By Andrew Liszewski

Because sometimes even Pac-Man can’t handle an entire city full of ghosts by himself. You know who he’s gonna call.

Printed on black American Apparel tees in men’s and women’s S-XL sizes for $19.95. (XXL and 3XL is an extra $2.)

[ Glennz Tees - Called For Help ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Re-enact the Battle of Britain in your living room with this 1/72 scale RC Spitfire MK XVI that has a wingspan of just 6 inches and an overall weight of 2.7 grams. The motor itself is just 4mm in size and spins an equally tiny 32mm propeller, and while the fuselage is made from foam, I’m pretty sure it will easily survive any crashes given the plane’s limited max airspeed.

With the fully proportional transmitter remote the 1/72 scale Spitfire is a bit steep at $149.99, but if you’ve already got Plantraco microflight planes in your fleet, you can buy the Spitfire by itself for $99.99.

[ Plantraco 1/72 Scale RC Spitfire ] VIA [ The Gadgeteer ]

By Evan Ackerman

This week on BotJunkie began with an iRobot Create hacked to fetch beer soda from a fridge, after which we watched a robot submarine competition in Singapore, then we turned things up a notch with some NSFW video translations of R2-D2, started following a year long project to draw 165 bots with stuff, asked a robot to make a sandwich (nicely), witnessed the first attempted flight of a robot helicopter with hexapod legs, saw the new black NXT block in action on a rapid-firing robot LEGO tank, were a little bit wary of a Japanese rescue robot that eats people, admired a badass picture of Orbswarm stuffed with fireworks, waited patiently for a Kuka industrial robot to serve ice cream, picked out a bunch of pictures to get robotized, watched iCub creepily play the drums, let some robot wallpaper remind us that robots are always everywhere, lusted after an autonomous flying WiFi router, watched an android named Justin dance like in Pulp Fiction, admired a bunch of big pictures of robots from the Boston Globe, watched a weird tin robot sitcom, got pissed at another alarmist article about killer robots, were impressed with a tool-using hexapod from JPL in 2005, and finished off the week with a bot with stuff.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This incredible stop-motion LEGO video of the construction of the Millennium Falcon was submitted by David Gunstensen to a LEGO-themed video contest organized by Gizmodo. You can view the contest winners here.

VIA [ Gizmodo ]

By Evan Ackerman

This is what happens after years spent searching for good Fish Tank Friday material… It’s like your brain is half full of water, and there’s a little blue fishy swimming around where your eyeballs used to be. This is a piece of functional artwork by Nicola L., and as far as I can tell, it’s not for sale. But, if you like the idea of furniture shaped like heads, there are some limited edition pieces available on her website.

[ Nicola ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

By Evan Ackerman

USB weirdness often seems to show up in groups, and today’s examples are no exception. What I like to do is try and picture how it would look if you were to combine weird USB things into one ÜberSB monstrosity, and this combo is particularly bizarre:

It’s a USB cow with fluffy tentacles and 8 gigs of storage! Totally worth the hour it took me to photoshop. Totally.

The CowCow USB Hub comes in four colors, two of which are not found in nature, and when you plug it into a USB port, it will sound “3 cow calls.” Moo, moo, moo. $12.

The Cat Tail USB Memory Stick Tail has a capacity of 2 gigs, and is made to order in Japan for about $55. Don’t worry, though, the Cat Tail isn’t made from an actual cat.

I mean, of course not.

Sheesh.

Instead, it’s made from mink.

[ CowCow USB Hub ] VIA [ Geeky Gadgets ]
[ Cat Tail Memory ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Luke Anderson

Last year Harmonix announced that they had acquired the rights to create a game based around The Beatles. Naturally this caused quite a commotion, as they are one of the most sought-after bands for rhythm games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Unfortunately details were scarce, and we’ve been forced to wait for another major announcement regarding the title. Thankfully the wait for more info is over, as Harmonix has not only released specifics on the game, but a launch date and pricing as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Luke Anderson

Despite my love for tech, rarely do I dabble into the world of Linux. I stick to my PC for gaming and my Mac for most other tasks. Don’t get me wrong, I do know it has it’s uses, it’s just not my thing. One thing that I’ve always liked is how quickly you can get some distros to load up, since I hate waiting around for Windows or even my Mac to start up. The dream is of course an instant-on OS, which MSI has developed specifically for several of their boards, dubbed Winki.

Naturally, the OS is Linux-based and is contained on a small flash drive which plugs directly into the USB headers on the board itself. Granted, this isn’t the first such instant-on OS to be created, but MSI claims that it is much more elaborate than the ones we have seen in the past. It will be interesting to see which boards this will be compatible with, and whether they will eventually make it available on all boards.

VIA [ Engadget ]

By Luke Anderson

How often do you watch the special features that come on most DVDs? Personally I’ll watch the outtakes once in a while, but rarely dive in much deeper than that. If you’re the kind of person that likes to listen to all of the director commentary on all of your flicks, you just might get a disappointment next time you go to rent a movie released by Fox.

It seems that Fox is trying to encourage people to rent less and buy more by taking out the special features on rental DVDs. The first movies to be released with a special stripped-down version will be “Slumdog Millionaire”, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, and “The Wrestler”. It will be interesting to see the reaction to this move, though I doubt that a lot of people will be all that upset. I mean, if you really care enough about a movie to sit through 4 hours of commentary and behind-the-scenes footage, maybe you’ll actually want to watch the movie more than once.

VIA [ Crave ]