Target, of all places, is selling a line of t-shirts that come bundled with indie PC games from the Experimental Gameplay Project. And according to Kevin Allen, Jr., they appear to be actually interesting little games, not schlocked together remixes of mainstream themes:

The games are all pretty interesting sounding. Not your usual game content, for example there is a game where you're a little dude with a gigantic head (like, your head has gravity and that effects play) trying to grow a dozen roses so you can attract the attention of a girl with a gigantic head. Or you are a robot spider in some uncertain distant desert future that has to traverse a dangerous landscape all while keeping your egg sac safe for future generations. The games get variously more abstract from there.

They very specifically weren't the kind of re-skinned games you normally see as cheep promotional items. There was no cars are fast and awesome tokyo drift game. There was no shoot the aliens with your space AK-47 game. There was one giant robot destroying a city game, but from what i could tell it was actually about finding true love with another city-destroying giant robot (a weird theme is developing here).

Each shirt and game costs $12.

Post 081240 [Kevin Allen Jr (Livejournal.com) via Waxy]

Update: I can't get any contact directly with the apparel company, but it appears the games have been favorites in the Experimental Gameplay Project, so the two are probably affiliated. I confirmed with Chronic Logic, maker of Gish, one of the featured games, that the program was legit. Or at least they thought so. Someone else, who I was unable to get on the phone, had actually done the deal.

Update 2: Looks like it's the work of 2D Boy:

Currently, we have 8 designs doing a test run in Target - six from the Experimental Gameplay Project, and two from Edmund’s back catalog including some Gish lost levels. Our evil plan is to get indie games into the hands of an audience that would otherwise never know that indie games exist. Fingers crossed this does ok, because I want 4th grade kids everywhere wearing velociraptors.

Case closed!

Cricket Wireless is a small mobile phone and data company that operates wireless data networks in Nashville, Spokane, the Central Valley of California, Santa Fe/Albuquerque, and Portland, Oregon. If you happen to be in their market, they'll sell you an EVDO Rev O modem—PC card only for now, but a USB version is coming—with truly unlimited wireless data access with uncapped usage for just $35 a month.

Company Page [MyCricket.com via Gearlog]

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling these gas-powered monocycles, capable of achieving shoe-melting speeds of up to 25MPH, for just $13,000. It's goofy enough to be beyond reproach and I'm not ashamed to say riding one looks like quite a bit of fun. And since they're not street legal, I don't think you have to worry about seeing too many people popping out to the store on these, a bag of groceries balanced gingerly on either side.

Catalog page [Hammacher.com via Crave.CNET.com]

I've always been a little surprised that you can top off a car's dead battery through the cigarette lighter, but apparently there's nothing stopping a second battery from doing a slow trickle charge back in. The Porta-Jump, a spare battery small enough to be left in the glove compartment, does this very thing. It's only $20, too, which seems a reasonable price, especially considering what a downer a dead battery can be. And since the simple electrical system in your car works both ways, once your alternator is turning fuel into electricity, you can recharge the Porta-Jump just by leaving it plugged in.

(Forgive any wide-eyed amazement that may be apparent in my post; I now live without a car, which is great except for when I totally miss driving. It's also been about a decade since I took any wistful walks through an auto parts store.)

Catalog Page [JCWhitney via Book of Joe via Coolest-Gadgets]

THE YEAR is 1975. For a man of 50 leaving a factory gate at five in the afternoon, you look remarkably fresh. Your light, comfortable-looking summer suit is pressed and spotless, your face and hands are free of grime, and your features show no sign of the strain that men once associated with the heat and noise of a big factory. There is an extra spring in your step as you walk toward the heliport, perhaps because this is Thursday. Your four-day work week is over, and ahead of you are three full days to call your own.

This is the rather optimistic opening to a sprawling 1955 Mechanix Illustrated article titled "How Automation Will Affect Your Job". The whole article is not as cheery; it does predict massive layoffs and the disenfranchisement of unskilled workers as a result. However still flush from the success of the New Deal and massive post-war boom the author anticipates that a coalition of unions, businesses and government agencies will swiftly provide relief when issues emerge.

Today we also looked at a strangely appealing DIY tractor made out of old car parts, Babe Ruth teaching a Belgian general how to bat, and a time in Arizona when copper was so cheap that businesses used thin sheets of it as typing paper. From our Animals for Profit category we have this ad encouraging the reader to follow a "New Road to Independence" by building an indoor chicken farm.

