Category: Strange + Wonderful

Here’s a nice conversation piece for your desk… The appropriately named Cat’s Arse Sharpener ensures that your pencil gets a nice sharp point in the most disturbing manner possible. Insert your dull pencil into the cat’s “third eye,” and it lets out a meow and sharpens your pencil.

Dutch artist Lonneke Gordijn of Drift has created these beautiful little lights which create an amazing synergy between technology and nature. The Dandelight combines a 9-volt battery, an LED, phoshphorusbronze and a real dandelion head to create a fragile, but stunning light source.

Designer Susanna Hertrich created this unique calendar that gradually rids itself of the previous day by shredding them into oblivion. The Chrono_Shredder combines a calendar, clock and shredder into a single device that gradually scrolls through the days, eating them away with the shredder.

Like your Nintendo Mii avatar? Now you can get yours rendered into a full 3-dimensional model that you can put on your desk. Model makers Fabjectory are offering a service which will take your Mii avatar and output a real-life miniature figurine.

Console modder extraordinaire Ben Heck is at it again. This time, he’s carefully taken the guts of the Playstation 3’s SIXAXIS controller and sandwiched them inside of an Xbox 360’s wireless controller. There’s something that’s oh-so-wrong but oh-so-right about the strange bedfellows coming together to form a single mutant controller.

This is the most bizarre case mod I’ve seen in a long while. It’s a fully functional mini-ITX computer crammed into the carcass of a beaver. In addition to being a dead animal, the CompuBeaver is a complete PC loaded with a Core 2 duo processor, 160GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM.

Do you have too many adapters plugged into in your power strip? This decidedly Flinstonian piece of office equipment eliminates the need for electricity by using hamster power. As little hammy pedals his butt off, he generates his own shredded paper bedding.

I’ve seen some crazy robots in my time, but this one could take the cake. It’s a replica of everyone’s favorite trashcan robot, R2-D2, running on steam power. The R2-S2 robot uses compressed steam to drive the bot around, spewing jets of water vapor into the air as it goes for a ride.

A group of scientists working with the National Human Genome Research Institute claim to have identified the specific gene that controls the size of dogs. Without getting into all of the scientific details (I flunked biology,) the researchers screened a group of almost 500 Portuguese water dogs (a breed with lots of size variance,) and sequenced their DNA to identify the differences.

Now you can bring the famous Northern Lights inside your house with this nifty light projector from Japan. The Genso Kukan Aurora simulates the beautiful atmospheric phenomena known as the Aurora Borealis and projects the images on your wall or ceiling.

For some time now, there’s been buzz about the Military working on a new “crowd control system” which works by blasting people with an invisible, yet highly uncomfortable electromagnetic blast. Well it turns out that they did a little demonstration of the weapon on some members of the press back in January, and here’s a clip of the reaction of one such test subject: The device, known as the Active Denial System (which probably refers to the fact that the Military will actively deny using it if it ever comes to real world use) hits its victims with a non-lethal blast of EM radiation at a range of up to 500 yards away.

Are your kids not sedentary enough? This LCD television from Hannspree lets your little ones enjoy all their favorite product-placement-enhanced TV programming, all the while reminding them of what they’ll probably be eating for dinner tonight, junk food.

For the low, low price of just $250,000 you can have your very own jet pack that you can strap onto your back. The TAM Rocket Belt is a complete rocket pack system which is custom fitted to the exact specifications of the pilot.

While there are plenty of spill-resistant keyboards out there, this is the first time I’ve seen one that can actually be washed in the sink. Unotron’s line of washable keyboards, mice and Smartcard readers can all be submerged under running water and cleaned with antibacterial cleansers.

If this season’s storyline on 24 has you worried about the threat of nuclear terrorism, you might want to pick up one of these little gadgets. The $160 NukAlert keychain radiation monitor automatically warns you of the unseen atomic threat anywhere you go.

Check out this rare DELTA-C vintage Soviet computer (if you can call 1991 “vintage”) that I found over on eBay. It’s apparently a clone of the classic Sinclair ZX personal computer, but it sure looks like something you’d find down in a Dharma station on LOST.