This isn’t new, but it’s mad interesting (and I’m slow sometimes):
If you like it, try watching his other videos too, they’re all worthwhile.
Category: tech
I could say growing pains in reference to, say, the life of this website, but really the most recent change is that I have, essentially, downgraded my web hosting, so “growing” doesn’t really seem appropriate. Moving pains would also work, but then you would lose the irony.
Hosting with DreamHostfor the past some-odd years has been fine. They have decent starting prices for the first year, competitive prices after, and they offer ridiculous amounts of both storage and bandwidth. More, in fact, than anyone should ever need on a shared host. They’re inconsistent though, when it comes to uptime, though I hear rumors that this is pretty much on a server- by server-basis, so maybe I just got unlucky.
I’ve been investigating DreamHost alternatives for a long time now, with some good leads now and again. I used Precision Effect when I created the lissat.org website (one that, sadly, I’ve never developed), and was happy with their speed and support, though at $6 a month for their smallest package, they still weren’t inexpensive.
After more recent browsing, I finally moved this site over to NearlyFreeSpeech.Net, which is a hosting service with a neat idea. It’s essentially a pay-for-what-you-use service: you charge your account with moneys, and then pay as you go, starting at $1 for the first GB of bandwidth and then getting cheaper per GB as/if your site becomes more popular. They don’t have any one-click installs, no user-friendly services. They have a knowledgeable user base and a well-used forum for when you run into trouble (as I did quite a few times getting WordPress installed). Pricewise, I expect $10 will get me through a few months, at least. Speedwise, so far, I find it much improved over DreamHost. And no, NearlyFreeSpeech.Net does not have an affiliate program, so I’m not trying to sell you anything. Fact is, the all-manual approach to site management is probably more than most people want to deal with, so NFS isn’t for everyone.
I’m in the process of moving La Casa Comics over to A Small Orange. That was also a swinging deal, $20 for 14 months of hosting in their “Tiny” package, which will most likely be enough for us, obscure as we are. I’m still waiting for the DNS to propagate (after a freak accident where it propagated immediately, and much sooner than I thought it would, and I have to switch it BACK over to DreamHost to ftp some files out before the switch). Once I get things set up, I’ll report back. But so far so good.
I moved all of the domains over to name.com, which has been nice and easy so far, and cheaper than anywhere else (currently under cost, actually, for new domains). I always heard that domain registrars should be separate from hosting services, but I’d always been too lazy to change it until now. It’s nice to know, though, that is for some reason the hosting company really decides to suck, there’s no chance of losing my domains on top of everything else.
Alternative hosting sites that I looked at (of note) include: Laughing Squid and Bluehost. Laughing Squid is neat because it’s based out of San Francisco and claims to serve the artist community particularly. Still, even if you use their “starving artist” discount, it’s $8 per month, so I thought I’d hold off and try some cheaper plans first. Also, you can see their sticker in the photo above. Bluehost seems like a big, but good, solid web hosting company, with lots of space and bandwidth and a free domain for $7 per month, but still a little too pricey for me, who is trying to save ALL his pennies for the time being. What can I say, I’m cheap yo!
If you’re interested in hosting and you have no idea what you’re doing, find someone like DreamHost who has nice one-click installs on a variety of applications (they really are easy for first-time host users). Bluehost evidently has a WordPress one-click install, though I’m not sure what else. If, however, you want cheap and complicated, so far I’m pretty happy with both NFS and ASO. I’ll be sure to let you know if anything changes. In the meantime, things should be much more stable around here (and eventually over at la casa); that is, if you even noticed anything going on in the first place.
So that’s my story. What about you? Do you have a great host? Who with and why are they awesome? I’m always on the lookout for the best deal. On the other side of the coin, who is completely worth avoiding?
What I Learned Today had a link over to Tux Paint, which looks awesome. From there I burrowed my way through to Tux Typing and Tux, of Math Command.
Tux Paint is an open source drawing program supposedly for children ages 3 to 12, but the way it looks, I kind of want to use it myself. I haven’t tried it yet, but just from the screens I can see it has cool stamps and a fun, bubbly interface. I think we should design all our programs as if we were making them for kids.
Tux, of Math Command is an arcade-style, comet-blaster math game, much in the style of that typing shark popcap game that everyone has played. Alongside with a training academy, you can choose what type of math problem you want to work on, or you want your kid to work on if, you know, you’re gonna actually use these things for their intended purpose. But who would want to do that?
