Women. These nefarious creature have come for our videogames, they’ve come for our comic books, and now they’re coming for the Transformers. An entire team of six new female Transformers debut in the IDW Combiner Hunters comic and then be released as toys later on.
Tulwar Sword
The sword is entirely made of bronze and it features a straight blade, provided with a strong and short curve at the foible, the tip bent of 90°. Along the entire length of the blade there are three longitudinal raisers, single -and false-edged tip, a short spike at the back of the curve, strengthened at the back and provided with eyelets, two of them still featuring the ornamental pendant.
The pattisa-like hilt has two long valves holding the balde, with pierced and cusped back. All in all, the sword is decorated with bas-relieved spirals, has a spindle-shaped grip and a large, quadrangular pommel with cusped corners, provided with eyelets and large cup-shaped button.
Source: Copyright © 2015 Czerny’s International Auction House S.R.L.
I guess I have a theme song now. :)
I’ve never seen a Simba costume quite like this one. When cosplayers tackle the lion from Disney’s The Lion King, it usually involves a full fur suit or a costume like the one seen in the Broadway adaptation of the film. Megan, a.k.a. Galacticat, came up with an original Simba design for a genderbent Disney heroes and villains cosplay group at DragonCon last year. She made a fur suit and crafted bracers and the neck collar using craft foam and Worbla.
I’m especially impressed with how she styled the wig. she started with an Arwen wig from Arda Wigs (Arda’s a really great place to find affordable cosplay wigs):
I braided it into tiny braids, then used boiling water to set them. After it dried out, I undid the braids and brushed them out. In retrospect, I probably should have tried using a flat iron on them instead. I also trimmed it several inches, and used leftover hair for the tail fluff.
More photos of Megan’s Simba costume at Facebook and see more of Megan’s other costumes in our interview with her.
California grows a pretty significant part of our food supply, both in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of different varieties. But as the land out there gets drier and drier, not everything is going to make it.
City dwellers encounter pigeons every day. But have you noticed that you never see a baby? One big reason: they stay in the nest until they’re adult-sized, which is why pretty much the only people who see pigeon babies are those who raise them, or know somebody who does — like the person who snapped this pic.
segway: you’re doing it right pic.twitter.com/Bjar7TE1KQ
— Give me Internet (@GiveMeInternet) 26. April 2015
Meet Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, a newly described dinosaur discovered by a seven-year-old boy in Chile. The theropod was related to famous meat-eaters like T. rex, but researchers think it was a vegetarian. Stranger still: It possessed a mixture of anatomical features unlike anything researchers have seen before.
Jeffrey Mangiat ‘89
Artist: Mihail Glooh
More creepy art
“And if you ever feel scared, alone, or just want to talk, you know how to call me.”
Uhm, yeah. Of course they have. It was only a matter of time. But this is alarming:
The final category of attack is a hijacking that completely takes over the robot. This turns out to be relatively easy since the Interoperable Telesurgery Protocol is publicly available. “We effectively took control over the teleoperated procedure,” they say. They even worked out how to generate movements that triggered an automatic stop mechanism built in to the robot. This occurs when a movement takes the arms beyond some predefined distance or makes them move too quickly.
By constantly sending commands that triggered this mechanism, the team were able to carry out a kind of denial of service attack. “We are able to easily stop the robot from ever being properly reset, thus effectively making a surgical procedure impossible,” they say. And if this kind of cyberattack weren’t bad enough, the video connection was also publicly available allowing almost anybody to watch the operation in real time.
I guess its’s time to call your next law firm, specialized in robot surgery injury claims, if you have an upcoming surgery.
I already wanted to go to Japan – this makes me want to go even more! Via Spoon & Tamago.
In Kinokawa City (Wakayama, Japan) there’s a peculiar train station manned by Tama, a peculiar station master. And “manned” is certainly not the right word because Tama is a cat. And Kishi Station is perhaps the only station in the world where work has been outsourced to our feline friends.
The cat’s tale begins in 2003 when a small railroad company, struggling to stay afloat, was consolidated with another railroad company forming Wakayama Electric Railway. One victim of this consolidation was a small cat shelter that was eventually told to vacate the premises in order to make way for new roads leading to train stations. In 2006, the old woman who had looked after the cats approached the president of the railway after an opening ceremony with a desperate plea: to let the cats, who were now facing eviction, live inside the station.
“The moment I met eyes with Tama, I was immediately struck with an image of Tama as station master,” recalls Mitsunobu Kojima, of the sudden revelation that would come to transform his railway. Although Kojima had generally been a dog person, he saw Tama as a maneki-neko (literally, beckoning cat), a Japanese lucky charm in the motif of a cat and thought to bring good business. Tama did not disappoint.
News of the feline station master was quickly picked up by the press and spread like wildfire. A train line that had been seeing annual decreases in ridership by over 5% suddenly saw a 10% jump in just the first year. The following year in 2008 an article published by Sankei News estimated that an increase in ridership, revenue from memorabilia like photobooks, commercial appearances, as well as a tourism boom was responsible for a combined economic impact of 1.1 billion yen.
For her hard work and dedication, in 2008 Tama was promoted to Super Station Master. She was given a brand new window office, a hat with gold lining and a badge. Tama’s annual compensation package includes 1 years’ worth of cat food.
Bunker.jordanSerious skills
So you think you’re pretty good at soldering really tiny parts onto a PCB? You’re probably not as good as [Shibata] who made a GPS/GLONASS and Geiger counter mashup deadbug-style with tiny 0402-sized parts.
The device uses an extremely small GPS/GLONASS receiver, an AVR ATxmega128D3 microcontroller, a standard Nokia phone display and an interesting Geiger tube with a mica window to track its location and the current level of radiation. The idea behind this project isn’t really that remarkable; the astonishing thing is the way this project is put together. It’s held together with either skill or prayer, with tiny bits of magnet wire replacing what would normally be PCB traces, and individual components making up the entire circuit.
While there isn’t much detail on what’s actually going on in this mess of solder, hot glue, and wire, the circuit is certainly interesting. Somehow, [Shibata] is generating the high voltage for the Geiger tube and has come up with a really great way of displaying all the relevant information on the display. It’s a great project that approaches masterpiece territory with some crazy soldering skills.
Thanks [Danny] for sending this one in.
Dagger Walking Stick
Masterfully crafted with a decorative silver inlay, this Persian walking stick conceals a dagger .This cane is appears on page 294 of “Canes in the United States: Illustrated Mementoes of American History 1607-1953″, 1994, by Catherine Dike.
Source: Copyright © 2015 M.S. Rau Antiques
