We’re all about the regular features on RPS. Except when we’re three men down and the one who can post is busy swanning around with racing drivers instead. So, with apologies to them and to you for not getting this up on Friday, here belatedly is our weekly round-up of splendid postery from the mellifluous Boing Boing Gadgets – it’s like Boing Boing, but about gadgets. In other words, very much what RPS would do if we were like RPS, but about gadgets.
– By way of a suitable segueway between them and us, here’s BBG throwing down the gauntlet for someone to design a portable console/UMPC dedicated to roguelikes, text adventures and the odd cheeky spot of Dwarf Fortress. About as specialist interest as a gadget could be, but you really can’t pretend you don’t want one upon seeing the excellent photo mock-ups they’ve created.
- At least once a year, I suffer from intense Keyboard Ennui, which usually results in me dropping 40 notes on something that’s esentially exactly the same as the last one, but with an enormous volume dial or something. This time, I’m hankering desperately for one of these gorgeous, hand-illustrated art keyboards.
- Nobody keeps disc-based pornography anymore, surely? Not when there’s this infinite online ocean of flith, offering endless new and ever more debased fantasies. DiscMakers disagree, and have devised this password-protected CD/DVD lockbox/auto-dispenser to safeguard “certain DVDs owners may prefer to keep private.”
- Google and Apple will ultimately either kill each other or join together to form an unstoppable empire. Google’s iphone-baiting ‘Android’ OS for Smartphones suggests war is coming.
- Can you help identify what joystick or arcade machine this orphaned shaft and knob belongs to? Without making gags about shafts and knobs, preferably.
- Alright, this thesis on how to found your own sea-based micro-nation may be a link through to someone else’s post, but John Brownlee nevertheless wins The RPS Best Use of A Bioshock Screengrab Award 2008.
- Finally, here’s Joel Johnson ruminating on the psychogeography of New York, as redefined by his extended visits to GTA IV’s Liberty City.
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Nice selection, although your portable rogue link is off, it goes to the whole days rather that the specific article.
I daresay everyone and their dog has seen this by now but on the topic of keyboards I really like the steampunk one here.
Good list of links, thanks. Google is not killing Apple.
Hi Ryan, I always find your comments insightful, so I was wondering, do you have a website at all?
Thomas – no flaming, please.
Ryan – a few people have complained about it, so lose the long sig please. Folk can click through to your site from your posting name if they so wish.
Hmm, even my Q6600 occasionally struggles with Dwarf Fortress (Usually when I turn mineral collecting back on and 30 idlers suddenly start pathfinding into the network of prospecting mines in the underbelly of my fortress), I dread to think of the power a handleld would require. Still as pointed out in the BoingBoing comments, the Pandora is looking interesting. ( http://www.openpandora.org/ ) Although as I already have a GP2X, and recently came into possesion of a DS (Thanks Mum!) I think I’ll hold off on that. (Especially if I replace my aging laptop with an EeePC come thesis time)
The password protect thing should also point here. At the moment it’s just going to the front page. I don’t really have anything else to add so please feel free to wipe this comment when you fix it.
Fixed, thanks. I really should have mastered copy’n'paste by now…
1. Why isn’t EVERYTHING hand illustrated?! I don’t want any luke-warm ‘practicality’ excuses, I want to be surrounded by beautiful consumer goods.
2. I wonder what the google spider will make of “this orphaned shaft and knob”, you may get a sudden influx of new visitors shortly followed by an email from DiscMakers thanking you for the huge burst in sales since their product appeared on your site.
Dratt: Is point number 1 in reference to porn on DVDs?
One can only imagine the days required for Dwarf Fortress to build it’s world, only to reject it at the last stage.