I don’t see any nifty screenshots for Tux Typing, but I can guess that it’s pretty straight-forward, and that it’s meant to teach kids typing skills. It probably even has cute graphics and nifty sounds. Really, what more do you want from a typing program?
Here are the download links for math and typing. If you’re a Windows user like me, go for the installer.exe files. You can download Tux Paint over on its website.
If you’re interested in other free entertainment software, check these guys out. They seem to be behind the Tux4kids apps, among others.
Categories
Memory is cheap
Flash memory, that is. If you’re in the market, this is a swingin’ deal right now. I just bought two of ’em the other week.
Looking for the perfect IM client? Sorry, it doesn’t exist. Well, I don’t know. Maybe Adium is perfect, but it’s for OS X, so I’ll probably never know. In the meantime, here’s what my search has revealed (without value declaration or filtering). I’m specifically trying to measure things up to Meebo, and the MeeboMe widget, so I’ll start the list with that.
Meebo (& MeeboMe): I like the support for all the major IM services (including gtalk / jabber, which many others often ignore). However, I do wish that there was a downloadable client (all browser all the time sucks). The MeeboMe widget isn’t as customizable as I would like (particularly in colors / transparency). Some safety concerns, though you can make it more secure by using https:// if you want.
www.meebo.com
Wablet (in Alpha): Sign up to test it. Strange caller id feature, but the tech mags seem to like it so far. I’ve not yet received my invite to test it, so who knows.
www.wablet.com
Plugoo: Supports all the right clients, but you have to pick one of them. Also, you can only chat with one person at a time. Lame.
www.plugoo.com
GAIM / Pidgin: As of April 2007, GAIM is now Pidgin. Pidgin runs on a boatload of OSes, supports a metric boatload of IM services, and overall seems very cool indeed. Sadly, there is no widget support. Apparently, Pidgin is the Adium of Windows (or vice versa). Maybe they’ll develop some fun widgets, eventually.
pidgin.im/pidgin/home
Miranda: Miranda touts itself as the “smaller, faster, easier” IM client. Personally, I hate it. I guess maybe it’s just not for me (e.g. it’s for developers and skinners and the like), but I find it to be the most unintuitive and clumsy program of the bunch. If you want, you can get an Adium X skin for Miranda (http://aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=30032). Maybe that would help.
www.miranda-im.org
Trillian: I like Trillian, but it doesn’t support GoogleTalk, so it’s a bust. I’m firmly convinced that everyone worth chatting to must have a gmail account by now. Right? Right!? Also, no online widgets. Trillian is working on a very, very, very feature-rich new version though, called Trillian Astra. If memory serves, it’ll do everything for you except make you coffee in the morning (and still may not include an online widget). Whether or not the features are actually worth the cost of developing, I guess only time will tell.
www.ceruleanstudios.com/learn
Gabbly: This incredibly odd little app allows you to discuss any website with anyone else that wants to discuss that website. Simply put gabbly.com/ before any url (e.g. gabbly.com/ahniwa.com/blog) and you’ll see the website with an included gabbly chat box. You can chat with anyone else who did the same thing. Technically, this is more a chatroom than an IM, but it’s kind of neat. Someone noted in my web perusal that you could use Gabbly in an online learning environment by pushing Gabbly links out to a group of people, thereby jumping with an entire class (for instance) from page to page.
gabbly.com
eBuddy: Supports AIM, MSN, and Yahoo. So no GoogleTalk / Jabber, which is annoying. Also seems fairly commercial (i.e. there are a lot of adverts on the website). Sorry, that’s all I got. Doesn’t appeal to me.
www.ebuddy.com
IMHaha: Very similar to Meebo, except drop GoogleTalk / Jabber and add QQ instead. Claims to use https:// so that you can IM securely. I don’t see any mention of a widget, and the lack of GTalk is a dealbreaker for me, again.
www.imhaha.com
ILoveIM: Allows web-based access to any one service: MSN, AIM, Yahoo, GTalk. That’s it.
www.iloveim.com
KoolIM: Meh, same sort of deal. Supports the same four as ILoveIM, plus ICQ. They claim they’ll add SMS support “soon”, which would be neat, but looking at their set-up, I somehow doubt that it’s really gonna happen.
