This is a series of photographs from Mineralblu Photography of some Twinzik cosplayers dressed as Simon Petrikov (the future Ice King) and Marceline from Adventure Time. Touching, isn’t it? You? You should be not touching right now. Put your hands down. I SAID PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN. Why do you always have to touch everything anyways? You’re like a child. Let me guess — you also have to see what the bathroom looks like whenever you go somewhere new. Jk jk, that’s totally normal. I’m always hoping to see one of those little kiddy urinals or a bathroom attendant. Oh, like I’m the only one who plays bathroom bingo?
Hit the jump for several more of the impressiveness.
I never owned a Tamagotchi keychain pet in the 90′s because I’m not a girl and I was born with absolutely zero nurturing instincts. But maybe you did have one. And maybe now you want to rekindle that feeling of a new pet dying every day and piss away your phone battery at the same time. Enter the Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. Android app from Bandai and Sync Beats Entertainment. It’s a Tamagotchi keychain, but on your phone. Truthfully, I can’t even believe I’m writing about it because it’s 80-degrees outside and my body is begging me to finish work so I can go get a beer on a patio somewhere. I let myself down a LOT, but not when it comes to keeping drinking promises. That’s like, one thing I’m good at. “Wow, such a triumph of the human spirit.” I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not but I also don’t care because it’s Friday and I am OUT OF HERE, SUCKERS. *slams laptop, waits a few minutes, then slowly reopens and keeps working* I hate the sun anyways. “But what about the beer?” The beer! *smashes laptop over knee, dives out window*
Hit the jump for a video.
If you only watch one video today, it should be this one. You will discover that it is footage of a DIY LEGO pancake maker which is, in my expert opinion, the best thing to come out of Norway since the fjords. Created by Miguel Valenzuela, an American maker abroad, the project has been around for a few years but this video shows us how the project works in detail, further proving that the nascent robotic-pancake-making scene is a cultural juggernaut waiting to explode.
The project uses LEGO and a ketchup bottle to squirt and cook pancake batter on a built-in griddle. While it is not able to feed us directly using a robotic arm, I definitely see a future for this sort of device in the homes of the catastrophically DIY-oriented, because I’d personally be afraid to trust LEGO to cook my pancakes for me.
If you want to make your own pancake bot, simply head over here and see Miguel’s step-by-step instructions or view this video again and again, marveling at how amazing those pancakes must taste on a hungover Sunday morning.
They’re looking to go to Maker Faire in San Francisco this year and they’re looking for donations so please be generous.
Apple is aggressively ramping up its iPhone 5 supply chain in order to make sure that customers looking for the smartphone can get their hands on it easily and quickly come the holidays, according to stock checks and supply analysis conducted by Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster (via Fortune). The analyst and his team conducted nightly checks of supplies at 100 Apple Stores in the U.S., and found that stock levels have improved significantly during the past 10 days, with availability of AT&T and Verizon climbing fast, and Sprint also remaining consistent after having risen previously.
Apple also recently improved the availability of its iPhone 5 models via its online store to two weeks, a slight but significant improvement from the 2-3 weeks it has been promising since earlier in November. Based on current availability trends, Piper Jaffray estimates that Apple will have same-day stock of iPhone 5s in most stores within two weeks, Munster concludes in the note he issued to investors Wednesday.
The last few years have been tremendously successful for Apple in terms of holiday iPhone sales, culminating in banner years in 2010 and 2011 thanks to the new fall release schedule for iPhones, which used to go on sale beginning in June. For Apple to continue to capitalize on holiday shopper appetite for its latest smartphone, the company needed to address supply bottlenecks and reported issues with manufacturing partners in order to make sure that customers shopping for the iPhone 5 could find it in stores and online. Supply chain optimization is one of CEO Tim Cook’s specialties, and it seems like the efforts he and his company have taken so far will indeed help make sure everyone who wants to give an iPhone 5 as a gift this year should be able to.
Faceshift is a new motion capture utility that does an impressive job of replicating facial movements with barely any noticeable delay. The technology relies on Microsoft’s ever-capable Kinect camera to pull in the 3D data it needs to mirror your expressions, though Faceshift’s creators have done an admirable job refining the device’s face recognition capabilities. Seeing even the most slight movements replicated by an on-screen avatar brings to mind the top-notch motion capture we’ve seen in the video game industry in recent years, led most notably by LA Noire.
