Remember TARS from Interstellar? If not, TARS, one of four former US Marine Corps tactical robots, joined the Endurance crew on their journey through the cosmos. Inventor Charlie Diaz managed to create a miniature version of TARS using a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ board, along with several 3D-printed components.
Only a single serialized ‘The One Ring’ Magic the Gathering card exists and there’s already a $1-million bounty out for it by Dave & Adam’s Card World. This “Precious” is a traditional foil card printed in the Black Speech of Sauron using Tengwar letterforms and can only be pulled in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Collector Booster.
Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet wanted to create a scale model of time in the universe and they headed to a dry Mojave lakebed to do just that. This wasn’t a weekend project either, as it took the two friends, along with a few more people, around 5-years of work to plan before everything could be set up the way you’re about to see.
Spider-Man isn’t a fan of Doctor Octopus’ tentacles, especially in the ‘Spider-Man 2’ film, but inventor James Bruton most certainly is. He wanted to see if it was possible to build a better Doc Ock tentacle using joints made from Stewart platforms, or a type of parallel manipulator with six prismatic actuators.
EddBuilds, a theme park enthusiast, created an amazing 3d-printed roller coaster, called Offride. More specifically, it is based on a Gerstlauer Infinity roller coaster, complete with a vertical lift and three inversions. The planning, building and putting the finishing touches on the build took around 1.5-years to complete.
You’ve seen the massive LEGO Hulkbuster, now check out a functioal 3D-printed Iron Man helmet that comes equipped with a heads-up display. Kris of Kersey Fabrications wasn’t satisfied with the Iron Man helmets currently on the market, so created his own using a 3D printer and NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX system-on-module used for supercomupting.
Photo credit: Juan Carlos Sanchez-Nivicela
While not as tiny as Brachycephalus Brunneus, Hyloscirtus Tolkikieni, a new stream frog species, was named after English author and Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien. It was discovered in Ecuador hiding around the streams of Río Negro-Sopladora National Park and measures 2.5-inches (63.5 millimeters) long.
The all-new LEGO Icons (10316) The Lord of the Rings Rivendell set has been unveiled, and it’s massive. It consists of 6,167-pieces and includes three sections, along with plenty of Easter eggs. The first section features The Council Ring with a semicircular ring of chairs for the council, Frodo’s Bedroom and Elrond’s study.
Gashapon, or gachapon, refers to the famous Bandai capsule toy vending machines that you see all over the world, and Takara Tomy Arts decided to cash in on the craze with a gacha machine backpack. At around $75 USD, it’s far cheaper than buying an actual capsule toy vending machine, but looks the part, complete with a front pocket that lets you store the 10 included capsules.
Smells Like WD-40 cologne by MSCHF is not an early April Fools’ Day joke, nor can it be used as a lubricant, rust preventative and moisture displacer. This is a real fragrance that supposedly smells exactly like the product, and for those who don’t know, it isn’t the first perfume that art collective MSCHF released, as that honor goes to Axe No. 5.