www.koolim.com
Chatango: Chatango is all widgety, which is nice, but only supports it’s own service. Which means, in the end, people can only chat with you through the widget. The library at Oregon State University is using it, and I was impressed with how nice it looked (and subsequently disappointed that it didn’t support any third-party services).
chatango.com
Snimmer & Interaction: Both along the same lines as Chatango, in that they’re web-based. Snimmer uses one of your choice of messenging services, whereas Interaction uses its own service exclusively.
www.interactionchat.com
www.snimmer.com
As far as embedded chat goes, MeeboMe appears the clear winner, despite its imperfections. Chatango and Plugoo are the runners-up. As for non-embedded chat, at least you’ve got choices! Unless you’re on OS X, and then your life is blessedly simple. Still, for windows, I’d recommend Pidgin. Trillian gets the silver.
As far as embedded chat in libraries, LibSuccess has a nice list of who is using what.
At some point I’ll try and clean this up a bit, add better links, and rate things in more detail (just in case people find it useful).
“Ideum develops interactive experiences for museum visitors. Working in partnership with a range of museums, they have created over 40 projects which extend the experience of the museum goer through the use of new technology. The weblog-style website features a generous selection of these, from a tool that allowed three to five year olds to upload the sounds of the gallery floor, through software mash ups and interactive photographic exhibits.”
Check it out at: http://www.ideum.com/
Link and description via Intute.
This may not be the kind of trickery I’m eager to deal with at the crack of dawn (assuming I ever actually attempted to wake up that early). Even so, it’s one of the coolest little gadgets I’ve seen in a long time. After all, everyone loves a cheeky little robot.
Snip from Thinkgeek:
Sleep is the little death, and dying kinda sucks, so we avoid it whenever possible. Problem is, if you don’t sleep, you tend to pass out an inopportune times, like driving, operating heavy droids, and various sex type behaviors. Thankfully, unplanned narcolepsy can be avoided by a strict regimen of planned sleep. Don’t let sleep take you over though; too much means no work done! You need a boot to the butt to wake you up, and Clocky is here with said metaphorical boot! Clocky’s robotic wheels propel this little alarm off your nightstand, spinning away from your grasp. Turning and spinning, it forces you out of bed to chase down this adorable noisy demon, making you instantly alert and ready to face the day.
Link: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/91f2/?cpg=52H
Amazon.com now offers RSS feeds, based on tags that you choose. You can then aggregate these feeds to your site, and even keep them as affiliate links, if you’re into that kind of thing.
See: RSS web feeds for tagged products (syndication)
Three books I need to own:
Creating Database-Backed Library Web Pages: Using Open Source Tools — Stephen R. Westman
Because these are exactly the sorts of sites I want to, and will likely be able to, make.
The Wisdom of Crowds — James Surowiecki
Because this book is mentioned so often it has nearly become annoying, but I suppose I should read it anyway.
Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become — Peter Morville
Because in the world of federated searching, findability is a more interesting topic than ever.
Comic Life, a comic creation program previously only for the Mac, now has a working beta for the Windows OS. Shit … I keep running out of reasons not to make a webcomic of my very own.
Our library is currently investigating implementation of an electronic reserves system, in tandem with other academic libraries in the area. My involvement in the decision is one of my summer “Library Intern” projects.
Next week we get to demo two major ER systems:
- OCLC Illiad, Atlas Systems, Inc.: Ares System
- SirsiDynix, Docutek: ERes Electronic Reserves System
Since I’m a creature of the open source generation, it also behooved me to search out some OSS options, which revealed namely:
- GMUtant Software’s OSCR; and,
- ReservesDirect, which was originally developed by Emory University and just went open source last December.
If anyone has any experience with any of these systems, I’d sure love to hear your thoughts! I’m e-attending a presentation on Ares and ERes next Tuesday, so I’ll have a better starting point to compare after that.
AKA the links from this month’s IRN that I find most intriguing:
Exciting stuff.
A group of scholarly societies is uniting to create more direct access to their collective content. In June, thirteen of the world’s leading science and technology societies will launch scitopia.org, a free federated vertical search portal that will enable users to explore the research most cited in scholarly work and patents in a single click. Scitopia.org will aggregate the entire electronic libraries of the leading voices in major science and technology disciplines. More than three million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and conference proceedings, spanning 150 years of science and technology will be searched through this dedicated gateway.
