Archive for November 2010

I bought a dSLR camera years ago because I was tired of getting photos of just an arm when I tried to snap my kids because my point and shoot was too slow. I also wanted to be able to get pics that were exposed well, even if it was dark.

My son really likes the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon on Cartoon Network. He still hasn’t quite wrapped his head around how the Clone Troopers are good now, and end up being bad later though. One of the episodes we watched recently had some of the clones training in a room against droids in order to pass a test so they could graduate.

I live in Texas where it’s not just hot in the summer, its hawt. The upside is that in the winter if we get below freezing more than a few weeks it’s a bad winter. That said, we rarely get snow so we don’t get to make snowmen or throw snowballs each year and sledding is unheard of around here.

This awesome Halo Master Chief helmet is made out of LEGO bricks. While it looks pretty awesome, I just wonder how long it will stay in one piece if it’s actually worn around. Ben Caulkins (aka Benny Brickster) created this helmet.

While it seems dubious that anyone in the Victorian era had an LED wristwatch, that didn’t stop Eric Schleapfer from putting one together himself. This steampunk LED wristwatch uses a LED wristwatch board. The watch is constructed from a small piece of oak and some pieces of brass sheet and tubing.

Mirrors are great. They let you see yourself much the same way that the rest of the world does. Unfortunately they have one major drawback: Everything is reversed. You’d think that whoever invented the things would have noticed that everything you see in a mirror is backwards.

If Optimus first landed on a golf course: The longer I look at it, the more I want to see an actual Optimus golf cart.

Need to express your objection or allegiance to a cause? There’s an app iOS device for that: Spotted at a protest over cuts to the pension system of Lithuania:

Most of the time when I think of robots, I think of tame little droids like R2-D2 and Asimo. But this robot-on-wheels means serious business. Created by Chris Rogers of Inspector Bots, the Mega Hurtz Tactical Robot is an seriously amped-up robotic vehicle, with enough torque to pull a 4700 pound Hummer H3.

For safety’s sake, a Segway tops out at 12.5 miles per hour. While that doesn’t sound that fast, if you’ve ever been on one of these self-balancing contraptions, you know that actually seems mighty fast when it’s just that tiny platform between you, the ground, and those oncoming cars.

Maker Pete Prodoehl recently came up with the Twitter Monkey. What does it do? It tweets, of course, right? Actually, that’s not how it works. Instead, Twitter Monkey alerts you in an annoying way when it ‘sees’ specific keywords come up in a Twitter stream by wildly gesticulating its arms.

While this watch doesn’t really make me think of sex ed, it is an interesting concept. I do think that explaining the birds and the bees is best left to parents without using a gimmick like this watch.

When I was a kid in school, I could do so many things with a rubber band, a pen and a paperclip that I felt like MacGyver. At least I would have if I’d actually known who he was back then.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense recently unveiled their flying surveillance drone, meant to be used for short distances. Surveillance drones are not exactly new in this day and age, but as soon as I saw the quadrocopter, one thing came to mind: Metal Gear Solid 2.

Until I came across the StatSheet Network, I thought that robots were the only man-made automatons that are taking over human jobs. But just last week,  a network of websites with no human writers was launched.

How’d you like it if you could turn your iPhone into a glasses-free 3D display? By using an old-school technique with a half-silvered mirror placed at a 45-degree angle, along with a special app, the i3DG Palm Top Theater turns your iPhone or iPodTouch into a 3D display.