Today on Modern Mechanix we have an psychic automaton from 1924 that reads your thoughts through the "radioplasm". The same page also has a prediction for personal radios that sound a lot like cell phones. Looking for a BBQ or trash burner that doesn't ruin the rustic look of your backyard? Check out this concrete tree stump cooker. In 1950 someone decided to cross a balloon with a kite, and came up with a Kytoon. We also have an article titled "Scientific Hoaxes that Have Fooled the World" as well as a machine that makes ice cream instantly. Lastly we have very odd, unbalanced looking concept car that looks like it was made by welding together the fronts of two other cars.

Here's a clip from "Ikarie XB 1," a Soviet-era sci-fi flick from Czechoslovakia in 1963, in which cosmonauts explore a derelict space station. I'm watching it now. It's gorgeous. I want a copy of this—and I can have one, it seems, from XploitedCinema.com. ($30, but it's in PAL.) I would also like my apartment to look like these sets. I'l get to work on that.

From the Youtube description:

The film is generally apolitical, except for this remarkable scene, in which the explorers enter a derelict 20th Century space craft, littered with evidence of capitalist immorality. The visuals are striking. Corpses of tuxedo-clad, gambling westerners, their bodies preserved by open vacuum. The crew killed by their own chemical hand-weapons as they fought over dwindling oxygen. The ship laden with nuclear weapons -- still active after centuries.

Exploring derelict space ship in rare Soviet-style SF film [Youtube] (Thanks, Brownlee!)

The "Brugo" mug has a trick top that lets you tip in a small amount of coffee to cool, letting you leave the rest of your coffee as hot for as long as possible. It sounds like a lot of trouble, but that's never stopped coffee nerds.

No price or availability information yet.

I first read the "Lock" setting on the lid as "Luck" and imagined a second compartment that would release a factory-selected random flavor into your mouth.

Product Page [MyFav-Things.com via Crib Candy via Coolest-Gadgets]

Image: Kerry Redshaw

Neatorama has a fun overview of the early history of computing, discussing famous computing devices like the Antikythera Mechanism and Babbage's Difference Engine, as well as ones I'd heard of but never actually seen, like Leibniz' Stepped Reckoner.

Leibniz’s design used a special type of gear called the Stepped Drum or Leibniz wheel, a cylinder with nine bar-shaped teeth along its length. He named his machine the Staffelwalze or the Stepped Reckoner.

The machine was a marked improvement from Pascal’s design and could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and even evaluate square roots by a series of additions.

The Wonderful World of Early Computing [Neatorama]

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is the bent brain behind "Zero Punctuation," the hilariously cutting weekly videogame review program that has been the first legitimate breakout hit from the gaming community in recent memory. If you haven't seen "Zero Punctuation," well, it's best watched and not explained. (The latest episode is below.) You might want to turn down your speakers if the boss isn't a fan of wonderfully vivid vulgarity.

BBG: What's the typical creative process you follow when making these videos? Are you taking notes as you play the game or do you wait until the very end?

Yahtzee: I usually take a few days to play through the game and I'll usually finish it, or get as far as I can before I feel I can formulate an opinion. After that I'll devote a day to writing the script. I don't take notes, but I'll usually latch onto maybe 4 or 5 points and get a paragraph or two out of each. I generally compare the text to older reviews then to make sure I've written enough. Then comes making the images, which usually takes me 2 or 3 days. I used to record the speech first, but I found that I'd sometimes want to make changes to the script while making the images, especially if I wanted to reword a phrase that I found too hard to visualise. Once the images are done, recording the narration and stringing it all together in Windows Movie Maker is the easy part.

BBG: What was the inspiration behind using the animation instead of, say, your yapping head?

Yahtzee: The inspiration for the animation was me not possessing a video camera or any similar means of recording and wondering if I could make a video out of still images and narration.

BBG: How'd you end up with The Escapist? Have you been surprised by your success?

Yahtzee: I put my first two videos on Youtube and of the many offers of work that would come my way over the next few months, The Escapist were the first. They're good people and I am treated well with a big sack of money at the start of every month. The success has been pretty surprising, and I'm also doing my best to exploit it as best I can; I've gotten two free trips abroad so far and been making decent headway on my main ambition to be a professional game designer.

BBG: What's your favorite gag so far? Have you felt like you've slipped any in that people have missed?