Read the official press release: (it’s a pdf)
Sci-Tech Societies Unite to Create Super Research Site
Check it out: Scitopia.org
I recently wrote a few pages about Open Access myself, for a take-home test in my Collection Development course. Since I was writing at about five in the morning, it’s hard to remember if what I said made any sense (I tend not to look back over my assignments once I’ve handed them in). I do remember that my tone was very much pro-OA, and that my title was “Open Access (or Close the Door)”. If I did make sense, then I hope that my paper resembled somewhat the one recently written by Alma Swan for American Scientist Online.
Swan argues against the current way we disseminate research:
“But no one would say, “Hey, why don’t we only let some researchers see this stuff and see how science gets on?” Yet that is precisely where we are today, in a system where gateways limit access to research results, and as a consequence only a small fraction of the world’s research libraries subscribe to some journals. The gentleman’s club survives, if only as metaphor.”
Swan goes on to cite multiple ways in which an open access publishing model would improve scientific research. I’m sure it makes a bit more sense than my paper did, but the sentiment is very much the same.
Open access, or close the door.
Read the article:
American Scientist Online – Open Access and the Progress of Science
With a title like that, I’m sure you’re excited to read on.
My Sony Dream System ™ arrived, and as I had feared it doesn’t have a digital audio connection. Also, it has an integrated dvd-player. WTF!? Okay, so I ordered it and I should have known. But I had thought to myself “NO WAY does a decent receiver in this day and age NOT have an optical port!” Well, I guess you showed me, Sony. FutureShop, for their part, were annoyingly vague in their description of available ports, and had no pictures on the website of the back of the receiver, which you’d think would be the most informative part to show prospective buyers. I thought that true DTS support required a digital audio connection, but somehow mine is still working through my handy red and white connectors. Perhaps my presumptions all this time have been wrong, in which case I blame Theo. Also possible is that the receiver is faking the DTS connection, but I don’t know how that would work exactly, either. In any case, my apartment is tiny and it actually sounds pretty good, so I decided to keep the damn thing, though I’ll try to sell it before I move for the summer. I’ll take a loss, that’s fine. No optical as a temporary situation is okay, but in the long term I simply can’t exist in such a state of squalor.
Did I mention that FutureShop has listed, as a recommended accessory, an optical cable? That’s just tricky, that is. The bastards. Oh yeah, and as a dvd-player it doesn’t have an hdmi port, which seems ludicrous what with television going digital and all. Here’s a link to the system, if you wanna see.
Some guy in Lawrence, Kansas wrote an op-ed piece essentially positing that libraries are worthless and obsolete. The write-up itself is incredibly annoying, but the responses to it have been really interesting. I forwarded the story on to my classmates, since it’s the kind of thing we’re going to have to stand up against soon enough, and we may as well start now. To briefly outline my description here, libraries are NOT worthless and are, in fact, AWESOME. These are facts, and therefore undeniable. So there, Mr Hirschey of Lawrence. I wrote a more eloquent proclamation (if you can imagine such a thing), in the comments proper. I encourage everyone to go and have their say. Lawrence could be a masthead for the library advocacy movement, if enough people took notice. Michael Stephens and the Librarian in Black have both posted verbose rebuttals, which is a start, but I think we really need to steamroll this issue. Their posts are worth reading, in any case.
My trip to New Jersey to see Abigail was fantastic. It was a slice of heaven, spread over a little less than two days, and that’s even considering the fact that I was suffering from some flu symptoms. Ain’t no disease was gonna get me down! The wedding itself was very sweet, and got us talking about how we want to do OUR wedding, which was fun in itself. If you’d told me a year ago that I would be making wedding plans in Jersey, I’d have given you my quizzical eyebrow look. Now it makes all the sense in the world, except for the Jersey part, of course. We’re looking at July of 2008, which will be right around our second anniversary, so it seems like a good time. Mark your calendars, etc.
I just finished watching season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which took me all of … oh, three days to get through. Maybe two. Much to my homework’s chagrin. But hey, once you start watching Buffy, it’s all over. I was powerless to resist its spell. It’s my first time through the series, as well, and a journey I began with Tim back when we were living together in Olympia. I’ll get through the rest of the series before the end of the year, and will finally be able to call myself a fulfilled and cultured individual. Until then, I have seasons 1 and 2 of Deadwood to keep me occupied, as well as, oh yeah, schoolwork.
