As seen in a post by the amazing Kevin over at grinding.be, here is a video from the delightful people at the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) conference (check out their YouTube channel for more awesomeness!).

University of Washington student, T. Scott Sponas, has created a muscle to computer interface which (among other wonderful things, like possibly mapping ASL/sign language) will allow you to play Guitar Hero without a guitar.

I wanted someone to break out into a ‘Deeledeeleedeeleee Wyld Stallyns!’ at some point there. If you go and skip ahead to 00:56 seconds you’ll see the magic, but I highly recommend watching the whole movie.

Notice the bad-ass monitors they had to strap onto the guy’s arm just to show this off, too.  Not exactly plug-and-play enabled, to say the very least.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play Alley Cat ON THE COUCH

My love affair with the work of Ben Heckendorn continues to grow by leaps and bounds, as he’s just posted up photos of his new Atari 800 laptop. Fancy the specs on this sucker? Well too bad, you’re getting them anyhow:

• Atari XEGS motherboard.
• XE 130 RAM expansion built-in.
• MyIDE circuitry and custom OS ROM to use a 2.5″ PATA hard drive.
• Large “shinier” 15″ screen
• Original, “new-old-stock” Atari 800 keyboard.
• Flush-mount cartridge slot.
• Amazing old-school styling!

And it’s the last dot point that really makes this case mod stand out. Old school chic barely describes it’s awesome nature.

Of course he’s had practice. This isn’t actually the first Atari that Ben’s laptop’d. His previous attempts had different asthetics however, one was more debonaire and the other was somewhat space age.

As usual Ben gives the entire run-down of how the unit was constructed and how it looks inside. You may want to start saving if you’re after one of these, by the way!

Super freak, super freak!

I mean dangerous in the Michael Jackson way, of course.

Those of you without strong stomachs may want to look away from this news post, as it contains GRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS of DISFIGURING PLASTIC SURGERY.

Of course by the time you’ve read this, you’ve already looked at the post image anyway, so why am I even bothering to warn you? Damn our visual-obsessed culture.

Proving that he can do functional alongside beautiful, Ben Heckendorn has posted up a couple of images of a commissioned Xbox controller mod he recently completed. The mod basically makes a straight swap of the button section with the D-Pad, resulting in a controller that one could only describe to the average gamer as … unnerving.

For someone with hands who naturally relax into a contoller curved “claw”, this would be like swapping a hand with a foot for me, but some people enjoy … unorthodox gameplay.

Take a look for yourselves, o strong willed ones!

Well, moreso the Jetsons promised so much, and reality delivered so little.

I read about these devices a while ago, and a prompt from m1k3y reminded me of these…

I’m talking about telekinesis, Kyle!

(more…)

A child of nature, technology and style.

Being gentlemen of a more refined sense of style, I can admit to you that co-writer Mark is probably going to mess his pants when he claps eyes on this particular marriage of science and nature.

It’s an iPod Mini, modded to create a wood and brass finish.  It’s case is Australian Red Cedar, the clickwheel is Camphor Laurel and it’s held together with brass plates and screws (no glue!).

Creator Josh Darrah also created the accompanying dock and FM transmitter to match.

The overall effect looks droolworthy.  If only my Shuffle was as svelt.  Mark may already be chopping down a tree outside his house, someone should keep an eye on him.

You can check out the complete set of construction pictures on Josh’s flickr.

Now all I need is a internet bar fridge and I NEED NEVER LEAVE THE COUCH AGAIN

Now while the recent purchase of my very own laptop has seen me tied to my couch even more than usual, to be fair at least I do swap the keyboard for a controller every hour or so (it’s my evening exercise routine).  Which is why I’m so impressed that now not even my field of vision has to leave the couch any more!

Benjamin J Heckendorn, owner of a strong name and case modding genius, has recently completed Revision 5 on his Portable Xbox 360.  Combining all the fun of an Xbox and the convenient portable nature of a laptop, it’s a testament to geek-envy.  Alongside the compact-fold up screen and console combo, this revision also features:

• Built-in Ethernet port and Wi-fi adapter
• Push button volume control.
• Flush-mounted DVD tray.
• IR sensor for the remote control.
• Two user USB ports.
• Speed holes (the make the car go faster!)

