Wonderland

Taun-Taun hobby horse

!!!!

$30 at - where else - ThinkGeek. GET BEHIND ME IN THE QUEUE.

 

Gamer blinds

Curious, "designer" blinds - classic game characters created using gamepad graphics, and put on a blind. Pretty neat for the gameroom or home office.

£99.

(Thanks Ian!)

Sioux's Makie Face-up

Makie-friend Sioux the Moo (pirate party queen, BJD faceup artist and all-round good nerd) did us a faceup on a spare Makie head. It's a bit jawdropping.

She's documented her working on the Makies forum, plus posted pics in progress on her flickrstream.

The R.A.T. mouse

Want want want want want!

I just used one too, and they're quite remarkable. Easy to use. Kinda heavy - to be expected - but many many benefits. Also, hawt.

Custom American McGee's Alice dress

Poking about on Etsy again, have a look at this beauty:

Looks pitch perfect to me. I'm tempted.

DEFCON Kids

We've just spent this weekend at DEFCON, a first for us all, and it was amazing.

I'm no hacker; I don't even have a compsci degree, and my "coding" stops at HTML, so the sort of talks by hacker superheroes like Moxie Marlinspike make me go slightly slackface. But that didn't stop me from having a complete blast: not only do DEFCON-goers have the best selection of nerdy-humour tees I've ever seen ("Non-flammable? Challenge accepted!") ...

... but there's so much to see and do: networked Team Fortress, lasersight shooting games. The Wall of Sheep, where those sniffed over the DEFCON wifi are ritually humilated on a giant wall in the vendor room. A vendor room where you can buy NSA mugs and caps, though "of course the agency doesn't even exist", etc. (The Director was there, doing a keynote.)

And movies, demos, gatherings, and some big, joyful parties, to boot.

I was amused at all the movie-esque hacker stuff that 2012 has turned out; blinky lights everywhere, and techno, light-up toys, ELwire. Plenty of (spiky / tattooed / fun-coloured-hair) ladies there, too. Maybe Hackers wasn't so off, after all - that, or what goes around comes around. My highlight: Katy Levinson's Sunday-morning, vodka-drinking robotics comedy-rant, a must-see. I'm waiting for a video to turn up of this. She was brilliant.

But back to the title - I post this mainly for DEFCON KIDS, hands-down the best kids' programming at a con I have ever seen, and by an overwhelming order of magnitude. Nico, the organiser, made sure that all the big names from "DEFCON Grownups" also came along to do a Kids talk.

From the "Top Secret Keynote" by General Alexander, Director of the NSA - YES, RE-READ THAT - to lockpicking demos and practice, to Moxie Marlinspike discussing privacy tips with 9 year old girls... oh it was just so, so damn excellent.

Zoom in on those and check out the detail, it's really boggling.

They screen movies and have a special kids party on the Saturday night, too. iPads, Nexuses and other devices were lying about for kids to play and hack with, as well as toys like Snap Circuits:

Poesy went to a lockpicking class. I don't think she picked up much on this occasion (BUT I DID. Muahahah).

DEFCON & DEFCON Kids. If you get the chance, I couldn't recommend it more.

ZombieBurbz: tiny zombie toys that interact with an app...

Tiny zombies that interact with an app!

Battle the Joneses

• Battle the zombie-hating Joneses in the suburbs
• Collectible zombie figures interact with the free app
• iPhone and Android compatible!

A tiny $9.99, too. By AppGear, and found at ThinkGeek.

(There's an air-hockey game with capacitive paddles, too).

Japanese emoticon stamper

Eeee, want!

(Via)

The Balloonicorn!

There is a Team Fortress 2 major content update coming called Pyromania (Pyro's a lady!). There's a video to promote this, possibly one of the most disturbing (and hilarious) videos I've seen in a while:

There's a Balloonicorn. And in a display of well-engineered, well-oiled production, you can now buy an inflatable Balloonicorn from the Valve store, which comes with a TF item unlock.

Style!

(via Tomopop)

MAKIES in the wild

Breaking the surface for air... :D

So, MAKIES. Live late May; sold out the first run in 3 weeks, and got the final four [cylons] out of the door yesterday, late June. You can imagine how nutso it's been: feet haven't touched the ground. Everyone's been working crazy hours, night and day - best team ! - and now we plan Batch Two, and holidays. Trying to get those not to collide...

Watching the MAKIES head out to their new owners is an amazing feeling, but completely blown out of the water when photos start to come back. Here's a few:

MakieDave & ElfinAm, a wife-and-husband team from the UK, their MAKIES like to cuddle a lot:

SueKat, who was given a full body blush and faceup by her owner @katsideswide:

And Plink, who is a wonderful mischief-maker, now with a new cape and a gorgeous 'do:

Last but not least, Dan Hon's possibly-quite-evil AdNerd, abominable plans afoot in every picture.

"Learning how to make drones."

Back to work. There's a tablet version to be getting on with.