Speaking of giant models, Maine-resident William Terra has spent 6 years completing this gigantic 1:20-scale model of a World War II German Panzerschiff, the Deutschland-class battleship Admiral Graf Spee. The 30-feet long, 700-pound model is built like a canoe and is capable of carrying two people on board.
Sharp has announced new Blu-ray recorders in Japan, with the 1TB hard drive-equipped BD-HDW20 as the new flagship. The player can start recording from its two digital or one analogue tuners in under one second.
Nothing quite lights up a room like the Discovery’s Rainbow In My Room — it’s also one of the best leprechaun-catching tools available on the market. Using LED lights, the gadget creates a prismatic rainbow arc on your wall or on your ceiling. It uses a motion sensor that turns the rainbow on and off when you’re near, and an automatic shut-off assures that you won’t over-rainbow your room. For sale for $30 dollars and available early October, it’s the cheapest way to achieve faux happiness without moisture and white light. [Discovery via SciFi]
While the Wind-Up lamp may make your room faintly reminiscent of Minnie Mouse’s bedroom, it is both ecological and useful. The lamp is powered mainly by a spring-driven generator, which uses a high carbon tensile steel spring that, when it unwinds, transfers power to a tiny electric generator that then powers the light.
As the giant, cartoony screw winds down, it acts as a timer that will eventually turn your light off — saving precious electricity long after you’ve fallen asleep. The lamp is a concept design by Yuko Taguchi and isn’t currently on sale anywhere but the back alleys of Disneyland. [RedFerret via SciFi]
If your own, strange bathroom sounds startle and horrify you, Toilet Tunes is like a urine-drenched super-hero, ready to please. The gadget uses a sensor installed in the toilet lid that will play six musical choices when the lid is raised and that will make your trip to the bathroom that much more like a scene from Dirty Dancing.
The musical choices include rain, waves, jazz, latin, modern, and appropriately, stream. The sensor uses 3 AAA batteries and is easy to install (just stick it on the lid using the adjesive backing). The gadget itself will set you back $29.98, which is a small price to pay to avoid your own bodily functions. [FindGift via NerdApproved]
A lawsuit has been filed against Steve Jobs and O.J. Simpson, with allegations of Apple hiring O.J. as a hitman, exhibiting prejudice towards political prisoners by slashing iPhone prices, and cloning Dolly the sheep in 1998. Riches also claimed he is in danger of being radio wave warped by O.J. for possessing old cards of the Hall of Fame wack job.
For those unaware,the man making these accusations is 30-year-old Jonathan Lee Riches, a prisoner in South Carolina. And while the accusations he’s making obviously aren’t real, the court filings are. This isn’t the first time Riches has done this. His handwritten documents may look amateur, but they are written in fluent legalese and still have to be processed by the court.
If you are ready to reenact Rommel’s campaign in North Africa, vandalize any wall in sight or look like Atom Ant, here’s the Paintball Panzer. At 3.4 x 4 x 6-foot it’s not comparable with the 17-tonne FV432 paintball tank after the jump, but I would love to have this mini-me version anyway. Compare specs and prices after the jump. Spoiler: Rommel gets killed and VanGogh cuts his ear.
Here are the Paintball Panzer specs:
The Microdot recorder, which Joel over at BB and Nigel from RedFerret have pointed out to me, is supposedly the world’s smallest digital audio recorder. It’s about the size of the an index finger tip, or about the size of a piece of japanese chewing candy, if that gives any context at all. (it’s 12x35x17mm) It’s got 128MB of memory which is good for 18.6 hours of recording, in what I presume is monaural before needing to be data dumped by USB. There’s voice activation, so you don’t have to worry about deep sections of zero sound, and for about $500, you’d better be deadly serious about your stalking. [PiMall via RedFerret and BBG]
See this woman? She wants to coat your gadgets in 24 carat gold. Or, if you don’t have a cellphone or iPod, she’ll coat a brand new one and send it to you. Here are a few that are available from their store: a LG Prada for £399 ($800), LG Shine for £279 ($561), and a Sony Ericsson W880i for £299 ($600). Yes, it’s extravagant and totally unnecessary, but who can say no to her? Not I. Nor Charlie. [Goldstriker]
