Archive for February 2020

To celebrate the upcoming release of Minions: The Rise of Gru, LEGO has revealed several new sets inspired by the film. My favorite of them is this set that lets you create some larger minions for your minion minifigs to hang out in.

If you are more aligned with the Dark Side than the Light Side of the force, I just found your new office chair. Just sit your butt on the Emperor’s Throne Armchair and you can watch space battle from your throne room, with your withered face and evil smile.

Sure, she may be made of paper and is susceptible to fire. Sure, she can be crushed easily, but this Millennium Falcon origami ship can deliver some killer paper cuts to the Empire. She’s a fast ship alright, but fast to build?

Marble runs can be a whole lot of fun to build and watch in action. But most of the ones I’ve seen are made from wood or maybe plastic. If you’re looking for something a little more substantial, check out this marble run kit that includes towers made from bricks.

Drawing with an Etch-a-Sketch can be quite a challenge. After all, it’s nearly impossible to illustrate anything with curves thanks to its simplistic X/Y movements. Even the most talented Etch-a-Sketch artists end up with jagged little “stairsteps” instead of real curves.

While hundreds of thousands of people put down a $100 deposit for an opportunity to buy Tesla’s Cybertruck when it eventually goes into production, I’d bet that only a small portion of those people will actually end up buying one when they find out the true retail price.

McDonald’s isn’t exactly known for the best food, but it is certainly one of the most consistent places to grab a quick bite on the road – and sometimes you just crave the textures and salty seasonings of their burgers and fries.

Since The Mandalorian was released close to Christmas last year, not many official toys of Baby Yoda (aka “The Child”) made it to market in time for the holidays. That’s all changing in 2020, and this might be the best one yet.

As far as I know, most clothes are made out of fabric like cotton, polyester, leather, or nylon. But this unusual fashion line is made entirely out of rubber bands. Student Rie Sakamoto designed the stretchy clothes as part of her Integrated Design thesis project at Japan’s Tama Art University.

Chewbacca and Groot have some things in common. They’re both big, strong, brown, and men of action – not words. But neither of them is particularly cute (though Baby Groot is a different story.)  But if you combined the furry mop of Chewie with the plant-growing abilities of Groot, then shrunk them down to pint-size, the offspring would be simply adorable.

Building LEGO replicas is one thing, but building working replicas of guns in LEGO is something entirely different. Check out this reproduction of the NERF Maverick REV-6 blaster by AstonishingStudios. This is some awesome LEGO engineering.

Head down the rabbit hole every time you use your computer. That’s the notion behind this keycap set that features imagery inspired by the Lewis Carroll classic “Alice in Wonderland.” Designed by keyboard enthusiast Rafal Hrynkiewicz, the UnAlice keycap set comes in a creamy Winter White color, with a skinny, easy-to-read typeface.

KFC’s marketing folks have some really strange ideas. Over the years, they’ve made chicken-scented fireplace logs, gravy-scented candles, and a Colonel Sanders bearskin rug. They’re either insane or creative geniuses, because they’ve got me talking about their brand yet again.

Do your kids love science, technology, engineering, or math? Sony’s KOOV system is a great tool for kids to learn about all of these disciplines, while having lots of fun doing it. These modular building kits encourage kids to experiment as they construct robots and other mechanical creations, and learn to program them.

Are you hungry for some milk and cookies? You could trudge all the way to the kitchen cabinet and grab some Oreos, then open the fridge to grab a bottle of milk, but that would be way too much work.

Computer graphics have come a very long way in the past couple of decades, offering up images which are becoming more and more difficult to distinguish from reality. Especially notable are the improvements in physics engines, which allow objects to move and behave more like they do in real life.