Lastly we have an entertaining article chronicling Tom McCahill's first 10 years testing cars for Mechanix Illustrated. McCahill was an iconic auto reporter who wrote for Mechanix Illustrated from 1946 until his death in 1975. The magazine's reputation was so tightly bound to his image that when he died they refused to acknowledge it for fear it would damage their business. McCahill's gift for hyperbole was part of his charm and the article is sprinked with examples of these "McCahillisms" such as: ". . . It’s rugged, tough and reliable as the Rock of Gibraltar—and just about as fast. . ." and ". . . about as exciting as a pocketful of wet pancakes. . ."

From Reuters:

The possibility of a nationwide video network was raised by a $711 million slice of the 700 megahertz airwaves won by Frontier Wireless, a partner of satellite television operation DISH Network Corp. DISH declined to comment.

But No. 2 wireless provider Verizon and No. 1-ranked AT&T dominated the Federal Communications Commission auction that started January 24 and ended Tuesday after 260 round of bidding.

"It means that the two big guys just got much bigger," said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

Verizon and AT&T dominate airwaves auction [Reuters.com]

Okay, watch a little bit of this. It's the original version. Just for context.

Then watch fan tribute, which is a work of majesty, and has really nothing at all to do with gadgets, but trust me, it'll be fine.

TV in Japan has a second tribute video, sort of re-mix, which might be even better.

Cat’s Guy - The Ultimate in Anime Fan Tributes [TVinJapan.com]

• Hard Drive – Maxtor 500GB SATA 7200RPM drive with 3-year warranty for $90, shipped. (About $25 off.) [Slickdeals]

• Battery Charger – What do you know? That La Crosse Battery Charger we mentioned yesterday is selling for $40, shipped, plus four AA and four AAA batteries. [Dealnews]

• Bluetooth Headset – Today's Woot! is the Soyo Freestyler 500 Bluetooth Headset and Bluetooth USB Adapter for $15, shipped.

Sony will sell you a laptop free from pre-installed trial software, a service they have called "Fresh Start." And since they won't be making any money on partnership deals with software vendors, Sony would appreciate it if you'd pay them an extra $50 for each machine delivered without interactive advertisements.

The kicker? Engadget is reporting that many recent Sony laptops have had horrible start-up times and performance due to the proliferation of crapware that comes bundled from the factory. They want their customers to pay extra money to guarantee a machine that works.

Sony hates you, offers $50 "Fresh Start" option to build your laptop crapware-free [Engadget]

Today on Modern Mechanix we round up a bunch of weird smoking accessories, including this double barrel cigarette holder. We also looked at a table fan with harmless cloth blades, a giant soap box derby, an automatic lathe that is programmed via phonograph record, and some very odd looking hiking apparel from 1922. Also check out this 1956 Mechanix Illustrated picture gallery of new and notable inventions.

BRIAN DUNN, BOY INTERN – I can tell I've arrived at the Gillies Coffee roasting plant from the faint but pleasant smell of coffee that permeates the surrounding block.

Apparently, this is a bad thing.

In 2002, the New York Department of Environmental Protection fined the coffee company for smelling exactly like what it produces. For years, owners Don Schoenholt and Hy Chabbott fought the fine—arguing that it was impossible to stop the smell, until finally acquiescing last year.

The city's negative attention is somewhat unfathomable, given that Gillies has both been around so long—now in its 168th year, the company is both a New York institution and the oldest coffee merchant in the United States—and has such a strong environmental record. In addition to promoting Fair Trade coffee and working with the Smithsonian on preserving bird habitats, the company operates a smoke-free roaster, guaranteeing that the only smells released are from the beans themselves.

Gillies has been around for a long while, but it's managed to stay under the radar, even as coffee appreciation has moved into the mainstream. Schoenholt himself admits that he's not a businessman—he's a coffee man. That's why Gillies abandoned the retail portion of their business, instead choosing to keep the focus on the coffee, which it sells through its website, in Fairway supermarkets, and wholesale to a variety of clients.

After the jump, a tour through the Gillies' roasting facility. Above right, an antique industrial coffee grinder. Directly below, a sponsored mobile widget from Microsoft.

Image: Screengrab from Goldcoast.com.au

An Australian man took his own life on the 18th by arming a "robot" with a .22 pistol, standing in front of it, and prompting it to fire. Which is, of course, a rather ingenious if overwrought way of taking one's own life.