Yahtzee: I think my favourite one is still the illustration of the developers of Heavenly Sword, 'Ninja Theory', as a ninja teaching another ninja with a blackboard and pointer. I don't know why, it just stays with me. And yes, I'm pretty sure a lot of them get missed, most people tell me they usually watch the videos over and over again to catch all the stuff they didn't see properly. One of my favourite techniques is to flash up more text than can reasonably by read in the time given. It's like a subliminal challenge or something.
 
BBG: Do you think it's easier to pull off all the vulgarity by not being on camera?
 
Yahtzee: I certainly don't feel as self-conscious as I would do if I were on camera. I have terrible presenting discipline. I never look in the right way while I'm recording, I usually stare at the ceiling and rock back and forth in my chair. If you listen very hard you can sometimes hear my chair squeaking while I talk. It probably needs some screws tightening.

BBG: What's your most beloved game?
 
Yahtzee: I have a well-documented love of Silent Hill 2 for its excellent atmosphere and storytelling, but as for games that balance good gameplay and story I'd say Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and probably Portal, too. I like games that mesh gameplay and story well, not too much one way or the other.

BBG: So what's next for you?

Yahtzee: I am working on a couple of things. I'm part of an indie game dev team here in Brisbane and we've got a couple of projects going, including a rather nice corporate contract I'm not supposed to talk about but which could be the big break we need. I'm also lending assistance to a professional studio here which I probably also shouldn't be  talking about. As for personal projects, not much at present. There's a couple of ideas I have on the go, it's just a matter of seeing which one holds my attention for longest.

Where do you go in minimalist design beyond the iPhone? For now it seems that flat slabs are the computer object design for the immediate future.

But what if the whole slab was a screen? That's a question answered by the "P-Per," a concept from the Chocolate Design Agency showing a phone that is wrapped in an e-Paper display, allowing it to pull off some pretty nifty transparency tricks with its camera. (There's nothing that would stop the iPhone or any other camera phone from doing this to a limited extent right now except for camera refresh rates and the depth of focus.)

P-Per Design Concept is Sweet, Shames My iPhone [Swongled via Gizmodo]

• Gaming Headset – SteelSeries 4H headset with microphone for $19, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Amazon Sale – The Friday Sale is here, including the Leatherman New Wave multitool for $50, shipped and the HP iPaq 310 GPS unit for $200 shipped (iffy reviews on the GPS, though). [Amazon]

• Keyboard – Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard for $14, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Sporting Goods – Cabela's Winter Clearance sale includes items up to 70% off. [Dealnews]

• Breathalyzer – Personal Alcohol Detector for $22, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Desktop PC – Today's Woot! is a refurbished HP Pavilion Elite m9040n Desktop Computer for $705, shipped.

Since it appears I'll be living with my current laptop for a while longer, I'm going to go ahead and get it laser etched. I've wanted this woodcut on the front for a while now, but I haven't been able to find any programs which can properly turn those cuts into vectors. A friend gave me an old Adobe program that worked well, except the vectors came out with lots of solid white areas, too, instead of being the sort of monotone vectors that a laser inscribing machine can actually understand.

Any ideas?

Image: ChrisDag

Yup.

(More pictures at the link below.)

When data center cabling becomes art [Royal.Pingdom.com]

The opening paragraph from Newsweek's Steven Levy's Macbook Air review:

Early in my writing career, I had an assignment to follow around a mohel--the guy who does ritual circumcisions in the Jewish tradition. My subject learned the trade by watching his dad, a renowned figure in the field. One day, father told son he was ready to handle the tools himself. Why now, the son wanted to know. "Most students ask me how much to take off," the senior explained. "You asked me how much to leave on."

Apple faced a similar question when designing the MacBook Air, the subnotebook computer that goes on sale next week.

Any writer would be proud to add that to their clips.

The Skinny on the MacBook Air [Newsweek.com]

What 1960 event employed 160,000 workers, 1,080,000 pencils, 260,000 pocket pencil sharpeners, 2,850,000 scratch pads and several giant UNIVAC computers? Find out today on Modern Mechanix. If you have any airplane drop tanks lying around, they make a really nifty backyard space ship. Worried about your job since you lost your arm in that milling machine incident? Try a Carnes Artificial Arm and just hope that you don't get replaced by a glass robot. Also today, learn what you get when you combine fine dining with a viewmaster and learn about the giant solar space condom.

