Joel Johnson

Fright Catalog's Animatronic Horrors, or Where I Would Have My Wedding Registry

When you get emails titled "Mechanized Attack Alligator for the Masses," you pretty much know you've got a winner. Dug North has spotted this animatronic alligator designed for haunted houses and fright shops, available for just shy of $9,000. It's from FrightCatalog.com, an online Halloween-themed store that obviously goes beyond just the traditional fake blood and skeleton masks.

Fright Catalog has a whole section dedicated to animated props, including...actually, let's take a look.

"Dead Fred Zombie Chaser" travels along the floor powered by four DC motors, screaming and groaning from his built-in speaker, pulling his entrails behind him. He's $2,650 but comes with a battery charger—and Fright Catalog's "Best Price Guarantee," their promise to beat any animated zombie retailer's price out there.

"Dead and Deader" is a coffin. It won't erupt with a cackling foam latex corpse until you give it AC power and a 100 PSI air compressor. Ask about their optional timer or motion sensor!

This little lady is almost $7k, which is cheaper than a real dead woman in most states.

"Acid Spitter" blasts guests with a air or water vapor while a variable bubble creates a boiling acid effect in the barrel itself. Throw a couple in your basement to recreate the contamination scene from Return of the Living Dead.

Three grand, air compressor and motion sensor not included.

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Puzzle Box Adds a Little Hellraiser to Gift Giving

My mother has a charming, if annoying gift-wrapping habit: she writes the name of the recipient in tiny script somewhere in the intricate patterns of packaging, forcing the screaming rabble of children and grandchildren to pause before each present is ripped open and its contents slathered all over our bodies. (In keeping with midwestern tradition, we gift each other only pork-derived salves.) My sister and I quickly learned how to beat the system, doing all our sorting before Christmas morning, arranging the gifts in a stacks that we could recognize but would not tip off our mother to our scheme so she could rearrange the packages.

So I should hate this puzzle gift box that Phil discovered—I think it's called "Movie Maze"; the company is "Magnif"—but I can't help but think of how much fun it will be to frustrate children with this in the future. You've ripped off the wrapping paper, you little bastards, but now you must think! Being an adult is awesome.

Solve puzzles before you can open a DVD, CD, book, money... [MAKE]

Joel Johnson

Emotiv EPOC Neuroheadset: Control Games with Thought

Emotiv will be selling this "EPOC" neuroheadset, allowing gamers to control characters simply by the power of thought. (Unlike previous systems, which required the hands to act as a proxy interface.) The headset will be available around the holidays for $300 with a custom game that will take advantage of the 30 different expressions which can be recognized, including:

immersion, excitement, meditation, tension and frustration; facial expressions such as smile, laugh, wink, crossed eyes, shock (eyebrows raised), anger (eyebrows furrowed), horizontal eye movement, smirk and grimace (clenched teeth); and cognitive actions such as push, pull, lift, drop and rotate (on six different axis) as well as a completely new category of action based on visualization, the first of which is the ability to make objects disappear.

The EPOC will be first released for the PC. I am less interested in how the EPOC will be used to control games and more interested in its use as a secondary interface method for general computing. I would love to be able to switch applications or control my media playback with only a raised eyebrow.

Kotaku's contemptible corsair Brian Crecente had a head-on with the EPOC at this year's Game Developer's Conference.

I was a little concerned with the underlying technology, though. From the demonstrations I saw and participated in, the device seemed mostly to detect whether you were or weren't doing one thing. In other words, it could tell when I was trying to float a rock or not trying. But it was hard to tell just how sophisticated that detection was. Could it, for instance, differentiate between my trying to levitate a rock and make one disappear? The Emotiv people said it absolutely could, but they didn't demonstrate that.

Press Release [BusinessWire.com via Crunchgear]

Joel Johnson

Disconcerting: The Sharper Image Is Kaput

The Sharper Image, the first organization to properly fetishize gadgetry as a lifestyle accessory and not just the domain of the obsessive, has filed for Chapter 11—and good riddance. The company has long hawked substandard, unimaginative products, like a cut-rate Sky Mall without all the whimsy (nor the captive audience).

And let's not even mention the retail stores, staffed by inept floor walkers and clogged with fake leather cases, ionic air lung scorchers and fake chromed plastic as far as the eye could see. Despite fond memories of fireside flips through its exotic pages, I am not upset to see the company go. It had long outlived its usefulness.

Sharper Image files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy [Reuters]

Joel Johnson

Clever Indie Game: Fez

"Fez" is one of the finalists in the 2008 Independent Games Festival awards. The conceit is deceptively simple: the protagonist avatar (the protavatar?) is a 2D character trapped in the 3D world. While that's been done before in games like Klonoa 2, the difference is that in Fez rotating the entire world reconfigures platforms that are out of depth on the Z-axis in 3D to still work in the plane in 2D. That doesn't make sense with me explaining it, I know, but watch the short clip and all should be clear.

Project Page [Kokoromi.com via Waxy]

Joel Johnson

Ariete SteakHouse Indoor Grill

The "SteakHouse" indoor grill's verical design is more than just a space-saving trick—and if you look at more of the pictures you'll realize it's not that small in the first place—but instead designed to allow fats to drain from the food into catch trays, preventing them from smoking next to the heating elements. Heating elements on both sides of the food tray speed up cooking times.