I'm curious to figure out what exactly this "robot" was, though. The local Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper said that the man had downloaded plans off the internet, but a cursory Googling isn't bringing up anything. The footage from which the above still was captured lingers over the rubbish bin in the man's driveway for quite a while, but I can't be sure if the bin served as the housing for the mechanism or if they just didn't have anything better to film.

Anyone know where to find these plans? I'd like to check them out. Call me morbid, but I think that a man ending his life at the hands of his own device has a certain respectability; at the same time, I'm curious as to why he'd go through all the trouble when just a gun to the temple would do.

Man shot by killer robot [Goldcoast.com.au] (Thanks, Rossignol!)

Jeff "Coding Horror" Atwood beams about his La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower battery charger, which as chance would have it is the exact same battery charger I purchased a couple of months back at all y'all's suggestion, but haven't actually yet had a chance to use, as my AA usage mysteriously has dropped to next to nothing.

You can also switch between four different readouts after the mode is engaged: time elapsed, voltage, and two mAh (I assume one is charge/discharge rate, not sure what the other one is). That refresh mode is incredibly slow-- it's basically discharging and recharging over and over-- but it really works. It can take marginal batteries from the brink of death and give them new life. But you don't have to care about any of that; if you just drop 4 AAs or AAA batteries in the device, it will charge them fine. I spent several hours after I got it plugging various batteries in it, trying different modes, and watching it work. I'm not sure what the exact definition of geek is, but I think "enjoys recharging batteries" has to be very high on that list.

Adventures in Rechargeable Batteries [Coding Horror]

Audiocubes is selling this "DangerBomb Clock" from Banpresto which flashes one of three differently colored lights that correspond to three wires. When your alarm goes off in the morning, you have to disconnect the correct wire, selected at random, or face the harsh fate of more alarm. It's just enough problem solving to kick your brain into something resembling actual wakefulness, I'd imagine.

It's whimsical is just the right way and I'd think about picking one up, despite its wildly inflated price of $60, but I actually have a personal phobia of shrill alarm clocks. I think there's something unhealthy about starting each day with a shrieking terror klaxon. Can't be good for the heart.

Product Page [Audiocubes via Ubergizmo via Oh Gizmo]

Davy writes:

Okay there was an anti-war protest yesterday in San Francisco. Someone put this message above the city at Twin Peaks, but either ran out of 'ink', or needs a phone with a better web browser.

All we're asking is to give CSS a chance.

Photo du Jour 82 [SFist.com]

• Mouse – Logitech MX Revolution Laser Mouse, refurbished, for $40, shipped, after $20 rebate. [Dealhack]

• iPod Touch – Slight discount on the 32GB iPod Touch, available for $475 shipped. [Dealnews]

• microSD – 2GB microSD card from Crucial with SD adapter for $9.50, shipped. [Dealnews]

• Speakers – Today's Woot! is a Athena Technologies WS-60 Wall-Mountable Speaker for $95, shipped. It's tall!

I've been fighting off a fever all week, which has made even dribbling up these small number of posts a chore, leaving the rest of my to-do list a phlegm-pocked inventory of failure. But one thing I have to get figured out soon is what computing device I'm going to take on my week in the woods. Not only do I need to get familiar enough with the machine to be able to work with it, I want to take a short overnight trip to wherever I am going to end up spending the week to make sure I have connectivity, a decent campsite, etc.

There were a few candidate machines that stood out: the Nokia 810, which could work, except I've not been able to find good information about using it with 3G besides over a Bluetooth connection to a phone, which is not exactly the most efficient use of power.

There was also the Asus Eee, which might just do the job, but I'd certainly need at least a second battery to keep in the rotation, as battery life is pretty poor.

I could afford to purchase either of the above, but there is a third option, which is cajoling a laptop manufacturer into letting me take a unit into the woods. I'm talking to Lenovo about taking one of the new solid-state X300 out, which could be nearly perfect. It's light, has good battery life, and can come with built-in 3G. I would happy to test out a Macbook Air, but Apple would never send me one, plus the battery life is poor and I'd have no way to rotate batteries. Fujitsu makes several lightweight laptops with amazing battery life and integrated 3G; I'll hit them up if Lenovo doesn't come through.