My photography is intermittent at best. Sometimes I love my Canon Digital Rebel XT, while other times I'd rather just leave it at home and take crappy snapshots with my phone. I wait so long between sessions that I forget half of the theory I learned, meaning I've got to figure it all out again when I next pick it up. I bought a flash which I used religiously for a while, then stripped the whole rig down to just a 50mm fixed focus lens and tried to learn how to shoot without using any flash at all.

I think I know a bit more about photography than the average person and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what my XT can do. That's why I don't talk up every new DSLR or camera that comes out here on BBG, because they so rarely do anything that the majority of amateur shooters will find useful. The low end is fine for almost everyone. Most people with DSLRs don't even swap out the kit lens.

Which is why I think the new Canon Rebel XSi (EOS 450D in the rest of the world) is pretty noteworthy, especially for a sub-$1,000 camera. Many of the features have been seen on other high-end cameras, like the "Live View" that shows what's coming through the lens on the 3-inch LCD (as well as through the viewfinder via the prism). But I think I'm most happy about the new kit lens, an 18-55mm lens with Canon's electronic Image Stabilization, a feature absent from most lower-end Canon lenses.

Press Release [DPReview.com]

Jon C. writes:

Yesterday I heard this on CBC that CSIS runs it's own museum that is only open to CSIS employees.  Better still, they have a souvenir shop that, again is only open to spies, but you list the item you want and stuff cash in an envelope, making what I assume is a dead-drop at the gift shop, in order to buy things.  It sounds kind of fun for the spies, but I'd really like a Cold War radio-pen-decoder-syringe too.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get us pictures from inside this museum.

But since that is a lot of work, the CSIS agency has put a virtual museum online with a few of the awesome spy artifacts, such as this toy truck that concealed a microdot reader and a one time pad. (The image is just of the flip-up engine that held the reader.)

Want to buy CSIS souvenirs? You'll need security clearance [The Globe & Mail]

The "I Am Not a Paper Cup..." is a double-walled porcelain mug with a silicone lid, giving you the feel of those disposable paper coffee cups without all the waste. It's not on sale until February, but should cost about $20.

It reminds me of Graham Hill's "We Are Happy to Serve You" mug.

Product Page [DCIGift.com via Josh Spear]

It's been nine years since the first LEGO Star Wars models were released and LEGO has asked the readers of The Brothers Brick which sets they'd like to see as 10th anniversary models for 2009. You can leave your suggestions in their comments.

What set would you want for the 10th anniversary of LEGO Star Wars? [Brothers-Brick.com]

Image: Gizmag.com

Yamaha Australia has built two 15-meter long fish tank trailers called the "SupaTanks" to be wheeled around to dealerships and boat shows. Each SupaTank will include 20 live fish. Can fish get car sickness?

The SupaTank is quite unique because it demonstrates all the underwater action when a fish is caught. The Yamaha SupaTank show is designed to both educate families on how to safely and successfully learn to fish along with displaying the fascinating underwater feeding behaviours of fish. In full view of wide-eyed spectators, the fish can be seen stalking and attacking the lures cast by participants from the elevated ‘half-tinny’ casting platform complete with Yamaha four stroke outboard motor.

Yamaha builds a giant fishtank on wheels [Gizmag]

iTunes movie rentals, unlimited Netflix downloads, Blu-ray finally pulling ahead—all this stuff has been making me think about the ways we'll get movies in the near future and what format may become the true heir of DVD. Especially the Netflix downloads. I've been really taking advantage of those.

It's not my aim to declare a winner or anything silly like that. There are wildly different price points and distribution permissions. But in the interest of better understanding the market as it is today, I've been talking to some companies as well as pulling some numbers out of press releases and news stories, trying to get some general state of the movie and television distribution market.

Here's how I worked up the numbers and let me warn you: many of these numbers are totally made up. I tried to come up with the numbers conservatively, but some companies do not make their numbers public, while others may have published figures that I just ended up missing. By all means, if you've got more solid numbers or criticisms of my formulae to add, please do so.

• Apple

These were fairly easy. Jobs said at Macworld that they've sold 7 million movies and 125 million TV shows since they started selling in iTunes over two years ago. I'm going to presume an increasing number of video-capable iPods and more content on iTunes as well as a natural curve up for a new service would put, say, half of those numbers in 2007. I'm trying to just focus on movies, so we'll say 3.5 million.

• Netflix

Netflix confirmed to me that they had 5 million digital download views in June when they threw the doors to the service open to all customers. Six weeks later they had 10 million views. After that they wouldn't share any more data. So let's call it five million a month for the rest of the year, for a total of 30 million views.