And gaming is an area where Faceshift could present new opportunities to developers. An SDK targeted at animators and game creators has been released, though it wouldn’t…
According to astronomers, star formation across the universe is at an all time low, some 30 times less than it was at its height 11-billion years ago. They also speculate only another 5% more stars being formed in the future. Well folks, looks like it’s all downhill from here. *prepping the Kool-Aid*
It turns out that half the stars in existence now formed more than 9 billion years ago, and it took just 2 billion years to form all of them. The other half took almost five times as long to produce. If this trend continues, the universe will only get 5 percent more stars, even if we wait forever, the scientists say.
“We are clearly living in a universe dominated by old stars. All of the action in the universe occurred billions of years ago,” Sobral said in a statement.
I mean sure 5% more stars is still a TON of new stars, It’s just weird to think that the universe as an old folk’s home. You think space smells like moth balls and stale urine too? I hope not. One time we went to sing Christmas carols at a retirement home and this one old lady farted and didn’t notice. I laughed about it at the time but now it just makes me cripplingly depressed. Unless — UNLESS — she just pretended to not notice because she knew she could get away with gassing us when we’re only a quarter of the way through ‘We Wish You A Marry Christmas’, in which case that makes me excited to get old.
Thanks to OD Wan Kenobi, who agrees the universe will never stop producing new stars as long as we keep having baby boys. Get it? Sons/suns. I’m a shameful idiot and should be shunned by my village.
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Rumors have swirled that Microsoft is developing a high-powered 7-inch gaming tablet dubbed Xbox Surface, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of Microsoft’s homegrown hardware brands. Such a move would change the landscape of Microsoft’s Xbox and portable game initiatives. It would mark a reversal for the company, which has stayed out of the increasingly challenging handheld space in favor of promoting Windows Phone as part of its ecosystem battle. However, it would be in keeping with Steve Ballmer’s promise (or is it OEM warning?) to expect more hardware from Microsoft. As the tablet was partly Apple’s answer to the netbook, it could also be Microsoft’s answer to the PlayStation Vita.
Continue reading Switched On: The time is right for Xbox Surface
Filed under: Gaming, Tablets, Microsoft
Switched On: The time is right for Xbox Surface originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If you found the new lineup of Vizio TVs announced last month interesting, then you might want to check out some potential accessories. Vizio hopes that soundbars will be at the top of that list with four new models available online and in stores in time for the holidays. The line is divided in half between the E-Series and the M-Series, with the extra $ 20 that the M-Series costs buying you a small display and controls up top. Within each series, you have the option to pay an extra $ 100 for a wireless subwoofer. All four of them do feature SRS TruVolume and TruSurround, though. The full release is available after the break, but sadly doesn’t include as many details as you might want, so you may way to check out Vizio’s website for more.
Continue reading Four new soundbars from Vizio, just in time for the holidays
Filed under: HD
Four new soundbars from Vizio, just in time for the holidays originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Nov 2012 21:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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One of the interesting omissions from Microsoft’s recently launched Windows Phone 8 operating system is the lack of a notification center. Android and iOS both include a system to collect the various alerts triggered by applications, but Microsoft is lacking that crucial element. During a session on notifications at Build today, Microsoft’s Thomas Fennel strongly hinted that the company is considering a notification center for Windows Phone.
“Because we ran out of time,” admitted Fennel, after being questioned on the lack of notification center by an audience member. “It’s very very important to me… we get tons of feedback from developers that they want something like that as well. I promise we’re thinking very very hard on that one.”…
LG’s been stepping up its mobile game recently, with the Optimus G being the firm’s clearest display of podium-position ambitions yet. And just like its regional neighbors, it’s getting in on the “explaining-ideas-behind-concepts” video action. In this clip we see senior research engineer, Sebastian Hochan Song, explain the inspiration and process behind the new phone’s QSlide multitasking function. Again, like its fellow Korean nationals, nature and the real world play a heavy part in the idea process. Head past the break if you want to see LG’s thoughts about pushing Android multitasking forward, and keep an eagle eye out for one of our very own editors’ quick cameo appearance.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, LG
LG tells the story behind QSlide multitasking, won’t be mad if you tweet at the same time (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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