Lunar New Year-themed Custom Mechanical Keycaps ring in the ‘Year Of The Dragon’

Celebrating the Chinese New Year in fitting spirit, this limited-edition mechanical keyboard comes with both QWERTY and the Standard Chinese Script… but what we love more is the fitting red and gold color scheme, and those beautiful majestic fire-breathing beasts found on the special keys! The special keycaps sit on Drop’s CSTM80 keyboard, and are designed as a collaboration between Drop and designer Boba.Types. “Adorned with fiery reds and rich golds (a dragon’s favorite colors, we’d hazard a guess), this set is nothing if not ornate,” mention the folks at Drop.

Designers: Drop & Boba.Types

While most keyboards are designed to be comfortable enough to use without looking at, this one makes it hard to look away. The keycaps are just gorgeous, and make for a great collector’s edition for people celebrating the Lunar New Year… or anyone with a fascination for the great “lóng” (dragon) of Chinese mythology.

The keycaps come as a base set, but also feature novelty and accent caps for adding a little more flavor to your already Sichuan-spicy keyboard. The accents come in the form of golden keys that stand out against the otherwise red keyboard, allowing you to easily spot keys you’re more likely to use frequently. The novelty keys add gorgeous mythological imagery to your keyboard, including a special numeric row that’s adorned with the 12 Chinese zodiac signs. Even special keys like the escape, shift, control, alt, etc. are jazzed up with symbolism… and while memorizing all the key types will probably be a bit of a headache, it’s absolutely worth it in the long run. Also, your friends will have a tough time figuring out how to snoop around on your computer!

The keycaps come in a special DCD profile (Drop Cylindrical Dye-Sub) developed by Drop. It’s designed to deliver a “classic feel with a unique, grit-free PBT texture for a finish as smooth—and strong—as dragons’ scales,” say the folks at Drop. The keycaps are compatible with Cherry MX switches and similar clones, and the base kit sets you back $49, while an additional $35 gets you the novelty keycap set.

The post Lunar New Year-themed Custom Mechanical Keycaps ring in the ‘Year Of The Dragon’ first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Dragon Sits on Your Pressure Cooker and Breathes Steam

InstaPots and other pressure cookers have become insanely popular in recent years, with millions of households putting what basically amounts to a bomb on their kitchen counter in order to cook dinners more quickly. Thankfully, these heated and pressurized vessels have a pressure-relief valve on them to let steam out, making a catastrophic failure far less likely. And if you’re going to have something venting steam into your kitchen, why not have it be a dragon?

Well, folks, you’re in luck. This dragon-shaped steam release diverter pops onto the steam release valve of many pressure cookers, breathing a puffy and fragrant white cloud of steam from its gaping maw. The product description on Amazon (affiliate link) calls it a “fire-breathing” dragon, but if that were the case, I’d think your pressure cooker might be defective. Unless maybe you filled it with kindling and set it on fire. I’m not recommending that you do that, of course, and you’ll just have to settle for a steam-breathing dragon.

[via Dude I Want That]

Tesla x SpaceX crossover semi-truck concept helps transport rocket parts and crew

Elon is having a pretty great month. He just became a billionaire, the Tesla stock prices are arguably the highest they’ve ever been, he’s got a battery-showcase event coming up soon, he’s hot off the success of multiple rocket launches and retrievals over the past few months, and he’s all set to demonstrate a working prototype of his brain-computer interface Neuralink on Friday. This Tesla SpaceX Semi-Truck concept builds on Musk’s incredible legacy.

Created by automotive designer Alex Baldini Imnadze, the SpaceTruck is a concept created as a dream collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX. Unlike Tesla’s original semi-truck, the SpaceTruck is more situation-specific, designed to transport rocket parts and the Dragon crew around and between facilities. Citing Syd Mead as his primary source of inspiration, Baldini says the SpaceTruck was created as an effort to embrace ‘Astro-design’, creating a vehicle that visually represented the space-age we’re currently in. The SpaceTruck’s design language mimics the Dragon Crew Capsule, with a similar white and black color-combination. Needless to say the truck is entirely powered by an electric drive-train, and features a cockpit that sits above all the machinery, jutting out too, to slightly resemble the SpaceX astronaut helmet. Unusually shaped doors allow you to enter and exit the cockpit, while it would be pretty safe to assume that the vehicle does come with some level of autonomy too. The SpaceTruck concept’s wheels boast of a rim-design inspired by the Dragon Crew Capsule too.

A pretty low ground-clearance indicates that the SpaceTruck is made for mostly in-facility transport, allowing crew to get from place to place, while also allowing crucial parts to be transported within different wings of the facility. Pretty neat, eh?!

Designer: Alex Baldini Imnadze

SpaceX will answer Crew Dragon and Starlink questions on Reddit at 3PM ET

If you’ve wanted to learn more about SpaceX’s projects than you normally see in the news, now’s your chance. The company’s software team is holding a Reddit AMA session today starting at 3PM Eastern to answer questions on the software that guides Spa...

SpaceX’s first-gen Dragon cargo capsule left the ISS for the last time

This morning, a first-generation SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule left the International Space Station (ISS). The Dragon CRS-20 will return to Earth with more than 4,000 pounds of scientific experiments and other cargo, NASA said. This spacecraft, which h...

Game of Thrones Dragon Lamps: A Song of Light and Fire

If you still love Game of Thrones after this final season (Sorry you named your child Khaleesi), check out these 3D-printed fire-breathing dragon lamps. These sweet looking tabletop lamps were designed by Adam Jech of 3Demon.

There’s nothing like dragon’s breath to light up the night. Just ask anyone in King’s Landing. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Too soon? Sorry about that. Anyway, I might get one of these. I like dragon lighting and this looks badass. Like this guy drank some alcohol to up his fire game and now his breath is an extra white-hot inferno. So he’s cooking up some animals below for dinner. Probably a herd of sheep or cows.

There’s some nice detail on that dragon. Look at those wings. I admire that. But mostly I just like fire. If you want a dragon lamp for yourself, you can purchase the 3D model from 3Demon for $6 and follow the instructions on Instructables, or you can buy one ready made from the 3Demon Etsy shop for $99.


[via Geekologie]