(Interestingly, Netflix really wanted to underline that they make no distinction between the mailed discs and the streaming content now. "The service is Netflix.  DVDs by mail and streaming are features of the Netflix service.")

• Microsoft Xbox

You can download HD movies and television on Xbox Live Marketplace, but Microsoft declined to share sales numbers with me.

• Comcast Video on Demand

According to this press release rewrite, Comcast's VOC had "1 billion hours of on-demand content watched this year alone, with 250 million views each month and 100 views each second." This included "205 million free movies; 376 million kids shows; 449 million music videos and programs; and 62 million sports and fitness programs." So, say, 3 billion views a year, but let's focus primarily on the movies, so 205 million.

• Blu-Ray

Software sales were reported by the Blu-ray Disc Association as 5.6 million units.

• HD DVD

I couldn't get HD DVD unit sales back in time, but the Blu-ray camps says their discs sold 2:1 with HD DVD last year, so let's take half of the Blu-ray numbers and call HD DVD 2.8 million units.

• DVD

Variety reported DVD sales at $16 billion, with rentals at $7.5 billion. Obviously DVD sales continue to be the dominant vector for movies in the home. Those numbers are solid, but I'm now going to extrapolate some unit sales out of those which will not be. Let's say $16 a disc for sales, $5 a disc for rentals. That gives us...1 billion DVD sales or so and 1.5 billion rentals.

Conclusions

I told you I wasn't going to make any! Fine.

Obviously, DVD is still the clear champion. And while it's not fair to compare the streaming services to disc or iTunes downloads, I'm surprised at how many Comcast customers are watching video on demand. That's sort of crazy.

Blu-ray sales should pick up now that HD DVD is on the way out, but it still looks like digital distribution services (even leaving out Comcast) are going to grow right alongside high definition disc sales. HD optical discs will probably do fine as a niche product this generation, augmenting DVD as the catalogs are updated over the next decade, but (and here comes some crazy-yet-obvious guessing) this generation is probably it for optical discs. After the transition to Blu-ray was handled so poorly for customers, I sort of doubt anyone is going to want to make another transition to a higher fidelity disc, even in ten years. And obviously people are fine watching content that is even lower quality than DVD if they can get it quickly and easily.

• Video Streamer – HD Slingbox SOLO for $145, shipped. [Dealhack]

• Laptop – Dell XPS M1330 Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz 13" Laptop for $900, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Videogame – Amazon is taking pre-orders for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for $40. I think that'll be the MSRP of the game, but still, it's coming. PS3 only. [Dealnews]

• iPod Dock – Today's Woot! is the JBL Radial Speaker Dock for iPod for $125, shipped.

Afrigadget recently blogged about an inexpensive power source for Africa created by Dr. Cedrick Ngalande in Malawi. Today, the blog points to videos of the invention in action:

The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight.

Basically we have two chambers on either end of the rotating (pivoted) rod. The arrangement of the chambers is such that on either side of the rod, one chamber sits on top of the other (this is important). At the beginning of this operation, I fill the bottom chamber on each side with a yeast sugar solution. Each bottom chamber is always locked under pressure by special valves. Due to pressure the solution starts moving from a bottom chamber into its respective top chamber. Note that by moving upwards, the fluid’s center of gravity shifts, resulting in a mass imbalance which causes the wobbling.

Link to post with video.

Allan writes:

Core77 has launched the Greener Gadgets Design Competition to coincide with the upcoming Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City on February 1st. One of the unique elements of this competition is that finalists will be judged live, on stage at the end close of the competition by a panel and audience. (Well, their WORK will be judged!) Prize money is US$2500 for First Place and $1000 each for Second and Third place. All winners and notables will be published on Core77.com and Inhabitat.com.

It's often that designers talk about green and designing things in more sustainable ways, but here is a chance for professional designers, design students, and design enthusiasts to actually throw their hats into the ring and produce meaningful concepts that address these issues.

And it is my honor to announce that I will be in attendance and will give each of the winners a baleful, uncomfortably long stare, which is a prize beyond price.

Greener Gadgets Competition [Core77]

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at man-made lightning used for scientific research as well as a cool ferry that drives along the bottom while keeping the passengers above high and dry. In 1962 self-service gas pumps were novel enough to write about in a magazine. Solving a problem we all have, here is a handy clasp to convert your pants into knickers. Scientists had to enter this germ-free laboratory by diving through a pool of germicidal solution.  We also learned how to make a refrigerator that uses a gas flame to keep food cold.