A font of infinite awesome.  And while you’re checking out the site, don’t forget to have a squiz at the equally cool Commodore 64 laptop.  Daaaaaaymn.

Spreading the word around: a little reminder that there is less than a day left to drop your bids on the case modded SNES PC.  It’s currently sitting around £350.  The Acer Aspire that runs the entire setup is worth around £200 on it’s own, so there is still a lot of room to move on this god-like sculptured testament to technology and nostalgia.

Head over to the eBay listing if you’ve got the scratch, or just interested in stickybeaking!  If they make themselves a decent turnaround for all their hard work, you never know what those clever folk from Asobitech could crank out next.  Crossing fingers for a Master System home server!

SOMEWHERE OVER 19 HOURS LATER: Apparently £350 it is.  Congratulations to the winning bidder, I’m jealous!
SOMEWHERE OVER 19 HOURS LATER STILL: And now, apparently due to a fall-through bidder, it’s relisted.  Hmmmmmm.

Donkey Kong Country STILL won’t be included (you’ll have to buy that seperately), but the SNES case modded PC is now on sale on eBay in the UK!  It’s got a whole week of bidding to go, but if there is any justice in the world this thing should heartily reward it’s creators.

Take a gander.

Is your laptop a SNES? Yeah, I thought not.

Thought that a handheld console to play NES games was cool? Well then how about a SNES console which is actually an Acer Aspire laptop?

This particular one-of-a-kind piece of bad-assery comes care of the crew at Asobitech. The SNES case has been adapted to contain this little 1.6Ghz beast, with USB slots available through the original controller ports, and a specially adapted game cartridge that houses both the system’s DVDRW drive and it’s webcam. And if you aren’t impressed yet (you liar!), here’s some further technical necromancy performed on this monster. The case’s power switch is operational for the computer, the SNES logo on the rear of the system lights up for hard-drive activity, it has internally mounted speakers, the system is both WiFi and Bluetooth capable, and here’s the kicker: the internal boards are bracketed and supported by Lego.

Yeah, that’s right son, Lego.

Face it, it’d be difficult to beat the owner of this badboy in a geek-off!  You can check out all the details behind it’s construction and more images here.

Maybe it’s my 90′s upbringing, but the mind boggles at technology sometimes.  What technology you ask? Is it the various advances in medical science?  The steady advance in robotics that will one day gain self-awareness and kill us all?

No, frankly I’m slightly amazed, outraged and impressed all at once by the fact that you can now play Quake 3 Arena in your browser.

Good Beta Best!

Quake Live brings for free what used to be the cutting edge of FPS, and with seemingly no real drain on your computers resources.  This was the game that used to be first choice of LAN events across the country in the new millenium.  Times were that your computer may actually struggle to run a game as resource heavy as Quake 3 (may you burn in hell, Pentium 2!), and to get a decent game going you better have been ready to use all 56k of your dial-up modem.

Well crack open a Jolt Cola, because now you can play it as a browser plug-in with hundreds of other players online. And even poor little old shaped me can get a decent connection.  It also supports friend lists and clans, so everyone can their dusty tags back out for an airing.

Which gets me to wondering if we’re at this level of technology now, what other great multiplayer games (that I probably still have mouldering away on CD-Rom) could now be played in browser? Unreal Tournament? BattleZone 2? Team Fortress Classic? Starsiege: Tribes? It would appear the options really are only limited by their respective copyright owners.

I’m also interested to find out if the eventual product will include a few of the classic Q3 mods.  It’s been quite a while since I engaged in a bit of Rocket Arena.

Anyway, those interested in a little nostalgia for no extra cost, come notch up a few humiliation kills with (or on, more likely) me.  Registration and installation times are minimal and there always seems to be an active game going on somewhere online.

GG everyone …