Gadgets, Gizmos, and Games for Geeks

Cocktails: sometimes they can help a bad time seem a little better. And unless you’ve been living under a rock this year (any room under there for me?), 2020 has been pretty much an eight-month-long bad time so far.

Tired of eating the same old boring dinners every night? Looking for something different to spice things up a bit? How about an up to 4-inch giant Asian scorpion? Mmmmm! Is your mouth watering? My mouth is watering.

I live in a 3-story, single-family house with my wife and two rather large, hairy dogs. So the amount of dirt, dust, and dog hair we accumulate around here on a daily basis is way more than should be permitted by law.

How do you remind someone to practice social distancing? Personally I just yell. LOUD. But maybe you’re a quiet person. Maybe you just want to politely remind someone with a 4.5-volt shock to the arm from this Socially Distancing Zapper from Firebox.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and I couldn’t agree more: the wait is finally over. Pampshades (“P” from pan, bread in Japanese, and “ampshade” from lampshade) are lamps made from actual bread loaves. Did anybody else just lick make-believe crumbs from their fingers?

While you might not shoot your eyes out, you could certainly melt your retinas sitting too close while watching scenes from A Christmas Story on this giant 8-foot inflatable television yard decoration. Fra-gee-lay — it must be Italian.

Pac-Man was the first video game I ever played in the arcade back in the day. I remember not making it very long because I was always trying to gobble up the power pellets and didn’t do a good job evading the ghosts.

InstaPots and other pressure cookers have become insanely popular in recent years, with millions of households putting what basically amounts to a bomb on their kitchen counter in order to cook dinners more quickly. Thankfully, these heated and pressurized vessels have a pressure-relief valve on them to let steam out, making a catastrophic failure far less likely.

These days, lots of people are replacing their bedside clocks with smartphones or other mobile gadgets which keep time. But there’s something about being able to just open an eyeball in the middle of the night and glance at the time that makes me still prefer a standalone clock.

Because our scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should, physicists at Leiden University have 3D printed a tiny tugboat only 30-microns in length. For reference, an average human hair is about 90-microns in width, although mine is much thicker because I shampoo with a product specifically formulated for bears.

Looking for a fun arts and crafts project? How about making your own wearable alien facehugger entirely out of rubber bands per this Instructable created by user tofugami? Personally, I can’t wait to make one, then slip it on when my girlfriend isn’t paying attention and see what she says.

Were you a good boy or girl this year? Doesn’t matter, 2020 has spoken and we’re all getting ketchup flavored candy canes for Christmas anyways. Created by Archie McPhee, a six-pack of “rich tomato flavor” ketchup candy canes costs $6.50 and is sure to be absent from every single Christmas list this year.

Digital music artist GLASYS looped and remixed the underwater theme from the original Super Mario Bros. using Blooper, a looping pedal recently released from Chase Audio. GLASYS came up with the idea after realizing Blooper is also the name of the squid-like creatures found in underwater Mario levels.

Disney Parks created an official ‘Ride & Learn’ video which offers a tour of the incredible computer-generated visual effects used in Shanghai Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure ride. Obviously, the first thing I plan on doing after winning the Super Bowl is going to Shanghai Disneyland and riding it.

Here’s some more next-level cake decorating from Natalie Sideserf of Sideserf Cake Studio. The professional pastry chef in Austin, Texas made a video showing how she made this realistic mutant monster toad cake. The toad was inspired by one of the creatures in the recently released post-apocalyptic Love And Monsters movie.

Because sometimes you need to diversify your assets and Disney has decided it wants to add some nightmare fuel to its portfolio, they recently posted a video of a humanoid robot developed by its research division with a “realistic and interactive lifelike gaze.”