Category: Weirdness
Slave Leia looked on proudly as Admiral Ackbar walked down the aisle
It’s a Star Wars wedding. Not just a a cake grandma made that, from the right angle, looks a bit like a 2D Death Star, but a proper, CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY DID THAT? Star Wars wedding. Everyone put in some effort.
Here’s a small celebratory montage we’ve put together of the finest photos. The highlight is the ginger man who grew his beard out to be Chewbacca, plus the grey-haired man who used his natural assets to do a superb Ben Kenobi. The X-Wings let the side down a bit, mind. What’s with the socks?
The entire set is, incredibly, viewable by the general public over on Flickr. We wanted to poke fun, but… it’s sensational…
Cows herded by remote control… the most fun you can have on a farm?
After his recent campaign to clear up the clearly criminal practice of battery chicken farming, I'm pretty sure mad-as-a-march-hare celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will be gearing up for a brand new TV series over the latest news that farmers might soon be corralling cattle using radio-controlled bovine headsets.
Researchers from the Department for Agriculture in the good ol' US of A have put their thinking caps on and designed a high-tech cow-hat that sits over the cow's ears and allows the controller to corral the individual remotely, using sounds funneled directly to the ears.
Matrix Unplugged chair created from submarine's torpedo jaws
If you're desperate to spend $37,000 dollars on a chair, then look no further. Even if only because you'll struggle to find many others at that price.
This is the Matrix Unplugged chair, and if you're excited about the name, you'll be ecstatic when you hear that the chair was fashioned out of the prototype of a nuclear submarine. Sadly, there's no nuclear technology on the chair itself, although it does boast motorized hydraulics to enable you to get into a perfect sitting position.
And if that's not enough for your $37,000, the designer of this one-of-a-kind chair, Zoran Milivojevic, will customize it in any colour you like, if it doesn't quite match your existing furniture. Although the red does go rather nicely with that picture in the background.
Something to do with a PlayStation3 – spend 25 minutes waiting for Windows Vista to load
You have to love hackers. OK, so they occasionally hack into your email account and upload your cybersex email history to the internet for everyone to laugh at, print out and stick on the office noticeboard, but, once in a while, they pull off something truly magnificent.
Like this – getting Windows Vista running on a PlayStation3. It’s actually running under emulation, with Qemu 0.9.1 doing most of the work. Which is why it takes 25 minutes to boot up.
There’s quite a bit more to it than that, but it’s frankly way above my head and if I tried to explain how it’s been done I’d only get something wrong…
Blow me up Scotty: James Doohan's ashes scattered with Falcon 1
You may have already read about SpaceX’s failure to get their privately funded rocketship Falcon 1 into space on Saturday night, but just what you may have missed is the news that stowed onboard the doomed rocket-ship, ready for delivery to space, were three commercial satellites and the cremated remains of 200 people.
Of those 200 urns of ashes blown into mile-high confetti, one happened to contain the remains of everyone’s favourite Scottish Star Trek engineer: Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (actor James Doohan)…
Like horror films? Well, make one at home, with the Wi-Fi Inter-Oral Dental Camera.
Remember the scene in the film Marathon Man where Laurence Olivier’s Nazi dentist ‘mines for gold’ in Dustin Hoffman’s non-anetheatised mouth? Well I do. I still get the sweats just thinking about it. In fact, i’ve been a confirmed odontophobe ever since my own Nazi dentist decided it was a jolly wheeze to rip out four of my teeth, then cement sharp metal braces to the rest.
Which is why i greet the new Wi-Fi Inter-Oral Dental Camera like the piece of hellish equipment it absolutely is. The company blurb says that it’s a great new ‘scientific tool’ for peering in your pie-hole, with ‘a high 1.3 mega-pixel camera lens’ at the end of the probe which allows you to get really up-close-and-personal on your lovely little toothy-pegs. Or for that matter: any other cavity you’re curious to search. The mind boggles.
Microsoft Research demos Surface Sphere
This week's useless innovations in computing award goes to the Microsoft Research team, who sellotaped a projector, an exercise ball and a customised version of Microsoft Surface (the touchscreen computing system that will look great in tech demos right up until it is abandoned as impractical) together. With these three unlikely ingredients, they have created the Microsoft Sphere.
George Lucas frozen in carbonite – silent at last
Oh, George. George, George, George, what have you done this time for everyone to desert you; for your fans to finally decide the best thing to do is freeze you in carbonite…
Saddam Hussein's Rolls Royce is (was) on eBay
Every dictator loves a Rolls – and Saddam’s fantastic Corniche was, until a few hours ago, listed for sale on eBay for £185,000.
Coming in a superb purple – no doubt to help mask blood stains of the peasants – the car was apparently bought from the Iraqi government by Surrey-based car dealer…
Canadian "Robot Doctor" is little more than a glorified webcam on wheels
EXPOSED! Some Canadian doctor who works out of Nova Scotia, has, so he says, been treating patients via a sensational “Robot Doctor” that helps him listen to his patients.
So what does this “Robot Doctor” actually do? It allows Dr Ivar Mendez to indulge in “real time” video communication with patients! Just like a £4.99 webcam. It also allows “real time” voice communication with patients! Just like a telephone. Or a Skype account. It’s basically a PC case mod…