Freeplay Energy is set to sell the "Freeplay Companion," an AM/FM radio with the typical Freeplay crank for powering the device, as well as an integrated solar panel, flashlight, and phone charger. The best thing is the price: around $30.

Press Release [PRNewsWire.com via Coolest-Gadgets]

Previously • Solio Magnesium Solar Charger Announced [BBG]
• Eton FR1000 Crank Radio with Walkie-Talkie [BBG]

Update: I had the wrong product image up. I've fixed it!

This is far off the beaten gadget path, but when ComicConnect's Ben Smith (who sold me my treasured "Wally Wood's 22 Panels that Always Work" paste-up) contacted me about a noteworthy upcoming auction, I figured there's a healthy enough overlap between gadget nerddom and comic fandom that you guys would find this interesting.

"First editions" are somewhat unknown in the world of comic books. Why reprint when there's a new issue out in a month? But one of the most notable books, the very first "Marvel Comics," was printed twice—a limited October, 1939 run of 80,000 copies, and a November run of 800,000 copies.

Steve Fishler, owner of the comics broker ComicConnect, got his hands on an October print in surprisingly good condition. And he wants you to buy it.

Fishler learned the story of the two printings after meeting Art Goodman back in '82 in the Marvel Comics offices. Art's brother Martin had been publisher of Timely, a small pulp novel imprint. After seeing the success of DC's Superman and Batman books, Timely took a stab at comics despite no prior history in the medium, hiring pulp cover artist Frank R. Paul to paint his first and only Marvel Comics cover.

"They expected the first issues to sit on the newsstands for weeks," said Fishler of the comic, which included the first appearances of Marvel stalwarts "The Human Torch," "Submariner," and "The Angel." "Two weeks later they went back to press."

"Pedigree" copies of "Marvel Comics"—technically not "#1," although "Marvel Mystery Comics #2" came soon after—have mostly been November issues, valued by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide between $21,250 for an issue in "Good" condition, up to $420,000 for an issue in "Near Mint." Overstreet notes the two separate printings but hasn't ever made a distinction in price, beyond noting that "some copies do not have the November imprint and could have a higher value." Fishler has estimated his copy as a "7.0" on the scale, putting it in the "Fine to Very Fine" range—somewhere in the $100,000 range in value, although Fishler is hesitant to guess what his copy will go for in his upcoming auction.

"November Marvel #1s have been going for below the listed price," he noted. It's possible that the appearance of a good-quality October issue will actually drive the price of November issues down.

We'll know in a couple of weeks. ComicConnect's auction starts on February 24th.

Auction Page [ComicConnect.com]

The Times profiles the "Clover," a $20,000 coffee brewing device that uses siphons and vacuum and the powered dreams of Colombian urchins to produce an apparently stupendous cup of Joseph.

Designed by three Stanford graduates, it lets the user program every feature of the brewing process, including temperature, water dose and extraction time. (It even has an Ethernet connection that can feed a complete record of its configurations to a Web database.) Not only is each cup brewed to order, but the way each cup is brewed can be tailored to a particular bean — light or dark roast, acidic or sweet, and so on.

The Clover works something like an inverted French press: coffee grounds go into a brew chamber, hot water shoots in and a powerful piston slowly lifts and plunges a filter, forcing the coffee out through a nozzle in the front. The final step, when a cake of spent grounds rises majestically to the top, is so titillating to coffee fanatics that one of them posted a clip of it on YouTube. [Of course the Times doesn't actually link to the Youtube vid and I can't find it. - Ed.]

...

A siphon pot has two stacked glass globes, and works a little like a macchinetta, that stove-top gadget wrongly called an espresso maker by generations of graduate students. As water vapor forces water into the upper globe the coffee grounds are stirred by hand with a bamboo paddle. (In Japan, siphon coffee masters carve their own paddles to fit the shape of their palms.)

The goal is to create a deep whirlpool in no more than four turns without touching the glass. Posture is important. So is timing: siphon coffee has a brewing cycle of 45 to 90 seconds.

Paging Tonx to the discussion.

At Last, a $20,000 Cup of Coffee [NYTimes.com via Core77] (What a shit headline, too. Sheesh.)

