Gearfuse

If you want to learn to do something properly, you’re going to have to fuck up every once in a while. Mistakes are what teach us the right way to do something. Without them, we’d be under the impression that everything is perfect, even if it was far from.

Writing and drawing are both skills that take an exceptional amount of error and practice before they can be mastered. Unless you are lucky enough to have some sort of freaky innate savant talent, you’re going to screw up… a lot. The Celebrating Mistakes Pencil by Tom Wrigglesworth (imagine having a name like that in grade school) and Mat Robinson allows for as many errors as you can stomach, with plenty of eraser to spare.

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Having trouble creating characters for your next best-selling fantasy novel? Never fear. The Characters for and Epic Tale Postcard chart is perfect for such a situation. Everyone is there, main and side characters, from “the hero” to “the magic cow” (actually not quite familiar with that one).

I can’t tell you how many jams this thing has gotten me out of.

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Flickr user { tcb } searches for abandoned property and then performs some awesome light writing effects. The photos speak for themselves. It seems totally worth it, shooting in an abandoned setting. Not only for freedom and safety sake, but because of the personality the settings ooze through their pores.

Each of these settings has a history. And while we don’t know exactly what that history might be, you can feel the energy of the past, of a busier time when perhaps the area wasn’t abandoned at all. The light writing itself? Top notch. (more…)

Alright. Stick with me on this one. You crazy Europeans love to created weird names for products, like The Mirror by Violet. That being said, The Mirror’ is one of the neatest gadgets I’ve seen in a long time. Hook the $60 plate up to your Mac or PC and get ready to read some RFID tags. The set includes Ztamps (glorified RFID tags) that you can stick in objects and assign actions. For instance, say you shove one inside a sandwich. When you put the sandwich on top of the The Mirror by Violet, it could open up Firefox and surf to the Scanwiches blog.

Sounds like a creative tool. I’d like to know how you’d use this cheap RFID reader. I’d probably shove some in empty CD cases so that the songs would automatically play in iTunes when activated.

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Remember when you were young? Days filled with school, pencils and dog anuses? Ahh, the good old days. I remember it like it were yesterday. Wait a second, that’s because it was yesterday! Thanks to these Dog Pencil Sharpeners. With the help of a mighty pet rectum, our pencils are never dull.

The funny this is, we don’t even use pencils! It’s totally for sexual pleasure entertainment value and that old feeling of nostalgia. There’s nothing quite like reliving the days of anally penetrating our pets with sharp writing utensils. Especially when it only costs $14.99. And for you kitty fans, there’s a cat flavor as well. Check it after the jump. (more…)

Once in awhile, I come across an invention that blows my mind in terms of creativity and functionality. Jay Silver’s Drawdio most certainly fits into that category. Drawdio is a pencil that has a simple synthesizer hooked up to the graphite. Based on the conductivity of graphite, drawing on paper will produce various different sounds creating a one-of-a-kind music experience. This is user-interaction on a whole other level.

Believe it or not, you can build your own Drawdio. The famous Lady Ada is selling kits on her website for $19.50. What are you waiting for? DRAW!

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Ars Technica has a great writeup on the subject of reselling MP3s. CDs are on the way out and I can’t remember the last time I bought one (probably Vampire Weekend). The thing is, you could easily resell a CD. Take the physical media to your local CD shop, trade it in for a few bucks and that’s it.

So what about MP3s? There’s no physical disc or anything to pick up and if you resell it, what’s to stop you from copying it to an external hard drive and then unplugging it? Answer: There isn’t. Reselling MP3s is an idea that just cannot work, no matter the execution. Don’t blame me, though. Blame the DMCA.

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