB WD hard drive. Here’s a screen of it running what surely looks like a Windows XP screensaver. Retro, indeed!

Perhaps my favorite thing about the Sputnik 0667 is the accompanying retro advertising campaign that Love took the time to create, echoing the style of the computer perfectly. If this were an actual system you could have purchased, this is exactly what the ads would have looked like:

Gotta love that typeface and the old game of Asteroids on screen. Sure, Asteroids wasn’t around during the days of Sputnik, but that’s okay. The vector graphics are a perfect fit anyhow. And the Pièce de résistance…

“Bye baby, I’m going space hunting!” And that goldfish bowl helmet? Priceless. Love, kudos on a brilliant job on the mod and it’s accoutrements. More details about this excellent mod can be found over at Sweclockers (in Swedish, of course), with the build log here.

[via Geeky Gadgets]

Like a regular theremin, the Matryomin creates sounds when you adjust your hand position on the outside of it. When used properly, it can crank out tones that make this rendition of Love Me Tender sound like Elvis’ cat in heat.

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According to the guys who make this thing, it can crank out more than 5 octaves of sounds, but they still sound like strangled cats to me. If a single Matryomin wasn’t enough for you, here’s an entire Matryomin orchestra for your listening pleasure:

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Frankly, I think they should be playing the Star Trek theme. Apparently, about 3000 of these oddities were made in Japan a few years back, and this one over on eBay can be yours for the low, low price of $499 (USD).

This isn’t his first tiny Rubik’s Cube. He’s got 12mm Rubik’s Cubes for sale for $15 if you want one for yourself. If you’re like me and you’ve got trouble with the big version, then you’ll no doubt appreciate how handy and small this one is. You can easily carry five or six in your pocket to share with your friends any time!

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It’s amazing how small this is. I wonder if he’ll be successful in creating an even smaller version – maybe one that could only be solved under an electron microscope with tweezers.

[via Dark Roasted Blend]

Although these robots made from found objects don’t really function (other than maybe lighting up), they are intriguing. I honestly don’t know what to call these things. Steam-bots? Ro-Punks?

Needless to say that my faves are the Futurama-inspired robots – although the green Bart Simpson ‘bot is pretty cool too.

[via Presurfer]

I spotted these on the crafster forums. The ever-clever RhymeswOrange crocheted them by hand, and each one has a different felty face! My favorite has got to be this guy with Pacman hands who’s working the snazzy sunglasses.

I gotta say, if our robot overlords are as cute as these robotroyshka dolls, I think I can handle it.