Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

I don’t know about you, but anytime I’ve played foosball I’m surprised the plastic balls don’t shatter given how much force they bang around the table with. So using gumballs instead just doesn’t seem like a fantastic idea. But that’s exactly what this Gumball Foosball table does, with a dispenser at each end that come filled with about 1,700 gumballs which are released one at a time and used as the game ball. Obviously the only way to claim your treat is to score on your opponent, or you can just keep one end of the table propped up with a phonebook for when you don’t feel like playing. Get it from Hammacher Schlemmer for a whopping $1,500.

[ The Only Gumball Foosball ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Think you had the world’s greatest treehouse as a kid? Well this guy’s got you beat. Horace Burgess’s treehouse is located somewhere near Crossville, Tennessee and stands over 97-feet tall thanks to the 80-foot white oak tree it was built around which also happens to be about 12-feet in diameter at its base. It has 11 floors, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 to 10,000 square feet, a miniature basketball court and is held together by roughly 258,000 nails. If you can think of a better way to spend $12,000, I’d like to hear it.

[ USA Today - Divine vision inspired a 97-foot treehouse ] VIA [ Baking with Medusa ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Yep, another one to add to the ridiculous Wii accessories list. This time it’s a 1:1 scale Heckler & Kock MP5 that Pocket-lint spotted at a trade show in Hong Kong. The controller was made by a Chinese company, and instead of having to find a place to stick your Wiimote and Nunchuck, the machine gun contains all of that functionality, as well as MotionPlus and a rechargeable battery, built-in. There’s no word on pricing or availability just yet, but the version pictured above with the orange tip was supposedly created for the US market so it wouldn’t look real or anything.

[ Pocket-lint - Wii gets custom-made Heckler and Koch MP5 controller ]

By Andrew Liszewski

For just $18 Brando will sell you a USB Foot Switch that comes with software allowing it to reproduce any keyboard shortcut when you tap your foot. Now off the top of my head I can’t really think of a keyboard shortcut I’d need to pass off to my foot, but since you can connect more than one switch to any given PC I assume there has to be the potential for something useful here. Internet? I pass the buck to you to figure out what it is.

[ USB Foot Switch ] VIA [ Pocket-lint ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Designed and custom built by a company called Bad Ass Golf Carts this miniature Hummer H3 known as The Royal Cart was created for a client who intends to use it on their own private island, which is a good thing since I can’t imagine too many golf courses being thrilled with the idea of this thing roaming their greens. It actually cost $55,500 to build and includes a long list of features that will probably leave you shaking your head.

This cart has BY FAR the best sound system ever installed on a golf cart. Pioneer AVH-P6000 DVD player with 7” touch screen display, 7” visor monitors (2 pcs.) and 7” headrest monitors (2 pcs.), Image Dynamics IDQ10D2V3 (12” subwoofers, 2 pcs: 1 piece mounted under hood in enclosure of fiberglass, 1 piece mounted in a custom box behind front seats), Image Dynamics Q700.2 Amps (2 pieces) AND Image Dynamics Q1200.1 Amplifier (1 piece) mounted in a custom box behind front seats, Dynaudio Esotec System 220V (3 component sets), 5 TV’s, Full Security system, Remote opening hood, Remote Stereo controls, and remote Strobe light control. 4 Extra Batteries AND charger to power Stereo and lights…

[ Bad Ass Golf Carts - The Royal Cart ] VIA [ Hummer Guy ]

By David Ponce

Go to Google.

Type “I like”.

Enjoy.

VIA [ Geekologie ]

P.S. Who doesn’t do this?

By Andrew Liszewski

I can’t imagine anything funnier than the look on someone’s face when their home is burning to the ground and they realize that the fire extinguisher they just grabbed is actually a novelty phone! Priceless! You get that on tape and you’ve just won yourself $10,000, no question. Not too mention the fact that this phone appears to set a new benchmark for unergonomics. Are you supposed to stick the nozzle to your ear or something? $22 from Gadget4all.com.

[ Fire Extinguisher Phone ] VIA [ Pocket-lint ]

By David Ponce

This seems to have been around since 2008, but it’s only now making the rounds on the blogs, so we thought to let y’all know about it too. The video we’ve embedded after the jump shows a creation by Japanese artist Mio I-zawa. It’s a rubber (or latex, we’re not sure) bladder shaped and painted to look like a tumor. It’s connected to a series of motors and pneumatic actuators, and the whole apparatus is controlled by a piece of software on the PC to which its attached. When the load on the CPU is low, the tumor gently pulsates. But start doing something CPU-intensive, and it’ll grow, giving you a direct, organic connection to the current load on the PC.

We’re not entirely sure why the use of a tumor, as opposed to say a fake lung. We get the whole bridging the gap between inorganic digital stress and biological stress; kind of anthropomorphizing the most inanimate of objects. But heck, even a heart would have made more sense… Why a tumor?

Hit the jump for the creepy video.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

So what if it turns out that all those Super Mario games created by Nintendo were actually based on real events? And what if Mushroom Island was actually a lost chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean that were recently discovered by a team of archaeologists? Well that’s exactly the idea that author Logan Zawacki is proposing with his book, The Excavation of Mushroom Island, which is supposedly a detailed account of what the archaeologists found.

In ‘The Excavation of Mushroom Island,’ archaeologist Logan Zawacki and his team uncover the greatest archaeological discovery of the century and document their entire experience. This book comes complete with a detailed chronology of the cultures that inhabited the islands between the Arcadic Period and the Early Snesolithic Period, as well as detailed maps of the landscape and site locations of each marvelous find. There are over 30 documented fossils to view within this 76-page softcover book. Each fossil comes complete with a map of their locations, scientific names, dimensions, and informative comments provided by the lead researcher, Logan Zawacki.

It sounds like the perfect addition to any geek or gamer’s coffee Mountain Dew table, and while softcover versions of the book are available from Blurb for $50, a limited edition signed and numbered hardcover version is also available by contacting Logan directly (details can be found on the Blurb site) but you’ll want to act fast since that run is limited to just 100 copies.

[ The Excavation of Mushroom Island ] VIA [ ALBOTAS ]