By chance, have any of you guys integrated 3G into a Nokia 810? It's sort of the least attractive option to me, because even though it's small and has great battery life, I'll still need an external keyboard to really...you know, forget it. Let's just rule that one out now.

So how about the Eee? It looks like using USB-based 3G cards like the Novatel 727 is possible with a little bit of tweaking. I just hate relying on my slim-to-nonexistent Linux skills when out on a hill for a week.

Maybe I should just start begging these companies for a laptop and promise I'll do my best not to drop it in a fire or throw it at a Sasquatch.

This is simply a branded version of the classic "Operation" game, but I think the art showing the Hulk, Spider-Man, and Iron Man is really adorable.

It'll be out in June along with hundreds of other licensed products to coincide with the movie. It would be great if instead of the trademark bzzzt, touching the sides of Hulk's wounds would instead prompt a roar.

The Hulk Challenge [Toyology via Geek Alerts via Gizmodo]

Sanyo has announced new Xacti CG9 camcorders in Japan which will almost certainly be released in North America relatively soon. They look slightly more bulky than the previous models, have switched from CCD to CMOS sensors for the camcorder, which Sanyo swears won't affect the video performance. Unless you just really want the new colors, including the pleasingly Robotech red-and-white model, you could probably do just fine with the previous versions, which should be dropping to an even more affordable price.

Xacti CG9: The Ultimate User Friendly Xacti by Sanyo [AkihabaraNews.com]

These "Periodic Rings" from Itsnoname are cute, but available only in silver, gold, and platinum versions. What, no meitnerium version? Like a company selling $6,500 platinum rings doesn't have enough money for their own personal heavy ion smashing facility.

Product Page [Itsno.name via Uncrate]

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at this idea for an unmanned tank that operates by executing preprogrammed instructions off of a stack of records, a novel way of launching gliders by turning your car into a rapid winch, an amphibious monorail system, Canada's first production car from 1899, an illustrated page of wanted inventions and researcher that seems to get off on waking people up using foghorns. We also have this 1943 piece about aerial combat called "The Feel of Death in the Air" and a pretty in-depth article about industrial model makers titled "Little Giants of Industry."

Spy shots from the set of the upcoming Star Trek movie show two items of note: the Starfleet-issue miniskirts are back (and about time!) and the three-wheel Aptera Hybrid might be making a cameo in the movie. An Aptera can be seen parked in the shade, perhaps prepping for a lazy background drive-by of the courtyard. I think it's a perfect fit, really. Part of what makes me adore the Aptera's styling is its call back to the clean lines of the late '50s and early '60s, which should work just dandy in a movie that appears to be acknowledging at least a little of the '60s style that influenced the original.

Why do these shots from the filming of "Corporate Headquarters" look suspiciously like the Starfleet Academy? [AintItCool.com]

Previously • Aptera Three-Wheeled Electric Car May Reach Production [BBG]
• PopMech Gets First Drive of the Aptera Electric Car [BBG]
• Aptera's Steve Fambro Interviewed About Three-Wheeled Egg Car [BBG]

While some defense researchers work on creating tiny, insect-sized spy drones, others are working on turning insects into fluttering cyborgs. Georgia Tech professor Robert Michelson has modified a Manduca moth to carry and power on-board electronics, reports Flight Global:

In the latest work a Manduca moth had its thorax truncated to reduce its mass and had a MEMS component added where abdominal segments would have been, during the larval stage.

Images taken by x-ray of insects with these changes and others found that tissue growth around the inserted probes was good. One DARPA goal is to show that during locomotion the heat and mechanical power generated by the thorax could be harnessed to power the MEMS.

The goal is to create insects that can be remotely controlled to serve as remote sensing devices, giving the paranoid schizophrenic in us all one more excuse to start gibbering about "Project: Beelzebub."

Cyborg insects 'born' in DARPA project [FlightGlobal.com via Danger Room]

Image: UW-Madison

Farhad Manjoo continues to excerpt his upcoming book, "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society," and like all well-executed enticements I keep finding interesting bits. Here, Manjoo explains how a woman used a think-of-the-children story to shill for electronics companies on local news:

Late in the holiday shopping season of 2005, Robin Raskin began to worry about a hidden danger posed by the world's most popular gadget: Pornography was popping up on the iPod. Raskin, a pert middle-aged woman with short brown hair and a deep, authoritative voice, considered herself an expert on how kids use technology (she'd once written a magazine column called "Internet Mom"). She approached local TV news broadcasts across the country with her iPod worries. They bit.

