Category: Curiosities

Ring ring

Bluetooth headsets make people look like idiots. Talking to thin air makes a man look crazy. Talking to your hand is only marginally better…

But that’s what these little ring things are going to do

It’s just a concept at this stage…

“The color rings are an accessory for cell phones that are inspired in the gestural language of the use of the phone. It is conceived as an extension of the hand, which makes their use a more natural one, and more comfortable and more attractive as well. The rings are thought to be either an electronic component, or a fashion accessory. They were designed to be worn in the thumb and pinkie fingers, and work as a microphone and headset, respectively. These, interconnected wirelessly with the phone, allow responding calls only by separating the fingers and speaking, using distance sensors between rings to activate the call.”

Via the design blog.

Mario’s poker face

It’s not surprising the lengths Mario fans will go to to pay homage to the Italian plumber. He is, afterall, the father of video games…

Making Mario with poker chips is one thing

Making him with a Rubiks Cubes is slightly more impressive

But with a display of coloured Pepsi boxes in a grocery store – that’s an entirely more awesome matter…

Popped Eye

Popeye is an incredibly freaky character. At least when you remove the cartoony makeup.

Found here.

Love meat tender

This meat tenderiser has a nice ring to it.

One up radish

I remember growing radishes in school. They tasted ok fresh from the ground, but I’ve never really had cause to purchase them…

Until now.

Wiinatomy

How does the Wii work? I’m sure there’s all sorts of Nintendo technical jargon to explain it – but I suspect it’s all lies and this is closer to the truth

Wheely good idea

This is, without question, the best in car invention ever, or at least since the in car cooking stuff I featured ages ago.

Coming a cropper

I’ve spent a fair bit of time playing Farmville on Facebook. I recently overcame my addiction.

This picture, from some other Farmviller named Jeff, is almost enough to lure me back…

Marvellous Disney

Disney bought Marvel a couple of weeks ago. You may or may not be aware of this.

It prompted a series of Marvel/Disney mash-ups (like these, these and these) as fans of both came to terms with the new stablemates…

Here are some of my favourites…

Watch out for Germans with baseball bats

I love how websites can collect data and make recommendations that are useful these days. iTune’s Genius thing is awesome, and Amazon’s book recommendations based on what others bought with books I’ve picked have led me to a couple of purchases… but this is just beautiful

Found here

Five smooth criminals

Some criminals are clearly better motivated than others, and some clearly come with more ingenuity… but here are five funny crime stories from this week…

From here.

This guy robbed a woman and then went back to ask her out on a date…

This one’s actually pretty clever… a pair of street criminals in India have a nice little racket where one surreptitiously squirts poo on foreigners shoes in crowds – and the other runs a shoe shining business and points out his partner’s crime.

This guy is claiming innocence on some 37 speeding tickets because his monkey mask means police can’t definitively say that he’s behind the wheel.

One little piggy went to market, while this guy buried a gun in his fat rolls (Eglon style) and tried to smuggle it into prison.

And finally, this guy slipped a loaded gun into his pants and left the safety off. You’ll never guess what happened.

Kung Pong

Take two of my childhood favourites. Combine them. And you have perfect blog fodder. Like this Ping Pong/Street Fighter mashup…

A wee little man

There are pointless USB devices and then there are USB devices created by Japanese USB company Thanko.

Thanko will never be devoid of USB ideas because they’ve veered well and truly away from the path of the practical and into the realms of the completely bizarre.

And so, in this tradition, I give you this urinating USB fountain – complete with a one litre water tank (a significant portion of your recommended daily water intake).

Do with it what you will. I suggest you don’t buy it. But if you want to you can go here.

I found this here.

All the trappings

The humble mouse trap has not really evolved in my lifetime – despite the complexity offered by the Rube Goldbergesque “Mouse Trap” board game.

This designer, Sarah Dery, obviously got sick of picking up dead mice…

Be a blockhead


Tetris makes you smarter. Which makes Robyn the smartest of all my Facebook friends.

This is a scientifically proven fact (well, almost) backed up by proper medical research… Here’s the study.

Here’s the summary from wired

“The study, funded by Tetris‘ makers and authored by investigators at the Mind Research Network in New Mexico, shows that playing the classic puzzle game had two distinct effects on the brains of research subjects: Some areas in the brain showed greater efficiency (the blue areas in the diagram above), and different areas showed thicker cortexes, which is a sign of more grey matter (red).”