Sebastian Bergne's Pencil Dice
The Pencil Dice is the brainchild of designer Sebastian Bergne, who combined a dice with a pencil. Should make rolling a 1D6 so much easier on your next game of Dungeon & Dragons.
The simple addition of dice markings to a six sided pencil makes all the difference. Pencil dice is an essential addition to any brief case, pen cup or pencil case. A little something to help you pass the time, entertain the children or even make decisions.
The Big Red Button: A Panic Button Light Switch Replacement Kit
The awesome people at Think Geek are selling another one of those "why didn't anyone think of this before?" products that will add much needed geekdom to any room: the Big Red Button. As they so eloquently explain:
...In every sci-fi film or TV show, there is usually one easily recognizable trope - no, not the hypersexual female alien in the skin-tight cat-suit, though she does make a fairly regular appearance. The answer we're looking for is the panic-button. You know, the Red Button™! The big shiny candy-like button that erases history, ejects the warp core, blows the emergency seals, activates the self-destruct, sounds red-alert, engages the hyperdrive, activates the halide fire-retardants, or simply flushes the waste-disposal system is a regular character in most sci-fi.
British Birds Built Out of LEGOs
Flickr user DeTomaso77 has put together this gallery of British birds made out of LEGOs. As he explained to me:
It's a long shot but I'm going to try and get LEGO to produce these as sets for Bird charities.
Portico Culture: When In Rome, Walk Like the Romans
Go to Italy right now, shortly after dinner and visit one of the majestic squares of Rome and you'll see people walking, side by side or solo. They aren't going anywhere per se, though, because walking is a social status thing, an excuse to see and be seen. Best of all, this portico culture goes as far back as the Roman Empire.
...Walking was also closely related to morals and social status. Slaves moved quickly; in fact, they did not so much walk as run (servus currens, "the running slave" being almost a tautology). One particular social climber, parodied in a comedy of "flat-footed" Plautus, was advised to slow down and to ape the exaggerated stately pace of the Roman gentleman (the only pace possible, I imagine, when you were formally dressed up in a toga). But it was important not to go too slowly; for that was the mark of a woman, or an effeminate. And it is precisely this idea that helps us restore some sense to one of the "jokes of Cicero", a sometimes pretty opaque collection
Microscopia
Looking through a microscope, Microscopia is azurenimbus first game for Ludum Dare 23. I'm not going to tell you how to play it, but don't be fooled by the easy start.
CSS 3D Tilt: Bookmarklet Turns Pages Into 3D (Kinda)
Although a bit processor intensive on my little old machine, this CSS 3D Tilt effect, which turns web pages into 3D, is quite impressive.
Using CSS 3d to make every website into 3d(kind of). It is a bit buggy but you can bookmark the script to your bookmark bar and have some 3D fun on any websites by one single click!/p>
VIM Adventures: Learn VIM While Playing a Game
If you feel your geekdom is not up to par for never having learnt VIM, Unix's daunting text editor, know that you're not alone (I, for one, never quite mastered it). For a meagre $5, you can now play VIM Adventures, a game that will teach you all the commands and functionality of VIM and turn you into a pro. Good luck in the maze.
TWEENK: the Lazy Twitter Role-Playing Game
If you're too busy to play World of Warcraft or any other time-consuming MMORPG, consider signing up for TWEENK: the role playing game for lazy people. You don't really have to do much else after that.
Tweenk is a game with minimal user's involvement. Everytime you tweet, your alter ego finds adventures, kills monsters or gets items. Every tweet you post can change his life. At the time you tweet "Good morning" your character finds a new sword.
Sign up the game with your Twitter account and just keep tweeting. Every tweet will be a source of adventure for your character.
It's time to be lazy.
MMMMMM: Strangest Side-Scroller Game Yet
I can't give MMMMMM enough credit for being a simple yet brilliantly designed game. And I'm guessing the game is called that way for the number of times you'll scratch your head or hold your chin to figure out how to get past the next challenge. I know it seems hard, but give it a shot.
musicForProgramming();
musicForProgramming(); is a series of hour-long mix-tapes featuring music designed specifically to help you program. They're pretty intense and surprisingly soothing.
...Through years of trial and error - skipping around internet radio stations, playing our entire music collections on shuffle, or just hammering single albums on repeat, we have found that the most effective music to aid prolonged periods of intense concentration tends to have a mixture of the following qualities:
Drones
Noise
Fuzz
Field recordings
Vague memories (Hypnagogia)
Textures without rhythm
Minor complex chords
Early music (Baroque, lute, harpsichord)
Very few drums or vocals
Synth arpeggios
Awesome
Walls of reverbMusic possessing these qualities can often provide just the right amount of interest to occupy the parts of your brain that would otherwise be left free to wander and lead to distraction during your work.
SHIRI: Robotic Buttocks to Represent Emotion
I can't figure out if this is a joke or not, but reportedly, Shiri is the first robotic humanoid buttocks designed to represent emotions with the "visual and tactual transformation" of butt muscles. At about 2:45 you can see the operator smack the robotic bum and the "muscles" tense up. Uhm.
Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers
If you're looking forward to the singularity, that moment in time where we'll be able to upload our conscious mind to a computer and live forever, Tom Scott created this video on what the digital afterlife may be like, courtesy of lawyers and copyright.
If you liked this, you may also enjoy two novels that provided inspiration for it: Jim Monroe's Everyone in Silico, where I first found the idea of a corporate-sponsored afterlife; Rudy Rucker's trippy Postsingular, which introduced me to the horrifying idea of consciousness slums.
How Economics Can Save You If You Are Kidnapped by Pirates
The Atlantic's Megan McArdle explains how economics can save you if you find yourself kidnapped by pirates. The number one suggestion: keep your mouth shut.
...According to a hostage negotiator quoted by This American Life, giving away this information is apparently typical of hostages and is counter-productive to their release as it narrows the bid-ask spread. Economists would describe hostage negotiation as a bilateral monopoly price negotiation that is structurally just a special case of chicken. That is, unlike a barrel of oil or a freight car full of soybeans which can trade on an extremely liquid market with innumerable buyers and sellers, a hostage has exactly one seller (the kidnappers) and exactly one buyer (the employer and/or family of the hostage). When there is only one buyer, the opportunity cost for ransoming the hostage is zero. Likewise, the employer and/or family has no realistic alternative means to recover the hostage. In order for everybody to walk away happy, we
Boxetti Collection: Minimalist Modular Furniture
I love the minimalist modular approach behind Rolands Landsbergs' Boxetti collection. When open, the furniture provides a tremendous amount of storage and functionality which can all be tucked away out of view when closed.
...Boxetti collection is driven by three basic design principles -- functionality, advanced technologies and contemporary aesthetics of minimalism. Each of Boxetti modules is designed to achieve maximum efficiency of particular demands for functionality and suitability. The capability of the modules to be transformed into compactly solid blocks is essential for the design concept in order to obtain an unobstructed and comfortable space -- free of uselessness. Boxetti collection is a handmade product -- the quality of materials as well as structural and technological solutions endues the collection to the extent of exclusiveness.

