hobby

Lego book does world landmarks in plastic (Q&A)

Lego fans! If you can't get over to Legoland Malaysia to gawk at its plastic architecture, here's the next best thing. A new book titled "Brick City" looks at Lego re-creations of global landmarks and shows you how to build them.

The 256-page manual has more than 400 illustrations of architectural icons such as the Taj Mahal, Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower, Chicago's Tribune Tower, and Westminster Abbey, as well as 46 instructions and two posters. Author Warren Elsmore and 13 other builders constructed the 100 models in the book, which includes vehicles such as New York cabs -- check out the eye-popping creations in "Brick City" in the gallery below. … Read more

$24,000 Transform Robot goes from car to humanoid

We've seen transforming robots before, and I'm not talking about anything related to Hasbro.

Researchers from MIT are among many engineers and tinkerers trying to design robots that perform different functions by changing their shape or appearance.

Japan-based Brave Robotics has designed a 1/12-scale RC car that can transform into a humanoid robot. It can shuffle around, grab footage with its Wi-Fi camera, and even fire little missiles from its arms. … Read more

Hobby robot Robovie packs PC power

Osaka, Japan-based robot maker Vstone has announced a new humanoid hobby robot that has its own 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, compatible with Windows and Linux.

Developed in collaboration with Japan's ATR labs, the new Robovie-PC represents an evolution in hobby robots with its advanced electronics.

Robovie-PC attempts to fill the gap between high-end machines in research labs and competitive hobby bots as seen in Robo-One and Robocup.

The 15.3-inch Robovie-PC comes preassembled and has an impressive 20 degrees of mechanical freedom, a gyro sensor and accelerometer, as well as onboard Wi-Fi and a 1.3-megapixel CMOS … Read more

Dated database program

Collectibles Organizer Deluxe is a database program that allows users to keep track of the contents of collections of any sort. Although the program works fine, there are likely more sophisticated options to accomplish this task.

The program's interface looks very dated; it's reminiscent of Windows 95. Not surprisingly, it's not particularly intuitive, and in general its layout feels somewhat cluttered and clunky. To its credit, the program does open with a brief explanation of its features, allowing users to get started without too much trouble. Collectibles Organizer Deluxe offers five different database templates for users to … Read more

A pirate's life for Crave

Arrr mateys! This week we welcome Donald Bell, senior editor of digital audio, to the Crave stage! Luckily, we had plenty of good content from the site over the past few weeks to make his first visit an interesting one! Here are the links, you landlubber:

How to rule the high seas of your swimming pool Coming soon: Snap-on Xbox 360 thumb-keyboard controller The dentist chair as a workstation A dishwasher for the dishwasher-less apartment?

Sorry for the late show this week, I was out sick for a few days! Won't happen again!

Download the Crave vodcast RSS feed, … Read more

Death-defying children's hobbies

Don't you love when innocent playground activities meld with extreme sports?

The same crazy folks at Hammacher Schlemmer that brought us the Mountain Scooter, Gravity-Defying Boots and Push-Free Skateboard, are now pushing The Pneumatic Drive Highest-Jumping Pogo Stick.

This is not the pogo stick of our childhoods. No, no, this one's inner compression spring generates more than 1,500 pounds of thrust capable of hurtling you seven feet in the air, which incidentally is the world record for pogoing set by--you guessed it--The Pneumatic Drive Highest-Jumping Pogo Stick. Air can be added by bike pump or air compressor … Read more