Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Oooo… the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists have a virtual lab where you can create your very own sideshow attractions. As one who is originaly from those parts, I can say that this must be the product of a disturbed snow bound mind. I love these guys, it’s like I’m back home! You have to check out the gallery images…
Go see if you can build a… ‘thing’ that is faster than what the computer can come up with. Sometimes being able to add real fast gives you the upper hand. :/
Sodarace is the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to design robots that race over 2D terrains using the Sodaconstructor virtual construction kit.
this looks like a more real world version of the Optimus keyboard. Too bad this version isn’t as amazingly cool looking as the other one, but it would be much easier to build. I figure that it’s a revision A kind of thing, the first versions all look like crap but get the job done. Once it takes off then it will start looking cooler.
The United Keys key-displays keyboard
I though that the living plant key chain doo-dads were weird… Thats nothing, now you can own a little chunk of green algae in a bottle to hang off your phone. The stuff in the bottle is called ‘marimo’. In the wild it will take the shape of a ball as it is moved around in a lake due to waves and curents. Some people use it as decoration in aquariums – I don’t know why, it’s hard enough to keep algae OUT of an aquarium. Anyway, you can now make it part of you keitai if you want to look uber cool.
If a loved one asks for this $400US Japanese ink-jet printer/paper cutter, it might be a sign that they are serious about making paper craft toys. Or that they are nuts. Either way this printer is a bit like the small desktop vinyl sign cutters that you can buy these days – call up the design on its program, load in some paper, and out comes a full color pre-cut paper project. Very neat!
You can run cardstock through it ( “(157g/m 2) and drawing paper * and postcard * mount 0.3mm or less in thickness” from the web site) , thats good because most paper models you build need thicker stock or they look like crud. Looks to only be supported under Windows, no mention of Macintosh at all. Bummer.
I wonder if this printer will make full clean cuts or will it make tiny pinholes in the paper so you can punch it out. Looks like is should make clean cuts from what the specs say but a demo would be nice (someone want to fly me to Japan to check this out?) I’d also like to know what the smallest cut size is, I’ve built some paper models that have some very small parts in them. It could be quite small as I now see that there is a plastic backing film that is rolled on to the paper during the printing process. This must be to keep parts from sliding around and hitting the heads. I doubt that the price per page would be very low but it sure would be fun to use. If the Craft ROBO is too small for your hobby, then you might want to look at this one. The Craft ROBO Pro II (translated page here) takes roll paper and will print/cut sheets as large as 2mx42cm!
You know, some people learn Japanese for the culture, some to understand the Anime, and others to play import video games. I’d learn Japanese to use this printer, as long as I could either make my own designs or import designs and tell it where to cut the paper.
Craft ROBO
[Translated via Excite Japan]
[via BoingBoing]
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
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Ah, now that was the day. Computer games had the best graphics, the smoothest animation, and the best soundtracks because it was all in your head… Yep, text adventures games were and are some of the best fun you can have with a computer game. For a little history go see what Wikipedia has to say about the historic Zork series and when your done with that go a head and play the game. Some guys made a version that runs via PHP. Now if that don’t rock I don’t know what does.
(If you want to cheat a little you can look at some maps of the game)