Until now, one of the cooler premiums available from Club Nintendo, at least in my opinion, was a DS game that featured recreations of all their classic Game & Watch titles. But Japanese Club Nintendo members who’ve reached the Platinum level will now be rewarded with an actual Game & Watch handheld game allowing them to enjoy all the excitement of Ball which was Nintendo’s very first G&W title released way back in 1980 according to Kotaku. And here’s to hoping this is the first in a series of Game & Watch re-releases, and not the last.
Oak Ridge National Labs’ ‘Jaguar’ supercomputer got an upgrade this year that bumped its top speed to 1.75 petaflop/s, or 1.75 quadrillion floating point operations every second. And that’s, you know, like, a lot. Jaguar is a Cray XT5 supercomputer that appears to share a room with the National Institute for Computational Sciences ‘Kraken,’ which comes in third in the world at a mere 832 teraflop/s. This video comes from Oak Ridge, and shows the assembly of the entire system as well as some of the upgrades being performed.
This is what’s called a sundial cannon, or a noon cannon. Assuming the weather cooperates, at noon exactly the lens on the sundial focuses sunlight onto a pan filled with gunpowder, setting off the cannon to mark the time. Generally, the cannons weren’t loaded with shot, but with all of the novelty alarm clocks out there, it seems like one that automatically shoots you could be really, really effective, in a potentially dangerous sort of way. And hey, it’s even solar powered.
While we’ve seen our fair share of projectors for the iPhone, all of them work by taking the device’s video feed, amplifying it and projecting it onto a surface. Not so for the HypnosEye. It simply uses a lens and a mirror to project images from your iPhone’s (or iPod touch, we suppose) screen directly to a projection screen. No amplification.
rather than use an ordinary mirror which would result in an unclear image, HypnosEye has implemented a special mirror with a reflection agent on top of the glass surface (rather than behind). As a result, you can show media from your portable device almost anywhere at anytime.
For the full specs, price and a video, keep reading.
Well here’s a brilliant idea. A subsidiary of NEC called NEC Electronics, or NECEL for short, have developed a TV remote control that will never require you to change batteries, nor will it ever run out of power. Every time a couch potato picks up the remote and pushes any of the buttons, the vibrations of those motions generates a small amount of electricity which is enough to perform basic TV remote operations like changing the channel or adjusting the volume. The remote, or at least its power unit, is being developed in conjunction with another company called Soundpower, and instead of it just being a research project, the companies intend for the technology to hopefully hit the market in the next couple of years.
Clearly targeted at consumers who are living a more extreme lifestyle than I do, the new Casio EX-G1 features a shock-resistant shell allowing it to survive drops from as high as 7 feet, or being submerged up to 10 feet underwater for as long as an hour. The waterproof seal also keeps out dust, and the camera is rated to survive temperatures as cold as -10 °C, which isn’t actually that cold, though it is below freezing.
As for tech specs, the EX-G1 features a 12.1MP sensor that’s also able to capture 30fps AVI videos at 848×480, 3X optical zoom using an internal mechanism so the lens doesn’t actually extend from the body, and all the other features you’d expect to find on a reasonably equipped P&S digital camera these days. The choice to use microSDHC and microSD memory cards is a bit odd, though I imagine it helps keep the camera compact.
The Casio EX-G1 should be hitting shelves sometime in December of this year in black or red for $299.99.
By now you know the drill. I’m sure this 8GB grenade shaped USB flash drive will result in a few laughs at work, particularly if you use it to share files by pulling off the cap and tossing it to your co-worker before cowering as you wait for the explosion that will never come. But if you’re stupid enough to stick it in your carry-on before heading to the airport, well then you deserve whatever fun the TSA decides to send your way. $39.99 from ThinkGeek.
Foosball is one of those timeless games that will probably never go away. I mean who doesn’t enjoy batting around a ball with a bunch of plastic guys on sticks? Well if you don’t have room for such a table anymore, you can still decorate your house in honor of the game with one of these Offside Foosball Coat Hangers.
When you think about it, the design is actually rather brilliant. When not in use the men will be standing straight up, and when something is placed on one, the feet lean against the wall to make a nice hanger. The men slide back-and-forth so that you can take full advantage of all hangers when you have a large coat hanging from one. Granted, for the price of just over $100, you could buy a cheap Foosball table.
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