I'm starting to believe in those Apatow movies about nerds suddenly becoming popular without having to shed their nerdiness: A dude name Paul Slocum—who I'm picturing looks exactly like Michael Cera of SuperBad/Juno/Nick & Nora fame—hooked a crappy old amp to his little laptop, told the laptop to continuously calculate the digits of the magical constant pi, digits that run to infinity to the right of the decimal point, and turned those digits into synth commands for surprisingly danceable house music.

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From Meninos, the same designers who brought you the Samuel L. Jackson hard drive cases, these iPhone coasters have harnessed fanboy obsession into practical functionality—to protect your table from dangerous glass condensation. Constructed of thin plywood wrapped in a vinyl decal and bottomed in rubber, the 8.5cm coasters come bundled in a pack of 16 for $US60. Sadly, there's no support for downloadable coaster apps at this time. [Meninos via technabob]

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The 'WowPod' might not the be first oversized, semi-functioning iPod, but it's probably the strangest. Perhaps taking cues from Salvador Dali (The Persistence of Flash Memory? Anyone? Sorry?), Aristarkh Chernyshev and Alexei Shulgi have not just blown up and distorted an iPod — they've thrown in some functionality. Their site is low on details, but from the looks of it they may actually have the display connected to a iPod Classic's video output. The rest is up to speculation: are the controls mapped? Are the earbuds speakers? What does it mean? What is art? Who am I? and so on. [XLGallery via Make]

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By artist Michel de Broin, the Dead Star is a sculpture formed from batteries at the end of their functional life. He explains, "Left to itself, the sculpture will slowly cool down since there is no longer electronic activity taking place in it." On exhibit at the Eyebeam Centre for Art and Technology in New York, we enjoy the sculpture because it perpetually looks like it's about to explode. [Michel de Broin via MAKE]

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This is a giant exterior light assembly that looks as angular as a stealth fighter, and bit like a Star Trek shuttlepod. By designer Jeroen Molenaar, it's got some artistic merit and sure, it lights up outside places really nicely... but who cares? It's a giant light fitting that looks like a spaceship, and that's all you need to know. [Jeroenmolenaar via BBG]

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The 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge has just concluded with some pretty astonishing imagery in the winning slots. This picture, dubbed "Glass Forest," is a scanning electron micrograph of diatoms (weird unicellular algae) clinging to a marine worm, and won the photography category: to my eyes it looks half like a palm tree and half like a Star Trek effect. The illustration category winner is even more amazing.

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Some very talented individuals at the Japanese company Hot Toys have developed 1:6 scale Iron Man Mark I, II and III figures that feature an absolutely extraordinary level of detail. Seriously though—just look at Stark's face. Sure he looks kind of Japanese but I'll be damned if that is not the best Robert Downey Jr. has ever looked in tiny plastic form. Details are scarce, but more info is expected to be released sometime "soon." I can't wait to find out how much I can't afford to buy this!

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Made by Ryan Cashman, this movie shows you that with a chunk of ingenuity and a huge bucket-load of patience you can make movies with any old DSLR. Ryan's clip of an LED pianist was made with nothing more sophisticated than a green keychain LED and a Canon digital Rebel. He took a sequence of 20-30 second exposures, and strung them together later into an animated movie with original music. HD-video DSLRs? Pah... this is real art. [Vimeo via Wired]

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The design team Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT) isn't the first to take the old "face vase" optical illusion seriously, but it may be the first to attempt to create actual portraits in the thin air surrounding pottery. "Heroes of the Invisible" forms the faces of designer/architect Mies van der Rohe and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, chosen for being "two figures who explored the idea of the invisible in very different ways." (Call it aesthetics, but I also find this video of the vase to provide remarkable respite from hangover.) If you happen to worship Mies van der Rohe and Marconi, too, you can buy the high-gloss black vase, but its price is undisclosed, presumed ridiculous. [FAT via Dezeen]

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By Eric Joyner, much of his robotic-themed work is available in fine art prints starting at $US225. You can also pick up his recently released book, Robots and Donuts, which features 175 pages of full colour art for a more impulse-buy-worthy $US23. [Book Preview and Eric Joyner via OpticalPoptitude]

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