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The pictures here really speak for themselves: Elecom have launched a set of LEGO-themed headphones, the PLAYBRICK EHP-CIN40, and if you've never quite been able to give up your childhood addiction with plastic building blocks then you're bound to find these appealing. Supplied with four different earbud sizes, Elecom are even going so far as to suggest that sound quality is decent, though we'd believe that when we heard it.
I spent lots of time playing with Lego in my youth. In fact, I got into more than one fistfight at school over the last set of wheels for my Fall Guy truck creation. Today, geeks are doing all sorts of projects with Lego that have more to do with gadgets than the type of building Lego intended its ubiquitous blocks to be used for.
It must be a week for Wiimote hacks, as there are two interesting implementations of Nintendo’s wireless motion-sensitive controller on offer today. First up comes a hack using DarwiinRemote, that allows you to play World of Warcraft using the Wiimote; then, there’s a self-balancing robot made of LEGO NXT, that can be remotely controlled with it.
Video demos of both projects after the cut
If you love LEGO and you love Rock Band, then prepare to whoop in unadorned rapture at the news that LEGO Rock Band has been officially announced. Available for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS, LEGO Rock Band will allow gamers to build their own minifig avatars, band and entourage, and play tracks including Blur’s Song 2, Europe’s The Final Countdown and Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting.
As awesome, insane, time-consuming LEGO projects go, building a 65,000-brick replica of the space shuttle complete with flashing lights, sound effects and frantic minifig technicians takes some beating. That’s just what was constructed for the Nasu Highland Park amusement park in Japan: the Nasu Space Center.
“Simulated launch” video after the cut
Working for LEGO has obvious benefits. Being near colored plastic blocks all day, probably getting a discount in the company store, all the plastic interchangeable hairstyles you could ever want, the list is almost endless. Now we can add “getting the best business cards in the world” to that list: your contact details printed on custom LEGO minifigs.
We have all had Legos at some point in our lives. Some of us, including myself, still have Legos around the house. With the age of gadget loving kids getting younger and younger Lego has set out to deliver kid friendly electronics that incorporates an all time classic toy.
When I first set eyes on the Lego V8 Engine, I had the same reaction many have. It starts as surprised wonder, then a curiosity as to whether or not an engine made of Legos could actually work and then a realization that that’s quite possibly the dumbest thought I’ve ever had. Even so, you have to admit, this Lego creation is pretty cool.
The fight got dirty in the netbook arena this week, as Monday saw VIA’s Nano CPU take on Intel’s Atom with a 1080p smack-down video only to become mired in controversy when bloggers ran the tests themselves and came up with wildly different outcomes. Still, we had Lenovo’s finally-official IdeaPad S10 and S9 to cheer us up, together with the rumor that Gigabyte plan a 10-inch dual-core version of the coveted M912 tablet-netbook.
Of course, ASUS couldn’t bear to be out of the headlines for a single minute, and so announced the S101 (the size of an Eee, the branding of an Eee, but it’s not an Eee) together with a cloud storage option. Netbooks are so much the niche of the moment that this week’s “He Said, She Said” editorial was all about whether the best value comes from there or from a second-hand laptop off of eBay.
Actually, it’s just the case that’s really made out of Legos, the rest are your usual computer parts. However, for once there is a Lego DIY project that isn’t multi-colored.
The ones that have all of the different colors tend to make it look even more like the project of some prodigy ten year old. This one is all black and for once looks like something an actual adult might create.
JP