Update: Serious Eats points out that the company has a map showing all the locations of the machines in the US. [CloverEquipment.com]

Update 2: As many of you pointed out in the comments, I am a dumb. The picture above is a crazy Japanese thing mentioned in the article, but not the Clover. There are two distinct machines!

Guitar tuners are a dime a dozen, including ones with little motors that physically turn the pegs to Gibson's fully automatic "Robot guitars." Separate tuners are difficult to find when you're on stage, however, and the Robot guitar, while interesting, makes you play on an entirely new guitar. (And pay over two large for the privilege.)

I think the new "N-Tune" tuner is a nice compromise. It's basically just a simple digital tuner as found for $15 on the shelves of any guitar shop, but designed to slip under your existing guitar's volume knob. Pull the knob out and the N-Tune activates, cutting off output so you don't sound like a twerp while tuning back in. The tone to which the N-Tune thinks you're trying to tune lights up, while a green LED activates when you're on pitch.

The N-Tune is going to be $100 when it's out this month. Some installation will be required, of course, but nothing too onerous. They're sending me one to test, so I'll be digging into my Mexican Telecaster to do my own install. My thrash metal cover of "Froggy Went a'Courtin'" will sound better than ever.

Product Page [N-Tune]

On Dosenation, Erik "Techgnosis" Davis gives a short review of Steven Vedro's Digital Dharma: A User's Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere.

It is, if I may say, a deeply techgnostic text, almost a workbook of IT mysticism. Using a perspective loosely inspired from Ken Wilber’s integral thought, Vedro looks at a variety of electronic media technologies as expressions and reflections of the evolution of consciousness (which I tend to think is really a mutation). With not a small amount of audacity—especially for a telecommunications consultant—Vedro maps seven different communication regimes (telephony, peer-to-peer networks, pervasive computing, etc.) onto the classic system of the Hindu chakras. The muladhara chakra at the base of the spine, associated with security and earthly reality, gets linked to radio telegraphy, which not only needs a good ground connection but which formed the infrastructural basis of the electronic universe in the late nineteenth century. Later in the book, Vedro also connects the visionary third eye with digital compression, the array of algorithmic processes that drive the vast multiplication of concocted worlds that now make up the multi-perspectival matrix of digital reality.

Digital Dharma [Dosenation.com]

Camelbak, best known for their hydration backpacks with the "Bite-n-Sip" valve, have released a line of water bottles that incorporate the same valve, the better to prevent spills. I've got a generic Nalgene-type bottle I use for water all day, but when it's near empty the heavy cap often will pull it over, so I'm amenable to better cap solutions. On the other hand, I hate having to suck a trickle of water out of a bottle, preferring instead to gulp a torrent of tap water in quantity sufficient to feel the chill in my belly. The choices of first-world living are so harrowing!

Available in a few bland colors for $10 to $14, the Camelbak "Better Bottle" also has a clip on the lid for a carabiner, should you ever actually go outdoors.

Camelbak Better Bottle [Gear Patrol]

Previously • "Life Saver" Water Filtration Bottle [BBG]
• Gadget Bottle: Water Bottle with Nest for Your Stuff [BBG]
• Binibottle: Teen Invents Easy-Fill Water Bottle [BBG]
• Solar Bottle Uses Sun to Purify Water [BBG]
• Eight Reusable Water Bottles Compared [BBG]

Thesis Audio is an Italian audio equipment maker that crafts these hand-made turntables with stone platters—or as Audio Junkies describe them, "non-resonating stone plinths with..separate non-resonating stone subchassis...via a semi-rigid three-point suspension system."

I don't see a price, but if you're a vinyl dork with a problem this bad, I'm sure you're comfortable with a third mortgage.

Product Page [Hi-Fi-Center.it via Crave.CNET.com]

This knock-of "MP4 Player" not only plays music and video, it can emulate the NES and Game Boy Color. But even better, it can be recharged with built-in solar panels. That's right: you can play Faxanadu until the sun explodes.

It comes with 2GB of memory built in, which is plenty for NES and GB ROMs, although perhaps not music and movies, and can be expanded up to another 2GB with an SD card. Oh, and it's got a USB out to which other gadgets can be connected—not for data, but to be recharged from the solar panel.

It's $123.32 from China Vision, plus shipping. And despite very need for yet another device that can play emulated NES or GBA GBC games, I'm having a hard time talking myself out of buying one. If it played SNES games I'd probably take the plunge.

Catalog Page [ChinaVision.com via Albotas]