...

But something here was amiss. In addition to panning the iPod, Raskin used her time on TV to push "safer" holiday tech gifts, including products made by Panasonic, Namco and Techno Source. These weren't unbiased reviews. The local stations that featured Raskin were fully aware that the three companies had hired her to pimp their products during news appearances.

How local TV embraced fake news [Machinist.Salon.com]

CrunchGear reviews the a generic 2GB media player from Geeks.com which is styled suspiciously like a certain Apple phone. Sadly it appears that the player, which costs just $70, is a bit of a turd, barely able to be connected to a PC (and not at all to a Mac).

Sure, it does everything as advertised. But the theft of the iPhone UI — for no good reason — coupled with the shoddy manufacturing, the various failed attempts and “value-added” applications, and a general unsuitability to any task makes me want to puke. Call me a stickler for shit actually working, but I couldn’t even set the date, let alone play the built-in game, Explode Pigboat.

I always scratch my head at poor quality Chinese knock-offs, because it should be within their ability to make clones with a reasonable simulacrum of a quality user interface. It's like cloning a car piece for piece but then replacing the steering wheel with a wrench clamped to the column. Just go the extra mile, guys!

Perhaps it's because the primary market for these sorts of electronics are places where the original products are too expensive, so offering a perfect copy is unnecessary.

Review: Geeks.com 2GB MP4 player [Crunchgear]

• iPod Dock – Logitech Audiostation speaker system for iPod for $30, after a $50 mail-in rebate. Very well-regarded piece of equipment, so even at $80 that's not an awful deal. [Dealhack]

• Hard Drive – Maxtor 500GB 7200RPM HDD for $87, shipped. [Dealnews]

• iPod Dock – Today's Woot! is the JBL Radial High-Performance Loudspeaker Dock for iPod for $105, shipped.

Above, Max Silvestri's endorsement of John McCain, specially tailored for the elderly. Below, the rough version, shown on March 6th at Silvestri's "I Like Attention" comedy event, held at Williamsburg's Sound Fix Records.

It was the first video I shot using my new Sanyo Xacti CG6 (that wasn't of my dog, anyway), and I have to say that while its video fidelity doesn't hold a candle to my Canon HV20, the ability to keep it in my pocket and to copy .mp4 files right off its memory card up to YouTube makes for an easy workflow. I wanted a still/video camera I could just keep on me at all times, even in the summer with its dearth of pocket space, and for $200 I couldn't be happier. (Well, it'd be nice if it had a lens cap iris instead of a pop-off cap, but I'll manage.)

The CG6 tops out at VGA (640 by 480) video, but for my purposes—getting stuff up onto the web fast—that suits me just fine.

Below is a sponsored mobile post widget from Microsoft.

No details yet, but an aide has reported that Arthur C. Clarke, luminous fiction author and progenitor of geosynchronous communication satellites (among other novel notions), has passed away in Sri Lanka at 90.

Arthur C. Clarke dies at age of 90 in Sri Lanka [LATimes/AP]

No, I have no idea what this is about, either, but it's certainly wonderful—and fuzzy! As the product description admonishes, "to create more amusement, we suggest that goat be manipulated by persons wearing burlesque costumes." Words to live by.

The Fuzzy Wonder Goat [PhoenixMasonry.org]

The Times is reporting that airlines will soon allow flyers to use their cell phones as boarding passes by displaying a two-dimensional bar code on device screens.

As mobile devices become more sophisticated and applications for smaller screens evolve, airlines expect passengers will be able to use their phones, BlackBerrys and other mobile devices for a growing number of services, like rebooking a ticket after a missed connection, switching seats, checking standby status or seeking an upgrade.

"We kind of like the idea long term of having a kiosk in your pocket," said Mark Bergsrud, senior vice president for marketing programs and distribution with Continental.

Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In [NYTimes via Crunchgear]

Today on Modern Mechanix we look at this idea for a floating pitstop for military airships, the 1936 Popular Mechanics premiere of the Hindenburg, some very odd techniques for growing giant mushrooms, and the new auto racing sport of balloon breaking. Have you ever been out to a movie and thought to yourself "I sure do wish I was fishing right now!"? Well, the patrons of this Florida drive in apparently did. We also learned about this 1936 operation to fly all of Tibet's stockpile of gold out of the country and what lies ahead in the Transportation of Tomorrow.