A new commercial has been created by Ryactive, bringing together Tron Guy, (Jay Maynard) and Duct Tape to create

” Duck Tron”. Watch the video after the jump complete with showdown when Tron Guy’s wife crashes the party.

When he’s not playing Tron Guy, Jay Maynard is a computer programmer and system administrator and the volunteer

project maintainer for Hercules, an emulator of IBM mainframe hardware.

When the sequel movie Tron: Legacy was released he was unfortunately not allowed to view the film in his iconic Tron

suit at his local movie theatre because of the illuminating lights on his suit might distract other movie goers.

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Pine. Acrylic. A LED bulb. Such are the simple materials that form this Klingon coffee table. It’s not really Klingon-made and it isn’t found in any Star Trek movie. Keep in mind it’s a DIY project by a very skilled craftsman who decided to put an alien twist on his coffee table. The pointy legs are pine smoothed to a polished sheen supported by acrylic rods. The triangular table top, on the other hand, is adorned with an acrylic layer to subdue the diodes emitting pop-colored lights.

The man behind this particular home build is  Nick Woodrow, who wanted a project that would ‘inspire my GCSE Resistant Materials kids in school!’

 Here’s an action packed video show casing this marvel of ingenuity:

Nick Woodrow seems to be interested in a lot of other things other than Klingon furniture. Judging by his Flickr account, he’s susceptible to artfulness and whimsy with a powerful inc ... Read more »

Skype has announced its intensions to acquire the GroupMe company, a new app startup, founded in 2010 at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon.  GroupMe has created and provides a group messaging service that helps users stay in touch with each other and will enable Skype to enhanced further its mobile offerings. Combining the new text based service with their acquisition of mobile video provider Qik, which Skype announced earlier this year.

The GroupMe company offers a free texting service that  works across mobile devices and platforms, enabling users to connect, share locations, photos and make easily communicate with their contacts and friends.

Early this month GroupMe rolled out a new version to its application GroupMe 3.0 allowing users to manage groups, send messages, share p ... Read more »

The lab in particular is Arhat Abzhanov’s. The scientist is on quite a mission. Without having to plod through excess jargon, he wants to find out which genes among bird embryos are dormant. When he does, he intends to apply the method to curing a birth defect known as HFM or Hemifacial microsomia. As the name suggests, it’s a facial anomaly that affect one out of every 4,500 births.

If you’re wondering how this is connected to the title of the post, keep in mind Dr. Abzhanov is experimenting with birds whose evolutionary ancestors are reptiles. So if he can alter the bird embryos at the specific point where they grow beaks, then he can make the birds revert to their origins. This means the embryos in the egg grow into reptiles. Of course, as noted in his website, ethical standards demand that the eggs are never hatched.

 

Once this complicated process is accomplished, ... Read more »

Ladies and gentlemen, an American biology student now holds the record for the world’s longest human powered flight by a female. She’s Judy Wexler and in the picture below she’s on Gamera, a carbon fiber four rotor aircraft that’s on track to bag the Sikorsky prize. It’s a holy grail of sorts among helicopter enthusiasts, its criteria being an unattainable goal of 60 seconds of human powered flight. Ms. Wexler has so far only managed less than a fifth of that span with her machine, but she’s determined.

Funny name though. Apparently Gamera  a Japanese monster from a kaiju film–a monster movie. Operating the Gamera is no joke either. Its five pilots need to exert a lot of foot and hand pedaling to power the rotor and getting the frame off the gorund. Ms. Wexler and her team already succeeded with a brief four second hover, they’ve just bested themselves recently with an e ... Read more »

In the vast universe of Star Wars merchandise, there exists a sizable subgenre called Han Solo Carbonite. Another variation is Han Solo Encased in Carbonite. The point is there’s an endless line of both official and fan-made merch depicting dear old Han in his carbonite prison. In our opinion, it’s one of the worst pieces of movie memorabilia, an awful sculpture whose details have gone awry. But it’s hyper-popular in many places.

The product itself isn’t very exciting. Basically a metallic case with a Han Solo Carbonite print on its surface together with the Star Wars logo. Functionality is straightforward, features are zip.

Comes as no surprise then that in Japan, an online retailer is selling a Han Solo Carbonite business card case. Pricing is so far unavailable and there are no other sellers other than Japan. This might hit U.S. or U.K stores soon though. But w ... Read more »

The graphic is titled ‘How people is science see each other’ and its goal is to humorously depict perception within the confines of academe. We never realized professor’s thought undergrounds were Megan Fox-sexy. Then again, we might be missing the point. The self-image of technicians are golden though. Hint: a timeless action hero sums up the glory of being an indestructible lab wizard.

The confessed creator of this graphic wanted to refreshingly convey the rigid hierarchy that dominates most institutions of higher learning. The result is amusing, to say the least. Chuck Norris is just too much of a mega-meme to get tired of.

 

Here’s a compelling question for the readers. No prizes except bragging rights. The question is: In what country and what city did PhDs originate?

 

< ... Read more »

By ‘conquer’ is meant a full fledged but otherwise benign mission to the Red Planet scheduled in the near future. A short while ago the Mars 500 simulation got featured here in the spotlight. Mars 500 is basically six guys living in the confines of a ‘spacehsip’ for 500 days. The whole point is to see how well (or worse) humans are going to fare on the long trip to mars.

Mars 500 is already winding down with just weeks to go before it’s over. In the meantime, a spokesman for the European Space Agency (ESA) declared that Russia will remain a vital partner on the next great planetary mission. The announcement was made earlier this week outside Moscow during the MAKS 2011 airshow where all sorts of cool aircraft were flown.

 

As for the date of when a mars mission will go live—that’s anyone’s guess. At the rate we’re going, neither Europe or fiscally-strapped U.S.A. Are in the ... Read more »

Take note that we carefully chose the perfect word to describe this delicate (and 100% theoretical) operation. What a team of physicists from Tsinghua University plan to do is launch a small solar-sail powered spacecraft to intercept the asteroid and smash it off course. The tiny details involving such a hair-raising operation are still vague, which is understandable. For starters, who’ll build the spaceship?

In a scenario not very different but far less exciting than the Michael Bay helmed ‘Armageddon’ a rather large asteroid is hurtling toward our grubby little planet. Named Apophis, the asteroid has the dubious honor of being a planet killer. And yes, when it hits us, everything goes up in flames, flaming rocks, and molten lava. Basically an infernal mess that’s righteous punishment for all the evil our miserable race has perpetrated since the first monkey bashed his brethren ... Read more »

You should be glad it doesn’t crush human skulls. But that’s in the near future, when the War has begun. Anyway, for now they’re just cans. Long story short, high tech firm Florida Robotics built Dr. R.E. Cycler to educate the youth about the recycling process. What the Dr. does is pretty visceral; each time it’s fed/given a can, it literally crushes it. Awed onlookers can then watch the scrap aluminum collect in what passes for Dr. R.E. Cycler’s stomach. Or they can pose for Facebook pics.

The Dr. came to be after local waste management requested that Florida Robotics develop an entertaining yet educational diversion for the younger set that would impart a positive message. So far, judging by the pictorial evidence Dr. R.E. Cycler is doing great. We just wish it had a cooler name. Dr. R.E. Cycler? How come real life robots are never as sexy as the ones we imagine? Crushing aluminum can ... Read more »