Awesome Etc

No doubt intended to augment the Moon Hater, Adrian Florea’s Hephaestus Crawler is a steampunk LEGO crawler with a cannon; it walks on eight legs like Theo Jansen’s kinetic walkers.

Not all robots and monsters are bad: for $50, Joe Alterio will draw you an original robot or monster based on three words you supply; the proceeds will then be donated to a charity.

Pasadena Art Center graduate James Paick has a fantastic collection of sci-fi inspired imagery; while he does characters and vehicles, his focus is on futuristic environments.

Augmented Space is a public video piece with shapes by Pablo Valbuena, projected onto the city hall of The Hague, Netherlands; it seamlessly blends reality with art.

Although named HAL and created by Cyberdyne, this cyborg suit is designed to help: it amplifies the strength of the elderly and disabled, and can be rented. Thank you, Sonic!

Still in its experimental stages, the Rocket Racing League is a futuristic dream come true, with rocket-propelled planes racing through a closed circuit racetrack in the sky.

More tilt-shifting: The Little People is a collection of photographs with miniature figures in often comedic (and occasionally macabre) situations throughout London, by Slinkachu.

While most of us toss our styrofoam, Jason Rogenes has turned it into high art–literally. Most of his works hung from ceilings or stacked tens of feet high, with lighting inside to make them glow.

Throw in a low coefficient of friction and a bit of angular momentum, and you get Hurricane Balls; they’re two welded ball bearings which spin at crazy high speeds with a puff of air.

Despite an often maddening interface, City Creator gets addictive; create pixel cities from one of three tile sets, and save or send them as an e-card. Above: view our misguided creations.

Shown at ResFest 2006, The Tale of How is brilliant yet twisted, with Monty Python-esque animations and a truly trippy soundtrack. So that’s what happened to the Dodo bird…

The Germans are known for producing solid goods, and das Panzerbike is no exception: touted as the world’s heaviest bike at 4.7 tons it’s powered by a 12 cylinder tank engine.

OMF-LEGO: check out these pics from Zombie Apocafest, which took place this weekend in Seattle at BrickCon 2008; it was sponsored by The Brothers Brick, BrickArms and Valve.

Keith Loutit combines the now popular tilt shift technique and stop motion photography in this quirky video. It’s filmed at Tamarama Beach in Sydney, Australia.

Yet another crazy French bastard, above is a video of human bobsled Jean-Yves Blondeau (aka BuggyRollin) racing Japanese biker George Takahashi. Staged, but still fun.

Gamer Grub is an unusual energy drink that sounds like a geek’s typical diet; with flavors like Action Pizza, Strategy Chocolate and Racing Wasabi, we really hope this tastes good.

This commercial for Dutch game retailer Bol.com is on permanent repeat in our office; we just can’t stop laughing, even though there’s a poor little girl in it. Please don’t hate us for being evil.

Mythbusters has a preoccupation with cannons, not that we’re complaining. Their Creamer Cannon uses non-dairy creamer to create an explosion that is both terrifying and awesome to watch.

Laid out in logarithmic, Height is a hand-drawn poster by xkcd that puts everything from the Eiffel Tower to the Horsehead Nebula in perspective; it measures 28″ and will ship 10/15.

Using C++, OpenFrameWorks, and OpenCV, Chris O’Shea and rAndom Int’l created Audience, a funky flock of 64 interactive mirrors at the Royal Opera House in the UK.

London-based illustrator Rod Hunt’s artwork reminds us of Goon City, albeit better drawn and more detailed; this is especially critical when viewing a 50-foot tall bikini-clad woman.

Using office supplies such as clips and rubber bands to make guns, OfficeGuns.com is simultaneously cool and dangerous: you really *will* shoot your eye out with these beasties.

Still drooling over those iPhone cupcakes? Check out these 3.3″ iPhone Coasters by Meninos Design; they’re made out of plywood and wrapped in vinyl with a rubber backing.