Is it worth €150? Probably not. But it's a striking piece of kitchen gear, looking more like commercial kitchen equipment than some other cheap, plastic grills.

Product Page [Ariete.net via Appliancist]

Joel Johnson

Alter-G G-Trainer Treadmill for Weightless Running

The "Alter-G G-Trainer," a treadmill which uses a compressed air chamber to lift and reduce the effective weight of its user, has been approved by the FDA for use in rehabilitation for injuries to the lower extremities. The G-Trainer can reduce up to 80% of lower body weight. Prices are probably somewhat extravagant, but unless you keep a rehabilitation chamber in your mad scientist fortress you'll likely only see the trainer when you send henchmen off to be restored to service.

Product Page [Alter-G.com via Oh Gizmo via MedGadget.com]

Joel Johnson

The Surprisingly Thoughtful Design of a Cheap Camcorder

EETimes's article on the creation of the Flip Ultra video camera by Pure Digital is a great example of how learning the thought and care that goes into a product can change your mind. Or my mind, at least, having ignored the Flip Ultra as a piece of knocked-together mass market exploitation but now finding myself questioning if perhaps I wouldn't be just as happy with a little pocket-sized, all-in-one solid state camcorder instead of my fairly expensive and unpocketable HD camcorder.

To address the ease of use issue, the designers rallied around a theme: No extra buttons. "The user would always know what each button does," said Fleming. In fact, the team had a goal that within 30 seconds, the user should know how to use it. "It must be intuitive or we won't use it," he said.

...

The "Eureka" moment came with the development of proprietary damping algorithms to implement a non-linear response curve off stasis to give a smooth 'landing' quickly, without instability in the system. "For slow or little change, we keep the auto exposure stable or make very small changes which cannot easily be discerned by viewers," said Furlan. While the auto exposure has no impact on the underlying video frame rate, it does improve the perception that as the camera moves from one scene to the next, there were no significant jumps in brightness.

Under the Hood: Flip Ultra camcorder - An ode to clean design [EETimes.com via Core77]

Joel Johnson

The "Z-Drive": Neato Linear Propulsion Prototype Toy

Phil Torrone uncovered this incredibly rad solid-state linear propulsion system that can send little cars or signs (or whatever) up and down a track by somehow pulsing in sequence underneath a shuttle's trio of magnets. Or at least that's how I suspect it works.

The toy guys showing this off at Toy Fair didn't have an actual product for sale but were just there trying to show it off to toy companies to see if anyone was interested. I am!

Amaing linear propulsion systems - no toy application (yet!) [MAKE]

Joel Johnson

Circuit Bending Documentary "BENT" Online

BENT 2004 from Derek Sajbel on Vimeo.

Dr. Rek writes:

I have just uploaded my Bent 2004 festival documentary to vimeo. In order to promote the art of circuit bending and the BENT festival, Absurdity.Biz has uploaded the first BENT festival dvd online in its entirety.

Shot at the first international circuit bending festival for Absurdity.Biz's ongoing Circuit Bending documentary, it later became a side-project DVD series sold at the BENT festivals.

I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but consider this my own way of bookmarking it for later.

Joel Johnson

Bedu: Emergency Shelter in a Barrel

More sci-fi concept than practical idea, I am nonetheless intrigued by the "Bedu" survival-annex-in-a-barrel idea by Toby McInnes, which crams a stove, tents, a radio and generator, medicine, and tools into a 50-gallon drum. Having just recently watched Into the Wild, I have a soft spot for survival and outdoors gear. I really want to go camping.

You know what I should do? Start putting together a camping trip for the spring. But instead of taking a few days off from blogging to do it, I should figure out how to power all my gear off the grid. Solar power would be a good option if I could get one of those roll-out panels. My Macbook Pro is heavier than I'd prefer—especially if I packed a second battery—but I don't think I want to buy a lighter machine just for this purpose. Perhaps I can get some sort of test model from someone.

What do you think I could pull off? I bet I could do a hike in one day, camp for two nights, then hike out the third day. Food would be easy, although water might be a hassle. The last time I hiked in to camp I ended up nearly running out of water on the way in. That would take some doing.

As for connectivity, I'd have to check the coverage maps, but there are several good trails running through the Hudson River valley that have good cell phone coverage. Five bars from the tops of mountains! I wouldn't be surprised if there were an EVDO node on some of those.

This is doable. Probably April at the earliest, depending on weather. I don't want to try to pack in the computer, food, water, and cold weather gear.

Emergency Response Unit [Yanko]

Joel Johnson

Morning Tech Deals Highlights

• Laser Printer – HP LaserJet P10006 Personal Laser Printer for $50, shipped. [Slickdeals]

• Laptop – Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz 12" 3.8-lb. Laptop for $955, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Videogame &Ndash; Rock Band (game only) for $35, shipped. If you already have an Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller you can use this, as well as any generic USB microphone. Drums, however... [Dealnews]

• Electric Razor – Today's Woot! is the Remington MicroFlex Titanium Rechargeable Shaver for $25, shipped.