The best parody of The Smiths ever – from, err, Horrible Histories
From Paisley to Geometric – this season’s best Patterned Shirts
The 11 hottest new psych bands – Hidden Masters, Hounds Tooth, Magnetic Mind…
Style – Summer Hats round up – Zara, Fred Perry, Ted Baker and more
5 ALTEC LANSING INMOTION iM7
One of the best all-round dock/speaker systems for the iPod. It’s light and small enough to be truly portable, but it also kicks out enough sound to fill all but the largest of rooms. Oh, and it’s also about 70 quid cheaper than Apple’s bulky iPod Hi-Fi. BUY IT
Name Carlos Ray ‘Chuck’ Norris.
Job Martial arts legend, all-American hero.
Special powers Kicking ‘ass’, wearing tight jeans/cowboy boots, maintaining a well-groomed beard.
He says ‘Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.’
They say ‘Guns don’t kill people. Chuck Norris kills people.’ [ChuckNorrisFacts.com]
For more hot Chuck action, including a hilarious YouTube video, click below…
So this is the story of a regular American guy called Jeff Kinder. One day Jeff decided to convert his crappy basement into an Eighties-style videogame arcade, or ‘Dragon’s Lair’, as he likes to call it. As you do. He pretty much had to destroy half his house to do this. Was this epic feat of geeky home improvement worth it? We think so, but you can judge for yourself… LINK
Name Bob Ross.
Job TV artist – Bob Ross was America’s answer to Rolf Harris. His TV show, The Joy of Painting, was watched by millions. He passed away in 1995.
Special powers Painting log cabins and mountain scenes. Using his awesomely relaxing ‘Voice of God’ to send you to sleep.
He says ‘I’m just gonna paint me a happy little tree.’
They say ‘The cloud is dead, the fog has cleared, the sun is peeking through a happy little tree. Bob Ross? Yes, he’s underground…’ [Avant-garde hip-hop group cLOUDDEAD namecheck Bob in the lyrics to their song 'And All You Can Do Is Laugh, part 1']
To see Bob in action (highly recommended if you’re feeling stressed), click below…
It may look like something Dr Frankenstein would keep in his lab, but in fact this set of lamps is something you can make yourself. Even if you’re don’t have the skills of your average lunatic scientist. The instructions can be found on Instructables, with my favourite bit being the dire disclaimer at the start:
So let me get this straight. VW has teamed up with guitar firm First Act to make an axe that you can play through your car’s sound system? Isn’t that a bit dangerous? Imagine if Clarkson gets his hands on it, and starts test-driving motors while cranking out the solo from Born To Be Wild. Grim.
Yet it’s true. According to Spin.com, anyone buying or leasing a model from VW’s 2007 range will get the guitar, complete with a VW logo on it and their own vehicle identification number. Better still, Slash is in the adverts. Obviously, the idea is not to drive and twiddle, but to stop your car before plugging in. A prize to the first rawk band to drive it up a mountain and recreate Jon Bon Jovi’s ‘Blaze Of Glory’ video. Except with a car in it, obviously.
Name Duncan, aka Man-at-Arms.
Job Watching He-Man’s back, inventing shit, being foster father to Teela.
Special powers Master of all weapons. Uncle-like wisdom. Looking like Nigel Mansell.
He says ‘I got your back He-Man, don’t worry ’bout a thing…’ (Or something like that)
They say ‘He has an understanding fatherly voice and rarely loses his temper. However, he is often infuriated by court jester Orko.’ [Wikipedia]
To watch Man-at Arms in action, click below…
Introducing the USB-powered hamster wheel. If you don’t already own a hamster, here’s the perfect reason to buy one. [Stuff]
New Creative Xtreme Fidelity gizmo claims to make your MP3s sound better than CDs. Could it be magic? [Tech Digest]
Nokia unveils Wibree – just like Bluetooth but more energy efficient. [BBC]
Cool video of the late Bob Ross, America’s answer to Rolf Harris, painting a mountain on some fake wood. More captivating than it sounds… [Drawn!]
It’s ‘Kitchen Week’ over at Dethroner, the ‘field guide for the modern man’. [Dethroner]
Brandish won’t feature keyboards very often, because keyboards are fricking dull. However, we’ll obviously make an exception for a keyboard that a) claims to be the ‘world’s most advanced keyboard’ and b) looks like it’s been ripped out of Darth Vader‘s TIE fighter. Logitech’s new diNovo Edge is created from a single piece of black Plexiglass, set into a
brushed-aluminum frame. It features touch-sensitive volume,
pointer, and scrolling controls, and function icons that appear when
you need them and disappear when you don’t. It’s also features Bluetooth. ‘Excellent (evil laugh) – we’ll take 10,000 for the new Death Star… it costs a hundred and fity quid, you say? Hmm, can we come to some sort of deal?’ LOGITECH
5 ROBOTAN TOILET-ROLL HOLDER
This ceramic bog-roll holder is available in black, white, yellow or red, from excellent gadget website Audiocubes, which sells all sorts of cool, out-of-stock Japanese stuff. It even comes with a free toilet roll, so you can wipe ‘in a robot stylee’ straight away. The best kind of toilet humour. BUY IT
Man buys Xbox on eBay, comes wrapped in soiled tracksuit bottoms and towel (see picture). Hadn’t he heard of bubblewrap? [Boing Boing]
Napster turns Japanese. [BBC]
Cnet UK reveals its gadgets of the year. [Cnet]
Interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. [Time]
How to dismantle an atomic bomb. Handy to know. [Wired]
According to gadget site Firebox.com, they’ve "never really seen anything that caters for the more sophisticated, style-savvy Star Wars fan". What? So you can’t be a style-savvy sophisticate who ALSO enjoys waving a cheap imported plastic light-sabre around down the park? Bah. Anyway, Firebox qualifies its remark with "Until now", as they’re selling a bunch of limited-edition canvas prints from the films.
Here’s the science bit *swishes hair Aniston-style*: each picture’s been created using a process called ‘Giclee’, which apparently involves generating the image digitally, then reproducing it using fine inks. There’s shots of Darth Vader, an iconic Stormtrooper, Boba Fett, the droids and the Millennium Falcon among others, and they’re going for between £55 and £90 depending on what size and pic you choose.
Blogger and artist Slinkachu takes tiny painted models into the grimy streets of
London and photographs them in interesting places, such as in front of Big Ben (see picture). The result is the most charming street art project we’ve seen today. LINK [Via Drawn!]
After you’ve checked out Slinkachu’s Little People project, pay a visit to his other site, the equally charming A World of Birds.
The internetweb can be a frustrating place, but there are ways to cope with it. No, not chucking your PC through the nearest window. Except in extreme circumstances. A better way to let off steam is to afflict an offending website with, say, a plague of flies, or some messy graffiti, or best of all an out-of-control chainsaw. The fun is provided by website Netdisaster, which gets you to enter a website, and a disaster, and then plays it out in front of your eyes. It’s not big, clever or funny beyond the first couple of minutes, but if it prevents you from those pricey window/computer repair bills, it’s got to be worth a look.
You probably wouldn’t want to drive it, but it’d look ACE in the driveway. And it brings a whole new meaning to the phrase drive-by-wire. Details are scarce on this see-through Beetle, which I found on Hemmings Auto Blogs, other than that it does work, and is one of the few cars that would probably come off worse in a clash with a cyclist. As a bonus, if you get fed up with it, you can probably reconfigure it into a neat garden table…
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