Gadgets, Gizmos, and Games for Geeks

When you travel, you need a place to keep all your grooming and toiletry products organized so they don’t just fall out all over your clothing and spill everywhere. A toiletry bag, aka “dopp kit” is a must have, and I think I must have this one. This shiny black PVC bag from Balvi is embellished with the maze from the classic arcade game Pac-Man.

With more and more smart devices in our homes, the need to occasionally reset or troubleshoot them comes along with that. But how do you interact with a device that has no keyboard, mouse, or other input mechanism when it can’t connect to your network?

Why is it that the body insists on growing hairs where we don’t want them? I mean, sure facial hair can look good on a guy, but hairs inside of our noses and ears are just a nuisance.

Think the BBQ grill on your back deck is impressive? Get a load of this custom-built grilling station, which was built into the side of a jet engine. As a bonus, if this thing gets hit by a bird, you can just toss it on the grill and hit it with some barbeque sauce. The grill was built by the Delta Airlines TechOps team in Atlanta, Georgia, using scrap parts from a Pratt & Whitney PW2000 jet engine from a 757.

Qi wireless charging docks are a dime a dozen these days. So if you want your desktop to stand out from the crowd, you might want to pick up something a little different. How about a charging station that looks like a giant lollipop?

A group of LEGO builders recently built a giant 8-foot by 4-foot LEGO Han Solo in carbonite. Because why not? It was made to promote the 2020 release of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga at the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo aka E3. The sculpture was made from 49,735 individual LEGO pieces, took 38 hours to design, and 210 hours to build.

Artis Benedetto Bufalino likes to make some pretty wild things out of vehicles. He’s transformed a construction digger into an aquarium, a Ford Mondeo into a pizza oven, a cement mixer into a disco ball, and both a car and a camper into swimming pools.

Shishido Mazafaka aka @44doooo on Twitter has created something super creepy: a coin purse that looks like a hyper-realistic male mouth. The human anatomy purse as it is called, features the entire mouth and chin area of a grown man.

Over the years around here, we have perused ThinkGeek on the daily looking for cool stuff that geeks would want. We’ve also purchased more than a few of those geeky items for ourselves. I still have that air guitar shirt that plays music around here somewhere. ThinkGeek was gobbled up by GameStop a while back, and the two maintain separate stores, with some ThinkGeek items at GameStop stores.

Amazon is showing off its latest robots in use at its sorting center in Denver, Colorado. Their orange Pegasus robots are 2 feet-high and 3 feet-wide, and are designed specifically to swiftly sort packages and get them on their way.

When Arnold said “I’ll be Back” in The Terminator, he solidified his throne as the summer blockbuster lead for the next several decades. The T-800 has appeared in several sequels, and this November he’s back again in Terminator: Dark Fate.

Chinese tech company DJI is best known for its excellent photography drones. Now they’ve taken their expertise in remote-controlled vehicle design, and applied it to an earth-bound vehicle, dubbed the RoboMaster S1. This $499 robot isn’t just for play though, it’s designed to teach kids (and kids at heart) about robotics.

Jeopardy has been on TV seemingly forever, and with the recent health woes of host Alex Trebek, it’s possible it won’t be on the air too much longer. You can pay tribute to your favorite very serious game show host with this Funko Pop!

Scientists from NC State University have created a new type of armor that could replace the rolled steel sort of military applications. The team created the new armor using a composite metal foam (CMF) that is less than half the weight of normal armor but can stop .50

Amazon has been working on delivery by drone for a while now. And now the world’s largest online retailer has revealed its latest drone variant. The newly-revealed Amazon Prime Air delivery drone flies using a similar approach to VTOL aircraft, taking off and landing vertically, but orienting itself horizontally once airborne.

Bipedal robots are those that walk using two legs like humans do. The problem is that this isn’t always the fastest way to travel. That’s why humans developed wheeled transports like cars, bikes, roller skates, and even so-called “hoverboards.”