Go figure. On one last note, the Pharmaprix up the street has Orangina for sale for $1.99 CAD per 1.75L, which makes me the happiest and orangest guy in the province, at least until Oct 13th or so, or until they run out. I bought four, which wasn’t nearly enough, but a guy only has so many arms. Until later, then: stake em if you got em.
On the evening of July 27th, the Deleting Online Predators Act passed in the House with 410-15-7; otherwise known as a ridiculously gigantic margin. The bill, which is incredibly vague, threatens once again federal internet subsidies for schools and libraries unless they take measures to block social networking sites and chatrooms. The goal is to block children, specifically; adults should still be able to ask permission to access the sites.
How many times are we going to try and put walls around the internet? How long will it take us to realize that our kids are smarter than we are and that the only way to really protect them is to be there, paying attention to their lives, and getting involved.
Though advocates for the bill constantly mentioned MySpace, the bill is broad enough that any site that allows "communication among users" could be blocked. In the Web2.0 world, this could mean pretty much every site out there, before too long. Blogs, forums, chat, IM, Skype, Amazon, Ebay, Livejournal, and online games are all at risk. Why not just outlaw the internet for anyone under 18 years of age, or better yet, 21, and see how much we've shot ourselves in the foot when, in less than a generation, we don't have any web innovators anymore.
From Library Journal:
"This unnecessary and overly broad legislation will hinder students' ability to engage in distance learning and block library computer users from accessing a wide array of essential Internet applications including instant messaging, email, wikis and blogs," said ALA president Leslie Burger. "Under DOPA, people who use library and school computers as their primary conduits to the Internet will be unfairly blocked from accessing some of the web's most powerful emerging technologies and learning applications. As libraries are already required to block content that is "harmful to minors" under the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation."
DOPA is in the senate now, and it needs to be stopped. Please make your voice heard on this one, or else it's another Patriot Act in the making.
ZDNet has a great rundown on DOPA if you want the background skinny.
(via geekaresexy)
Riya is a visual search engine that lets you upload, tag, and search your own photos or any other photos in their index. Pretty normal, right? The neat part is that it has some capacity for recognizing objects, including individual faces (with some margin of error). Once you've taught it to recognize your friends, it will automatically tag your photos that those friends are in with their names, making it easier to search for them later. Riya can also breakdown searches into related tags, letting you jump to similar interests or narrow down your search. The main downside right now is that all large images are automatically resized to 800×600 pixels. And let's face it, in today's digital photophile age, that's a pretty big downside. Adult pictures are removed, though it appears that they may rely on user-policing to mark "adult content", and I was able to find some without much effort. In the name of science, of course. All in all, it's a neat idea, definately in beta, but worth keeping an eye on.
The ButtKicker LFE Electromagnetic Transducer has a fancy name and a fancier purpose: to make sound move you. Without creating any additional audio, it can be placed below or attached to your couch or chair to make you feel the bass. At $200, I seriously need to get one of these.
Table of Malcontents is a daily read (when I have the opportunity), and has enough good stuff over the past few days that you should really just hop over there and check it out. But if you need my encouragement, I particularly enjoyed: Pirates and Treasure, Modern Living/Neurotica Series (though it's super-creepy), and 787 Cliparts.
After about a month of almost painful deliberation, I finally screwed up my courage yesterday evening and bought myself a laptop. Talking to Abby about it, I told her that the more you know about computers the more difficult it becomes to choose one. I wanted dual-core, but I also wanted 64-bit, and I wanted at least a 5400-RPM hard drive, decent graphics, and at minimum 1GB of RAM. I preferred something smaller than the fairly standard 15.4" screen, which tend to weigh in starting at 6.5lb, and I wanted built-in wifi with bluetooth. Also, I didn't want to spend very much.
Easy, right?
I spent a lot of time on Dell's website, trying to finagle a deal with coupons and instant rebates. Even with the $750 rebate on certain Inspiron notebooks of $1999 or more (which technically meant I could get a $2000 laptop for $1250), I was unenthused about my specs. Poking about on Newegg.com, I noticed that the Turion 64 X2 notebooks were much cheaper than I had figured they might be, but that they didn't have one that really matched my every little desire.
