Gasper pad by Chih-Ching Yang

This cute little ghost will adapt to your hot pans in an awesome way, just smash him down and he turns into a pad. Via Designboom.

Mini Rube Goldberg Machine Makes Cool Travel Companion

A man takes a seat on a park bench and opens a pair of suitcases, carefully adjusting a few things inside, placing a few small objects in just the right spot. Then an alarm clock sounds, a pencil comes down onto a trigger and the most entrancing sequence of events takes place, one after the other. Melvin the Mini Machine is the creation of Dutch design studio HEYHEYHEY, and it’s possibly the coolest portable Rube Goldberg machine ever invented.

As music starts playing, the choreographed movements begin, flinging objects from one of the suitcases to the other, making their own little sounds. The fact that all of this magic can fit inside these small compartments, compact enough to travel around the world, is even more incredible when you consider the fact that HEYHEYHEY previously created the world’s largest Rube Goldberg machine.

Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine was a room-sized exhibit made for 2010 Dutch Design Week, and as cool as it was, it had one big limitation: it couldn’t be moved. Lots of people who couldn’t travel to the exhibit wanted to see it. Thus, the idea for the mini was born.

In addition to the many Rube Goldberg machines that came before them, both Melvins were inspired by the cult 1987 art film ‘The Way Things Go’ by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Check out a clip, above.

Free Universal Construction Kit Bridges Generations of Toys

LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys … what do they have in common? They each represent a universe of constructive possibilities, but each is incompatible with the next, like alien planets with their own unique atmospheres. Until now, that is.
With the advent of 3D printing technology, individuals can now print their own pieces and connect the dots (and logs and bricks) between ten disparate worlds of childhood fun: Lego®, Duplo®, Fischertechnik®, Gears! Gears! Gears!®, K’Nex®, Krinkles®, Bristle Blocks®, Lincoln Logs®, Tinkertoys®, Zome®, ZomeTool® and Zoob®.

Adapters can be downloaded from Thingiverse.com and other sharing sites as a set of 3D models in .STL format, suitable for reproduction by personal manufacturing devices like the Makerbot (an inexpensive, open-source 3D printer).

“The Free Universal Construction Kit is a collection of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten popular children’s construction toys. By allowing any piece to mate with any other, the Kit encourages totally new forms of intercourse between otherwise closed systems — enabling radically hybrid Constructivist play and the creation of heretofore impossible designs. (For example, one of the pieces adapts Legos® to Tinkertoys®.) As with other grassroots interoperability remedies, the Free Universal Construction Kit implements proprietary protocols in order to provide a public service unmet, or unmeetable, by corporate interests.”

1 Trillion Frames-per-Second Photos Capture Light in Motion

Nothing moves faster than light, right? True as that may be in theory, a team at MIT has developed a method for visualizing its propagation to amazing effect in practice.

Slowed down and turned into film format, an illuminated tomato goes from ordinary to uncanny as a snaking arc of white light approaches in a billionth-of-a-second burst, then deforms to move across it, with an unrivaled FPS rate.
And the impact goes beyond making neat little films: “Beyond the potential in artistic and educational visualization, applications include industrial imaging to analyze faults and material properties, scientific imaging for understanding ultrafast processes and medical imaging to reconstruct sub-surface elements.”
So how does it work? Per their abstract: “The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second. Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. We use an indirect ‘stroboscopic’ method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints. Then we rearrange the data to create a ‘movie’ of a nanosecond long event.

Safety Drive

It always tickles me pink when I see a clever twist to a seemingly simple design. Bulavkus is a USB Flash Drive masquerading as a classic safety pin! Sharply designed as a 4GB storage unit, it ‘keeps your data safely pinned.’ Forever ensuring that you never loose your drive, wicked minds can use this disguise for industrious purposes. Am I right 007?
Designer: Art Lebedev Studio


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(Safety Drive was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Gallery of cute lunches that Heather makes for her son

Heather Sitarzewski says:

I decided during this past summer that I wanted to make a fun bento every day for my son's lunches this school year. I dug around online for a bit to see ideas and found some very fun sites that have recipes and tutorials for how to manipulate food into shapes and patterns that you don't envision initially when you think about it.

Day one I put together a cute, generic style, bento. I knew immediately that I wanted to do Disney characters and other fun imagery. But little did I know, that crazy idea I had during the summer, would be received so warmly with my Facebook friends. I started posting them daily there and got so many requests for a place to see them all at once. A book, a blog... a tumblelog.

One day a book may be in order. But for now they can all bee seen in one place at Lunchbox Awesome.

iPhone LiquidMetal Orgasm

I love Antoine Brieux’s enthusiasm and his perception of the next-gen iPhone. Rumors about the use of LiquidMetal’s alloy and how durable yet liquid the overall experience will be, has got me excited (what can I say…. I’m a fangirl!). For the moment this iPhone 5 LM Concept fills the gap, with its virtual ‘Home Button’ replacing the physical one. Utopian specs whet our appetite while Jony Ive and his team keep the real deal under wraps.
Designer: Antoine Brieux for NAK Studio













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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs - Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store - We are about more than just concepts. See what's hot at the YD Store!
(iPhone LiquidMetal Orgasm was originally posted on Yanko Design)