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Last Friday, we posted a public bus surveillance video that captured a barbarous attack on a man "for his iPhone." Since then, MacBlogz has spoken with the unnamed victim. And—no huge surprise here—he felt that the robber was going more for blood than his popular Apple product.
Forget about the Lego Airbus A380 and the Lego Death Star, because this video will show you the mother of all Lego models: the 750,000-brick Kennedy Space Centre. Using 1,506 square feet, it took 2,500 hours to build. It includes a 1.87 metre tall Space Shuttle on the launch pad, the space centre with a 2.7 metre long Saturn 1B rocket, and the Vehicle Assembly Building—2.4m long x 1.8m high x 1.5m wide—made out of 50,000 Lego bricks. I know. Mindblowing. This thing is so massive that it can probably affect Earth's orbit. Update: if Lego's Kennedy Space Centre is the mother of all Lego models, Giz reader Florian Frischmuth has sent us his pictures of the father: the 1,300,000-brick Lego Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany. This titan contains a mindblowing 30,000 mini-figs inside.
This Russian Geiger Counter casemod (technically an Ion Detector) won't let you know if you're standing waist deep in nuclear radiation, but flick the power switch and the meter jumps to life, letting you know the relatively weak CPU housed inside is working properly. As for the specs inside the box, there's a 300 MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM and a 4GB Compact Flash card for storage. That's more Pong than Half-Life, but it still looks sharp. Just be sure not to mistake it for your real Geiger counter when you're packing for that vacation trip to Chernobyl. [Modding.ru via Technabob]
A new report from CERN allegedly puts the final nail in the coffin of doomsday theorists claiming the Large Hadron Collider will result in a reality-ending black hole on Earth. In a word, the report calls the project "safe," and reiterates CERN's original argument that even the most powerful collisions planned for the LHC are nothing compared to what nature has done already for billions of years. "The universe as a whole conducts more than 10 million million LHC-like experiments per second. The possibility of any dangerous consequences contradicts what astronomers see - stars and galaxies still exist," said a layperson's summary of the report. Conspiracy theorists will no doubt keep on keeping on about the LHC, regardless of the report, but for the more level-headed amongst us, there's a certain finality to CERN's findings. Not end-of-the-world finality, mind you, just peace of mind. The countdown timer says 16 days until activation. [Cosmic Log]
As the clubbers in Britain's first-ever eco-nightclub rave their little hearts out in the coming months, they'll be doing their part to conserve energy. Well, their feet will be, because the energy that powers 60% of the club is going to be generated by the springy dance floor beneath them. The springs in the floor are connected to power generating blocks made of piezoelectric crystals. It's similar to what Enviu, a Netherlands-based research group, proposed for Holland-based clubs, but with a different accent. Like that system, the British club's crystals produce current when subjected to pressure created by the gyrating bodies above. But millionaire founder Andrew Charalambous didn't stop with spring-filled floors--he's taking the entire green thing very seriously.
Love 'em or hate 'em, Comcast sure knows how to throw together a 10 million pixel video display. The one seen here is available for ogling at the Comcast Centre in Philadelphia, and covers over 2,100 square feet of wall space with four-millimeter LED lights. The images and video that play on this super screen do so with a resolution that's five times that of HDTV. Comcast ended up paying Barco US$22 million for the wall display and accompanying automated control room, which handles about 27,000 gigabytes of information. If you have 10 minutes to spare, the impressive presentation video of this thing in action is definitely worth a view.
Ok, so the disembodied, interchangeable heads on these super-detailed Hot Toys Iron Man and Batman collectibles are a bit weird, but that's the only downside I can see so far. They're 1/6th-scale, and were on display today at the 2008 Tokyo Toy Show. If you thought Batman sculpt looked cool, just wait until you see his whips.
Japanese toy company People has released a new age alarm clock that supposedly helps kids wake up by turning them into Ultraman. It's called the Okiro! Asa Ichiban Taiyou Senshi - Charenjaa Kitto (Wake up! First Sun Warrior of the Morning - challenger kit) and was manufactured for the Japanese Ministry of Education "early to bed early to rise" program. The US$38 kit comes with the extravagant eye shield and helmet; a series of talismans and message cards (no doubt world-saving secret missions); and a 27-day program that will involve your child taking orders from "the commander."
Camcorder pens often sacrifice the whole "writing" thing in the name of capturing video, but this one from BrickHouse Security does write, and has considerably bigger storage capacity than previous video pens, too. It's a big pricey, but if you're into the whole Maxwell Smart lifestyle it could make a nice, voyeuristic addition to your repertoire. Two hours of battery time per charge, 30 hours of audio and/or video (4GB), and a potential restraining order are available to you for US$250. [BrickStone Security via GeekAlerts]
Wherever this place is, Cisco, we never want to live here. Or visit. Or accidentally drive through on the way to work. [As seen on Crunch]
Next time you're camping, instead of digging a hole or using one of those suspect comfort castle port-a-johns to dispense with No. 2, why not infuse a little portability into nature's call with the Shit Box? It's completely cardboard, fully biodegradable, and utterly ridiculous. And yet, I'm drawn to it. I want to see if it can hold my weight (77 kgs, colon empty). I want to know why designer Richard Wharton named his talking poo mascot "Little Jack," and how the hell a company like this gets away with a returns policy page. But most of all, as a writer named Jack who also happens to go to the bathroom in the woods, I want to test one.
The enema is a gadget you probably don't think about too often, but for many people it's a invaluable tool that's made many an uncomfortable situation flow more smoothly. For the Russians, it's obviously something more, because one city there erected an 360 kg, US$42,000 statue to honour the device for its many years of unsung service to the backside of mankind. "There is no kitsch or obscenity, it is a successful work of art," said Alexander Kharchenko, a resident of the regularity-loving Zheleznovodsk. "An enema is almost a symbol of our region." That's great, Mr. Kharchenko, but which "region," exactly, are we talking about here?
Dell wrote us to say that due to popular demand (read: common sense), they are extending the deadline for customers who want to order systems with Windows XP Home premium. As of today, a Dell rep said customers can order select configurations of the Inspiron 530 or 530s desktops with Windows XP Home Premium through June 26. This means if you're in the market for a Dell, and don't want to pay the surcharge for downgrading your bundle from Vista to XP, you have a few more days to do it. [Dell]
Two weeks ago today, a tornado ripped through Illinois. At points it was up to 400 metres wide, and it did enough damage, cracking giant powerlines like toothpicks and yanking old-growth trees right from the ground, that it completely closed the major highway I57 for a 56-kilometre expanse south of Chicago.
I was lucky enough to be travelling that day (on the way to the airport for WWDC) and pulled off the road just in time to intersect with the tornado at its worst. Inside a gas station with no basement and plenty of active fuel lines, it was the first time in a long time--maybe ever--that I genuinely feared for my life, that I thought things were over. Watch that video above. Then know that I was a lot closer.
But as I've played the scenes back in my head over the last several days, it's not the storm that's proven to be the most haunting. It's the way the people reacted. Because in the gas station, I watched a group of 20 scared people not take shelter, but stand in front of a wall of glass to record the event--to make some YouTube clips.
Some people celebrate anniversaries with food, or a little dancing, but Business University Turiba in Latvia decided to have a little fun with a Gizmodo favorite: the ol' Mento in the Coke reaction. For the school's 15th anniversary, the students set out the break the previous world record for this category, which was held by 1,499 Belgian students in the town of Leuven. Last Thursday, they succeeded, and the contents of 1,911 bottles of Coke were sprayed violently upward, and into history.
Forget about the 