Long story short, with the help of NoteBookReview.com and HPshopping, I decided on a very snazzy, classy, black Compaq V3000Z, tricked out to match my exacting standards. So what did I get? Check these babies out:
- AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-52 (1.60GHz/2x512KB L2 Cache)
- 14.1" WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800)
- NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150
- 2.0GB DDR2 533 SDRAM (2x1024MB)
- 80 GB 5400 RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive
- LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+/-RW w/Double Layer
- 802.11a/b/g WLAN and BlueTooth
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- 1-yr Standard Warranty
- Dimensions: 13.15" (L) x 9.33" (W) x 1" (min H)/1.54" (max H)
- Weight (6 cell): 5.5lb
Curious what a 1.6ghz processor might be in AMD-terms, I checked Newegg, and it appears that, were the processor single core, at least, it would be a 2800+. That sounds nice and snappy to me, though I'm sure your mileage varies. The only part I'm not completely tickled about is the integrated video, though evidently the Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 is the cream of integrated video cards for notebooks at the moment. A dedicated card it's not, but since there aren't any x2 notebooks available right now with dedicated graphics cards, I won't take that too personally. Besides, it could be detrimental to my health if the notebook were able to play games too well. Willpower and all, you understand.
Two features that have me particularly thrilled are the wifi switch on the keyboard, which allows you to easily disable your wireless capabilities, for security as well as battery-saving purposes, I would imagine. The other one is the HP-proprietary Quickplay, which is described in the review as:
Quickplay is possibly the only software pre-installed which is worth keeping. Quickplay or QP for short is HP's take on the media center and unlike the media center QP can run without booting into windows and play DVD's, video, pictures and movies located in the shared documents folder. It is a nice tool if you watch movies or just play music on the laptop. It has a dedicated button which can launch QP from within Windows and even when the laptop is turned off. The optional remote might be worth buying as it is capable of controlling the Quickplay controls and will be useful when watching a DVD.
That sounds pretty damned neat, and I'm excited to try it out.
One of the main reasons I was so damned picky in choosing a notebook is that I wanted it to be (surprise) Windows Vista compatible. Fully compatible. Which means a 64-bit processor and the graphics power to handle Aero. This baby should, I think, do the trick. Now, about that Vista release date …
The only real pain about the entire situation is that it isn't estimated to be built until August 7th, and then it's being shipped 5-7 day ground. Who can be expected to be that patient after blowing that much cash on a laptop!? Do they think I'm some sort of saint? Cross your fingers for me that they finish it sooner, because I want to play around with it a bit before I start heading eastward. Also, if you like, feel free to suggest some names. And carrying cases. I'm in the market for both.
Categories
Google Spreadsheets
Now you can work on spreadsheets collaboratively, online, thanks to Google Spreadsheets. Just more proof that Google can make anything sexy. Even spreadsheets.
Categories
BumpTop Hip-Hop
BumpTop is a prototype desktop management system that organizes your computer desktop in much the same way as your actual work desk might be arranged. Plus, they rap!
Watch the lengthier, less hip-hoppitty video for an explanation of features like Dragoncross Drag n'Cross, and to hear them say "lass-ooh" (lasso) a lot. Personally, I'd like to organize my workdesk to be more like my computer's desktop, rather than the other way around, but it's still neat!
(via Gear Live )
Categories
Technology makes me happy
I don’t have a ton of gadgets, personally. I jumped on the iPod bandwagon about 2 years late, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that for those years I wasn’t realizing my “hip” potential. Still, reading about supercool tech gadgets has the power to make me giddy, so I guess I’m a closet gadgeophile, despite myself.
If you’re old-school like me (all relative, I know), you won’t be able to help but love this modded NES-controller-turned-cell-phone. (Google ads displayed “Zelda Ringtone”, which was so appropriate I guffawed.)
On another note, for people who always bite the heads off their animal crackers before they eat the rest, someone has fabricated the perfect USB drive for you. Data storage has never been so deliciously sadistic. Unfortunately they don’t appear to be available for sale, but you could always make your own without too much trouble.
Finally, in the not-so-cute-and-actually-I’m-kinda-scared category: Giant Panda robots. Perhaps a Flameosapien will meet the beasts in battle and save humanity. Or join them, in which case, we’re fucked.