...Because when you think of Britain, you think of sunny skies. Ikea has started selling solar panels for residential rooftops at its stores in the United Kingdom. The furniture outfit's move into home solar systems (as opposed to sun-powered lighting) was apparently made attractive due to the drop in cost of solar panels, and Ikea's initial offering will set you back £5,700 (about $9,300). For your money, you get a 3.36 kW system, in-store consultation, installation, maintenance and energy monitoring service. Ikea's got plans to sell solar panels in other locales, but according to Ikea Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard, such expansion will be done market by market (so don't expect a worldwide rollout). Hey Steve, might we suggest your next store to start selling solar be someplace with more than two weeks of sunshine per year?
Christmas is right around the corner! No, no it isn’t, but that’s what corporate America would have me believe — they’re already putting up Thanksgiving decorations up at the grocery store! And since I’m as much as a part of consumerist society as the next person lining up on Black Friday, ready to trample anyone [...] Visit IncredibleThings.com for the full post.
We’ve already seen official Iron Man hoodies, but if you want something more unique – to the extent that copies can be described as unique – check out this cotton hoodie made by Catherine Kim aka Iamknight. It’s not in Shellhead’s trademark colors, but I think that’s a good thing. It’s a lot easier to find clothes and shoes that match a black hoodie than a red and gold one.
As with Kim’s other armor-themed hoodies, the mask of this hoodie is detachable. Kim said that the hoodie is a mix of different versions of the Iron Man armor. She said that she copied the abdomen and elbows of the Mk. VIII armor and combined that with the chest and shoulders of the Mk. VII armor.
You can order the Iron Man suit hoodie from Kim’s Etsy shop for $450 (USD). That’s Tony Stark pricing right there.
Looking for a one of a kind Breaking Bad collectible? How about this incredibly realistic Walter White mask that was once worn by Bryan Cranston? This mask first showed up when Bryan Cranston wore it at the 2013 Comic-Con and walked among the unsuspecting crowd. He then revealed the disguise on stage at the Breaking Bad panel.
Then later it showed up on all of the talk shows, even Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where Fallon wore the mask and interviewed Bryan Cranston as Walter White. At one point musician/actor Common put on the mask too. The mask was signed by Cranston and returned to the artist after that. Now you can own one and do whatever you want with it.
It’s great for Halloween, making your own fan movies, scaring people, or just staring in the mirror telling yourself that you are the one who knocks. The eBay auction ends tonight and right now it is at a whopping $41,300.00(USD).
Kenji Ido’s Tamatsu House in Osaka, Japan is wedged in an urban, mixed-used area of small factories and office buildings that coexist in lines of very vertical structures! A major problem with this type of close-construction is the sparse amount of natural light able to enter the house, thereby making an already small space seem smaller. To counteract this issue, a clever mixture of skylights and inclined walls break up both the space and incoming light. So effectively, in fact, that you’d have almost no idea the entire house is a mere 1000 square feet!
- Yanko Design Timeless Designs - Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE - We are more than just concepts. See what's hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Squeezed In was originally posted on Yanko Design)
It's like Jeff Goldblum's neurotic, chaos theory spouting character in Jurassic Park said: "life, uh, finds a way." Or, in this case, it's the internet that can't be kept down at heel. According to a Reuters report, the Chinese government's State Internet Information Office has instituted a "crackdown" on rogue mobile news apps that purportedly transmit images of pornography and other "obscene information" to children. But what's more likely, however, is that the apps in question serve as a workaround for citizens seeking news reports from established foreign media outlets; news that would otherwise be censored.
The move could see any offending app makers, which includes popular apps like Zaker and Chouti, effectively shut down if they fail to fall in line and sanitize their content. China's long had a history of strangling internet access, but this development, coupled with recent news of censorship as usual for its Shanghai free trade zone, highlights just how difficult it is for the state to control the web. And with new social networks cropping up every day and promising novel means of spreading illegal information, that fight's fast becoming a losing battle.
If grammar is as important to you as your morning coffee, then these should be you’re mugs! (Ha, gotcha!) This set of 6 mugs highlights the correct usage of commonly confused words like “lose” and “loose” or “effect” and “affect.” Their (*snicker*) a great gift for the grammar Nazi in your life who’s always correcting [...] Visit IncredibleThings.com for the full post.
In the future, we may not need to go to museums and other repositories of art in order to admire paintings and sculptures. We may be able to print inch-perfect replicas of artworks that, to the untrained eyes, look exactly the same as the original. Engineer Tim Zaman showed that it’s possible to make high quality and full color scans of paintings using off the shelf devices. But for now, it takes a rare and proprietary 3D printer to turn those scans into accurate replicas.
For his master thesis at the Delft University of Technology, Tim built a custom 3D scanner composed of two Nikon D800E cameras with 80mm PC-E lenses and a polarization filter and a picoprojector that also has a polarization filter. Tim said his rig enabled him to combine two 3D scanning techniques – stereoscopic scanning and fringe projection – allowing for scans with a resolution of 50 micrometers (μm) and a depth precision of 9.2 μm. Skip to around 1:52 in the video below to see Tim talk to the BBC about his project:
In his reply to a commenter on YouTube, Tim said that it takes him one day to scan a 1 sq.m. (approx. 11 sq.ft.) surface. Printing the resulting file can take up to a day as well. Not that you’d be able to do so with just any 3D printer. The miraculous machine in the video below and the 3D printing process it uses were developed by Océ, a printing company owned by Canon. The painting that was replicated here is Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride.
That is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in my life. No doubt visual artists and art critics will have to come to terms with the off-putting consequences of this technology. What is the value of a painting if it can have infinite perfect replicas? Should one’s appreciation of a painting or sculpture be informed by the knowledge of its authenticity if you can’t tell the difference between an original work and its replica? But as Tim stated in his thesis, the fruits of his labor can also be applied to study, conserve and restore works of art. Head to Tim’s website or YouTube channel if you want to find out more about his research.
Amazon's really laid off the pomp and circumstance this year. Between a new Paperwhite e-reader and a trio of tablets, the company's hosted nary a press conference; just a couple of small-scale meetings. In the case of the Paperwhite, the reason seems clear. From the name on down, nothing about the device screams "major upgrade." Both the hardware and software received some tweaks, sure, but, well, if this were an Apple product, it would almost certainly be called the Kindle Paperwhite S. Then again, we loved the Paperwhite the first time around, so why mess with near perfection?%Gallery-slideshow99545%
